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The basis of capitalism is private ownership of production, by definition. The basis for why this is at all acceptable as a system to organize society is that
by jacknews 4y ago
The basis of capitalism is private ownership of production, by definition.
The basis for why this is at all acceptable as a system to organize society is that competition, government restrictions, etc, whittle down private power to somewhat tolerable levels. There must surely be a better system which we haven't thought of yet though.
- iForgotMyPW 4y agodo you think capitalism would still be the base of that system?
- jacknews 4y agoIt's complicated, but I think, no. Many people, especially Americans seem to confuse capitalism with 'trade', 'competition', 'markets', etc, whereas I mean it as the private ownership of production, the profit from other people's work, etc. That seems fundamentally immoral in some ways from the very start. Eg, I read an article about working with Elon Musk recently (https://www.businessinsider.com/working-for-elon-musk-spacex-workplace-culture-twitter-jim-cantrell-2022-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/working-for-elon-musk-spacex...), where they said "If there are employees not aligned with that vision, he will chew them out and he will do it in a vicious way, which is his right as owner.". I mean, no, we really should not be enshrining that, or even really tolerating it, in a decent society. The question then is how should we allocate resources (capital), how should we incentivize risk, innovation, hard work, etc, What kinds of ownership are moral, etc. I suspect we'll be stuck with some form of capitalism for a while though - like democracy, it's the worst system, except for all the others, for now.
- iForgotMyPW 4y agointeresting