3 ms·

> Many people also believe that capitalism inherently leads to wealth inequality unless efforts are taken to stop that. Or alternatively, capitalism is gamed b

> Many people also believe that capitalism inherently leads to wealth inequality unless efforts are taken to stop that. Or alternatively, capitalism is gamed by legislation passed by the government, written by lobbyists, to ensure corporate cash cows are never troubled. Medical, pharmaceutical, insurance, banking industries are good examples. That's not really capitalism.

Jon_Lowtek 5y ago
You have that backwards. Capitalism is not gamed by legislation, buying legislation is a core concept of unregulated capitalism. As is "buying people" and "paying someone to make the dead hooker go away and not be a problem" One of the core ideas of a constitutional republic is that there are fundamental rights and laws that are not for sale. As such "efforts are taken" to prevent the worst that pure unrestrained capitalism could do. Same goes for wealth inequality. Collecting taxes to finance schools available for free to those who could not pay for a school out of their own livelihood is "not really capitalism" and yet it is one of the key elements of social upwards mobility. And yes unrestrained capitalism is creating more inequality. A core concept of a capitalist-social-democratic-republic is that workers can unionize to have more power in wage negotiations. In a pure capitalist society a factory owner would consider paying mercenaries to shoot the union leaders and beat up anyone willing to protest the conditions. That happened a lot in the last two centuries.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> That's not really capitalism. That's exactly capitalism: the system that emerged as the mercantile class leveraged their growing influence to wrest control of government from the titled aristocracy to themselves, and organized it to suit their ends as a class. (It's not the utopian vision created to justify capitalism after critics identified “capitalism“ as a thing and started attacking it, but...that vision was always a lie to keep the working classes in line and believing that the dominion exercised over them was fair.)

Jon_Lowtek 5y ago

You have that backwards. Capitalism is not gamed by legislation, buying legislation is a core concept of unregulated capitalism. As is "buying people" and "paying someone to make the dead hooker go away and not be a problem" One of the core ideas of a constitutional republic is that there are fundamental rights and laws that are not for sale. As such "efforts are taken" to prevent the worst that pure unrestrained capitalism could do. Same goes for wealth inequality. Collecting taxes to finance schools available for free to those who could not pay for a school out of their own livelihood is "not really capitalism" and yet it is one of the key elements of social upwards mobility. And yes unrestrained capitalism is creating more inequality. A core concept of a capitalist-social-democratic-republic is that workers can unionize to have more power in wage negotiations. In a pure capitalist society a factory owner would consider paying mercenaries to shoot the union leaders and beat up anyone willing to protest the conditions. That happened a lot in the last two centuries.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> That's not really capitalism. That's exactly capitalism: the system that emerged as the mercantile class leveraged their growing influence to wrest control of government from the titled aristocracy to themselves, and organized it to suit their ends as a class. (It's not the utopian vision created to justify capitalism after critics identified “capitalism“ as a thing and started attacking it, but...that vision was always a lie to keep the working classes in line and believing that the dominion exercised over them was fair.)