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Capitalism is just people being free to own what they produce or acquire in trade, and do with it what they wish. What people do within this context, is up to t

Capitalism is just people being free to own what they produce or acquire in trade, and do with it what they wish. What people do within this context, is up to them. This attribution of a value system, e.g. consumerism or profit-seeking, to capitalism, is misguided, and a way for certain ideological camps to pathologize and stigmatize human freedom.

waingake 5y ago
Capitalism here is what you are doing once the accumulation of further capital becomes the principal objective of you activities. If you generate a lot of profit, but you use it all to finance a luxurious lifestyle of even just to keep you and your employees comfortable then you are not necessarily doing capitalism. The pursuit of captial accumulation is always dependent on the exploitation of someone's labour / time somewhere. If you really care about freedom why are you happy with a system that means all but the very rich must spend the majority of their lives in toil?
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  >>Capitalism here is what you are doing once the accumulation of further capital becomes the principal objective of you activities. That is not the definition when used in the context of cross-economic-system analysis. Individual objectives, values and motivations are completely orthogonal to whether capitalism is in place. Eliminating capitalism doesn't mean changing people's objectives and values. It means depriving them of the right to keep what they produce and acquire in trade, and do with what they wish. And no, profiting has no relevance to exploitation. That is just Marxist pseudoscience to pathologize success. >>If you really care about freedom why are you happy with a system that means all but the very rich must spend the majority of their lives in toil? The amount that people toil has decreased largely as a result of the ruleset I mentioned, that is associated with capitalism.
  - cloudfifty 5y ago
    > That is just Marxist pseudoscience to pathologize success That's not a serious way to argue at all. That is just emotional dogma that criticism can ultimately be traced to envy. > The amount that people toil has decreased largely as a result of the ruleset I mentioned, that is associated with capitalism. No, it hasn't.
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      >>That's not a serious way to argue at all. There is nothing of substance to argue against. Characterizing all profit as exploitation is completely baseless. It's also extremely inflammatory, making this accusation totally irresponsible, and it unsurprising that every society which has accepted this pseudoscientific doctrine has turned into a Hellish dystopia full of repression. >>No, it hasn't. Economists who have studied development say it is: https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-billion-people-have-been-taken-out-extreme-poverty-20-years-world-should-aim http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-bill... http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-global-war-on-poverty http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-glo...
      - cloudfifty 5y ago
        > Characterizing all profit as exploitation is completely baseless, extremely inflammatory, and totally irresponsible. Why? > It's totally irresponsible, and it's unsurprising that every society which has accepted this pseudoscientific doctrine has turned into a Hellish dystopia full of repression. More emotional stuff. > Economists who have studied development say it is: That's regarding absolute poverty (which is a contested topic as well), not that people spend their lives in toil.
        CryptoPunk 5y ago
        >>Why? Because there is no basis provided for this absurd characterization. >>More emotional stuff. And Marxist dogma calling profit exploitation isn't? >>That's regarding absolute poverty (which is a contested topic as well) Absolute poverty means extreme toil. As the economy develops, wages rise and jobs become less strenuous. A more developed economy also means more household chores become possible to automate or outsource to specialists who do them far more efficiently.
cloudfifty 5y ago
> This attribution of a value system, e.g. consumerism or profit-seeking, to capitalism, is misguided It's not. Capitalism is not exempt from the common sense notion of "You reap what you sow", and the history of Capitalism proves this indisputably. > and a way for certain ideological camps to pathologize and stigmatize human freedom. The economic sphere of capitalism isn't free at all. It's firmly authoritarian. Most people today have no other choice than to sell their labour and thus their freedom for most of their lives to someone lucky enough to be wealthier than them. That's a very poor standard of "freedom". Sure, it can certainly get worse, but this wasn't the freedom that people dreamt of 100 years ago and beyond.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  >>It's not. Capitalism is not exempt from the common sense notion of "You reap what you sow", and the history of Capitalism proves this indisputably. You're making a lot of unsubstantiated assertions that are in the realm of conspiracy theory. >>The economic sphere of capitalism isn't free at all. It's firmly authoritarian. Most people today have no other choice than to sell their labour and thus their freedom for most of their lives to someone lucky enough to be wealthier than them. Nothing you wrote substantiates your first assertion that "The economic sphere of capitalism isn't free at all. It's firmly authoritarian." As for being forced, by the prospect of starvation, to work: as Frédéric Bastiat wrote 170 years ago.. "Man recoils from trouble, from suffering; and yet he is condemned by nature to the suffering of privation, if he does not take the trouble to work. He has to choose, then, between these two evils. What means can he adopt to avoid both? There remains now, and there will remain, only one way, which is, to enjoy the labor of others. Such a course of conduct prevents the trouble and the satisfaction from preserving their natural proportion, and causes all the trouble to become the lot of one set of persons, and all the satisfaction that of another. This is the origin of slavery and of plunder, whatever its form may be - whether that of wars, imposition, violence, restrictions, frauds, etc. - monstrous abuses, but consistent with the thought which has given them birth. Oppressors should be detested and resisted - they can hardly be called absurd." Someone wealthier offering a higher wage than the other options available to a person, and a person consequently choosing to work for them, is not authoritarianism. What your argument is based on is inflammatory appeals to emotion, that upon even mimimal examimations, are revealed as totally without substance.

waingake 5y ago

Capitalism here is what you are doing once the accumulation of further capital becomes the principal objective of you activities. If you generate a lot of profit, but you use it all to finance a luxurious lifestyle of even just to keep you and your employees comfortable then you are not necessarily doing capitalism. The pursuit of captial accumulation is always dependent on the exploitation of someone's labour / time somewhere. If you really care about freedom why are you happy with a system that means all but the very rich must spend the majority of their lives in toil?

CryptoPunk 5y ago
>>Capitalism here is what you are doing once the accumulation of further capital becomes the principal objective of you activities. That is not the definition when used in the context of cross-economic-system analysis. Individual objectives, values and motivations are completely orthogonal to whether capitalism is in place. Eliminating capitalism doesn't mean changing people's objectives and values. It means depriving them of the right to keep what they produce and acquire in trade, and do with what they wish. And no, profiting has no relevance to exploitation. That is just Marxist pseudoscience to pathologize success. >>If you really care about freedom why are you happy with a system that means all but the very rich must spend the majority of their lives in toil? The amount that people toil has decreased largely as a result of the ruleset I mentioned, that is associated with capitalism.
- cloudfifty 5y ago
  > That is just Marxist pseudoscience to pathologize success That's not a serious way to argue at all. That is just emotional dogma that criticism can ultimately be traced to envy. > The amount that people toil has decreased largely as a result of the ruleset I mentioned, that is associated with capitalism. No, it hasn't.
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    >>That's not a serious way to argue at all. There is nothing of substance to argue against. Characterizing all profit as exploitation is completely baseless. It's also extremely inflammatory, making this accusation totally irresponsible, and it unsurprising that every society which has accepted this pseudoscientific doctrine has turned into a Hellish dystopia full of repression. >>No, it hasn't. Economists who have studied development say it is: https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-billion-people-have-been-taken-out-extreme-poverty-20-years-world-should-aim http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-bill... http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-global-war-on-poverty http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-glo...
    - cloudfifty 5y ago
      > Characterizing all profit as exploitation is completely baseless, extremely inflammatory, and totally irresponsible. Why? > It's totally irresponsible, and it's unsurprising that every society which has accepted this pseudoscientific doctrine has turned into a Hellish dystopia full of repression. More emotional stuff. > Economists who have studied development say it is: That's regarding absolute poverty (which is a contested topic as well), not that people spend their lives in toil.
      - CryptoPunk 5y ago
        >>Why? Because there is no basis provided for this absurd characterization. >>More emotional stuff. And Marxist dogma calling profit exploitation isn't? >>That's regarding absolute poverty (which is a contested topic as well) Absolute poverty means extreme toil. As the economy develops, wages rise and jobs become less strenuous. A more developed economy also means more household chores become possible to automate or outsource to specialists who do them far more efficiently.

cloudfifty 5y ago

> This attribution of a value system, e.g. consumerism or profit-seeking, to capitalism, is misguided It's not. Capitalism is not exempt from the common sense notion of "You reap what you sow", and the history of Capitalism proves this indisputably. > and a way for certain ideological camps to pathologize and stigmatize human freedom. The economic sphere of capitalism isn't free at all. It's firmly authoritarian. Most people today have no other choice than to sell their labour and thus their freedom for most of their lives to someone lucky enough to be wealthier than them. That's a very poor standard of "freedom". Sure, it can certainly get worse, but this wasn't the freedom that people dreamt of 100 years ago and beyond.

CryptoPunk 5y ago
>>It's not. Capitalism is not exempt from the common sense notion of "You reap what you sow", and the history of Capitalism proves this indisputably. You're making a lot of unsubstantiated assertions that are in the realm of conspiracy theory. >>The economic sphere of capitalism isn't free at all. It's firmly authoritarian. Most people today have no other choice than to sell their labour and thus their freedom for most of their lives to someone lucky enough to be wealthier than them. Nothing you wrote substantiates your first assertion that "The economic sphere of capitalism isn't free at all. It's firmly authoritarian." As for being forced, by the prospect of starvation, to work: as Frédéric Bastiat wrote 170 years ago.. "Man recoils from trouble, from suffering; and yet he is condemned by nature to the suffering of privation, if he does not take the trouble to work. He has to choose, then, between these two evils. What means can he adopt to avoid both? There remains now, and there will remain, only one way, which is, to enjoy the labor of others. Such a course of conduct prevents the trouble and the satisfaction from preserving their natural proportion, and causes all the trouble to become the lot of one set of persons, and all the satisfaction that of another. This is the origin of slavery and of plunder, whatever its form may be - whether that of wars, imposition, violence, restrictions, frauds, etc. - monstrous abuses, but consistent with the thought which has given them birth. Oppressors should be detested and resisted - they can hardly be called absurd." Someone wealthier offering a higher wage than the other options available to a person, and a person consequently choosing to work for them, is not authoritarianism. What your argument is based on is inflammatory appeals to emotion, that upon even mimimal examimations, are revealed as totally without substance.