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Capitalism is not an economic system, it is a description of fundamental economics. Countries can have a highly regulated form of capitalism where trade and ow

Capitalism is not an economic system, it is a description of fundamental economics. Countries can have a highly regulated form of capitalism where trade and ownership is strictly controlled… and they’re often called socialist or communist, or a laissez faire system. However, so long as people are using land, buildings structures, designing equipment… the laws of capitalism will apply.

agentultra 4y ago
Capitalism isn’t a fundamental law like the speed of light or thermodynamics. We can use other systems that suit our goals better. Even if it’s a better form of capitalism than what we’re dealing with now. This post-monetarist form of capitalism is killing people and this planet and enriching but a few. That’s not the kind of society most people want. A matter of time before there are enough have-nots and upheaval becomes a real problem for the capital owners.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- s__s 4y ago
  Capitalism is too broad a term to be useful in these conversations. At it’s core capitalism just means that private individuals can own property, instead of the state owning everything. Which is absolutely critical for a free society. It’s paramount that individuals not be dependant on a ruling class for survival.
  - agentultra 4y ago
    It’s absolutely not critical or essential for a free society. It’s only essential for capital owners to maintain their wealth and power.
    - JieJie 4y ago
      Markets are probably essential. Ownership is a term that is loaded and the argument between socialism and capitalism is actually not really helpful. For instance, if we removed the concept of capital and implemented socialism, there would still be a concept of "responsibility for". So if there were community bicycles, individuals would still have responsibility if they threw the bicycles in a lake. The community officially "owned" the bicycles, and the individual acted against the community's best interests. Capitalism as written about by Adam Smith seeks to solve the same problem by putting the "ownership" in the hands of the individual, so that the individual is given incentive to care and maintain the bike. These are both potentially-effective systems that seek to solve the problem of "who's responsible for this bicycle". There are trade-offs for each. When we simplify complex market-based problems into choices between either capitalism or socialism, we have created nice ways to describe the problem, but neither of them serves as an effective solution to the problem. For the solution, we have to dig deeper and that means not being beholden to ideologies that can prevent us from seeing good solutions.
      - imtringued 4y ago
        The problem with ownership is that it isn't that easy. With land people don't own the land itself they only have exclusive usage rights for a specific period of time. Once that time is over they are no longer responsible. Thus even with private ownership you still can have the tragedy of the commons problem, it is just divided over time instead of space. The most common example is soil depletion from industrialized agriculture. If you wanted to solve this problem you would need a regulatory body that inspects the quality of the soil and fines people who degrade it. Governance becomes essential to balance the micro and macro economy.
  - HyperSane 4y ago
    The concept of property has been warped to include the value of shares of a corporation, whose value is generated by the labor of its employees. This is the primary way the richest people steal wealth from labor.
    - satvikpendem 4y ago
      Only if you believe in the Labor Theory of Value, which most don't. If I own a ship that's going on some expedition (as how shares originally started), I raise capital and reduce risk by issuing shares that people can buy. I have to, well, share my wealth but I have more money now to do the expedition. Corporations are just bigger versions of the same idea, they're still run by people, any of whom can decide not to work there anymore, for better or worse.
    - cambaceres 4y ago
      What you and other students of Karl Marx always ignore is the fact that if company owners was not allowed to earn profit then there would be no companies founded, meaning that the workers would not have jobs.
      - agentultra 4y ago
        I think the idea is that the workers would profit from their labour and control what gets produced. I’m not sure that means companies wouldn’t be started and everyone would sit around doing nothing.
        satvikpendem 4y ago
        They can do that, nothing stops people from setting up co-ops today, I've been in one as well in fact. But at the same time, if I'm making something lucrative, I'd want to profit from it. That other people I hire are willing to work for the wage I give them is their problem, since if they don't like the wage, they can always go elsewhere (given that they are skilled workers, not workers who can find no other job in some company town or something).
- kbelder 4y ago
  Not like the speed of light, but similar to thermodynamics. It arises statistically from complexity.
- goodluckchuck 4y ago
  Capitalism is a fundamental law. It’s inexorably true that means of production control the outputs. It’s unavoidable that whoever has power over production has power over those who rely on those outputs. Unless you’re advocating for the destruction of factories, the razing of homes, etc. you’re in favor of capital. We’re just discussing who is going to control the capital.
Xelynega 4y ago
> However, so long as people are using land, buildings structures, designing equipment… the laws of capitalism will apply. Capitalism is the system where someone can claim ownership of land/buildings/ideas(typically due to prior ownership) aka "capital". If the laws don't allow someone to make and hold that claim of private ownership, how would the "laws of capitalism" still apply?
- ilyt 4y ago
  > Capitalism is the system where someone can claim ownership of land/buildings/ideas(typically due to prior ownership) Typically due to paying someone to invent/build them, then continuing to capitalize on essentially someone's else work. That's the problem. I think we would be in much better situation if the person who worked on something reaped majority of benefits, and not boss of their boss. Instead we have IP producers needing to produce thru their whole productive life, while having their IP ownership assigned to corporations because that's what their employment contract allows, and nobody else in society being able to benefit (without paying not-the-author of it), even tho near everything relies on what came before. That then can be used by corporations either long enough to stifle innovation and competition (patents), or even long enough that nobody involved is alive anymore (copyright law), all while paying far lower taxes than people they hire. Like, capitalism might have some problems but they are by far exacerbated by how law around it works. Any technology that increases performance by far benefits the owners of company the most and they pay less taxes on top of that.
- onlypositive 4y ago
  Capitalism isn't "a system" in the sense that it's defined. It's the default you're left with when you get rid of all the other crap.
imtringued 4y ago
>Capitalism is not an economic system, it is a description of fundamental economics Silvio Gesell has developed an economic system inspired by Darwin. I don't mean social Darwinism, I mean that he deconstructs the economy down to self preservation and group preservation instincts which are biological necessities. Self preservation is necessary to survive. A biological organism that does not self preserve will be selected out. This means that self preservation instincts represent egoism. You might now say that this is the end, capitalism has won, except there is also group preservation. Group preservation requires self preservation as a prerequisite. If you cannot meaningfully self preserve, you will most likely contribute nothing to group preservation as there aren't many situations where dying outweighs the cost of raising a member of the group. This means self preservation instincts play a significant role all the way until they start threatening group preservation. An organism that exclusively specializes in self preservation would always be a lone wolf with no socialization. The problem with this theory is that it would imply subsistence which is the opposite of capitalism. In other words, capitalism cannot be the result of simple egoism and self preservation because people would simply leave the capitalist society for the sake of self preservation if it were to become too stressful. Thus there must be a significant group preservation instinct in humans and they have been evolved to survive in groups. In other words, capitalism has to leverage group preservation instincts somehow and therefore it is just another flavor of socialism or communism except in favour of people with capital. Now, you can take it too far and entirely rely on group preservation instincts like communists claim but that doesn't work in practice either as self preservation overrides group preservation. Only people who have their basic needs met can engage in altruism. Thus you can't expect a society consisting exclusively of altruists or egoists. Instead you would expect evolution to hit just the right balance between the two and that would imply the absence of both capitalism and socialism. It means both are an aberration that cannot be explained biologically. Yes, that would imply that people can choose to participate in a market economy but it doesn't mean they have to and market economies don't have to be capitalist. >Capitalism is not an economic system, it is a description of fundamental economics. Theoretical economists have no concept of capitalism except maybe Keynes. In classical and neo classic economic theory there is no such thing as "capitalism". In theory it doesn't exist. There is a market economy with zero coercion and it does not intrinsically favor capital. You can't get richer through unfair means or corruption in these models either. The gaps between the model and the real world are then filled with dogma and ideology. For example, you can just say that a positive return on capital represents a voluntary high time preference even if the return is higher than what would bring the economy into equilibrium. The real world starts exhibiting cycles that make no sense in the model, meh. Let's claim capitalism is a constant of the universe even though biological dynamics imply the opposite.

agentultra 4y ago

Capitalism isn’t a fundamental law like the speed of light or thermodynamics. We can use other systems that suit our goals better. Even if it’s a better form of capitalism than what we’re dealing with now. This post-monetarist form of capitalism is killing people and this planet and enriching but a few. That’s not the kind of society most people want. A matter of time before there are enough have-nots and upheaval becomes a real problem for the capital owners.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
s__s 4y ago
Capitalism is too broad a term to be useful in these conversations. At it’s core capitalism just means that private individuals can own property, instead of the state owning everything. Which is absolutely critical for a free society. It’s paramount that individuals not be dependant on a ruling class for survival.
- agentultra 4y ago
  It’s absolutely not critical or essential for a free society. It’s only essential for capital owners to maintain their wealth and power.
  - JieJie 4y ago
    Markets are probably essential. Ownership is a term that is loaded and the argument between socialism and capitalism is actually not really helpful. For instance, if we removed the concept of capital and implemented socialism, there would still be a concept of "responsibility for". So if there were community bicycles, individuals would still have responsibility if they threw the bicycles in a lake. The community officially "owned" the bicycles, and the individual acted against the community's best interests. Capitalism as written about by Adam Smith seeks to solve the same problem by putting the "ownership" in the hands of the individual, so that the individual is given incentive to care and maintain the bike. These are both potentially-effective systems that seek to solve the problem of "who's responsible for this bicycle". There are trade-offs for each. When we simplify complex market-based problems into choices between either capitalism or socialism, we have created nice ways to describe the problem, but neither of them serves as an effective solution to the problem. For the solution, we have to dig deeper and that means not being beholden to ideologies that can prevent us from seeing good solutions.
    - imtringued 4y ago
      The problem with ownership is that it isn't that easy. With land people don't own the land itself they only have exclusive usage rights for a specific period of time. Once that time is over they are no longer responsible. Thus even with private ownership you still can have the tragedy of the commons problem, it is just divided over time instead of space. The most common example is soil depletion from industrialized agriculture. If you wanted to solve this problem you would need a regulatory body that inspects the quality of the soil and fines people who degrade it. Governance becomes essential to balance the micro and macro economy.
- HyperSane 4y ago
  The concept of property has been warped to include the value of shares of a corporation, whose value is generated by the labor of its employees. This is the primary way the richest people steal wealth from labor.
  - satvikpendem 4y ago
    Only if you believe in the Labor Theory of Value, which most don't. If I own a ship that's going on some expedition (as how shares originally started), I raise capital and reduce risk by issuing shares that people can buy. I have to, well, share my wealth but I have more money now to do the expedition. Corporations are just bigger versions of the same idea, they're still run by people, any of whom can decide not to work there anymore, for better or worse.
  - cambaceres 4y ago
    What you and other students of Karl Marx always ignore is the fact that if company owners was not allowed to earn profit then there would be no companies founded, meaning that the workers would not have jobs.
    - agentultra 4y ago
      I think the idea is that the workers would profit from their labour and control what gets produced. I’m not sure that means companies wouldn’t be started and everyone would sit around doing nothing.
      - satvikpendem 4y ago
        They can do that, nothing stops people from setting up co-ops today, I've been in one as well in fact. But at the same time, if I'm making something lucrative, I'd want to profit from it. That other people I hire are willing to work for the wage I give them is their problem, since if they don't like the wage, they can always go elsewhere (given that they are skilled workers, not workers who can find no other job in some company town or something).
kbelder 4y ago
Not like the speed of light, but similar to thermodynamics. It arises statistically from complexity.
goodluckchuck 4y ago
Capitalism is a fundamental law. It’s inexorably true that means of production control the outputs. It’s unavoidable that whoever has power over production has power over those who rely on those outputs. Unless you’re advocating for the destruction of factories, the razing of homes, etc. you’re in favor of capital. We’re just discussing who is going to control the capital.

Xelynega 4y ago

> However, so long as people are using land, buildings structures, designing equipment… the laws of capitalism will apply. Capitalism is the system where someone can claim ownership of land/buildings/ideas(typically due to prior ownership) aka "capital". If the laws don't allow someone to make and hold that claim of private ownership, how would the "laws of capitalism" still apply?

ilyt 4y ago
> Capitalism is the system where someone can claim ownership of land/buildings/ideas(typically due to prior ownership) Typically due to paying someone to invent/build them, then continuing to capitalize on essentially someone's else work. That's the problem. I think we would be in much better situation if the person who worked on something reaped majority of benefits, and not boss of their boss. Instead we have IP producers needing to produce thru their whole productive life, while having their IP ownership assigned to corporations because that's what their employment contract allows, and nobody else in society being able to benefit (without paying not-the-author of it), even tho near everything relies on what came before. That then can be used by corporations either long enough to stifle innovation and competition (patents), or even long enough that nobody involved is alive anymore (copyright law), all while paying far lower taxes than people they hire. Like, capitalism might have some problems but they are by far exacerbated by how law around it works. Any technology that increases performance by far benefits the owners of company the most and they pay less taxes on top of that.
onlypositive 4y ago
Capitalism isn't "a system" in the sense that it's defined. It's the default you're left with when you get rid of all the other crap.

imtringued 4y ago

>Capitalism is not an economic system, it is a description of fundamental economics Silvio Gesell has developed an economic system inspired by Darwin. I don't mean social Darwinism, I mean that he deconstructs the economy down to self preservation and group preservation instincts which are biological necessities. Self preservation is necessary to survive. A biological organism that does not self preserve will be selected out. This means that self preservation instincts represent egoism. You might now say that this is the end, capitalism has won, except there is also group preservation. Group preservation requires self preservation as a prerequisite. If you cannot meaningfully self preserve, you will most likely contribute nothing to group preservation as there aren't many situations where dying outweighs the cost of raising a member of the group. This means self preservation instincts play a significant role all the way until they start threatening group preservation. An organism that exclusively specializes in self preservation would always be a lone wolf with no socialization. The problem with this theory is that it would imply subsistence which is the opposite of capitalism. In other words, capitalism cannot be the result of simple egoism and self preservation because people would simply leave the capitalist society for the sake of self preservation if it were to become too stressful. Thus there must be a significant group preservation instinct in humans and they have been evolved to survive in groups. In other words, capitalism has to leverage group preservation instincts somehow and therefore it is just another flavor of socialism or communism except in favour of people with capital. Now, you can take it too far and entirely rely on group preservation instincts like communists claim but that doesn't work in practice either as self preservation overrides group preservation. Only people who have their basic needs met can engage in altruism. Thus you can't expect a society consisting exclusively of altruists or egoists. Instead you would expect evolution to hit just the right balance between the two and that would imply the absence of both capitalism and socialism. It means both are an aberration that cannot be explained biologically. Yes, that would imply that people can choose to participate in a market economy but it doesn't mean they have to and market economies don't have to be capitalist. >Capitalism is not an economic system, it is a description of fundamental economics. Theoretical economists have no concept of capitalism except maybe Keynes. In classical and neo classic economic theory there is no such thing as "capitalism". In theory it doesn't exist. There is a market economy with zero coercion and it does not intrinsically favor capital. You can't get richer through unfair means or corruption in these models either. The gaps between the model and the real world are then filled with dogma and ideology. For example, you can just say that a positive return on capital represents a voluntary high time preference even if the return is higher than what would bring the economy into equilibrium. The real world starts exhibiting cycles that make no sense in the model, meh. Let's claim capitalism is a constant of the universe even though biological dynamics imply the opposite.