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Please indulge me to try to clarify my thought. Before you choose to practice capitalism or something else, you should choose whether to be a good person who c

Please indulge me to try to clarify my thought. Before you choose to practice capitalism or something else, you should choose whether to be a good person who contributes to society. Those two things are independent of each other. First choose to be a good person. Then employ whatever gift of intelligence you have to build super efficient systems in pursuit of doing good. Capitalism is like gravity. Gravity isn't good or bad. It just is. Everybody takes advantage of gravity all the time to do things like walking. Some people build clever systems that explicitly rely on gravity. The current state of gravity is not making the world better or worse than the state of gravity did a million years ago. People are doing amazing things that seem to defy gravity. But they don't defy gravity. They still rely on principles of physics that include gravity. People who understand gravity can depend on it to make things like Burj Khalifa possible. Any interaction between people involves economics. Capitalism is just a set of observations about those interactions. Capitalists can be selfish or generous (or both). Capitalism focuses on the effects of acting in self interest. But people have to decide for themselves what is in their best interest. That decision is independent of capitalism. I think it is best not to confuse that decision with capitalism. That might help better explain why I think capitalism is super awesome when informed by enlightened ideas of self interest. Your gripe doesn't seem to me to be against capitalism. Your argument seems to be that people have mistaken ideas about their own self interest.

kelseyfrog 5mo ago
> Capitalism is like gravity. This is a very reified stance. What that means is that it expouses a position that has gone through the process of reification. It is a human behavior that takes an idea, usually social, and simultaneously does two things. It forgets the authors and substitutes nature/the universe/reality as the basis/authority for its existence. We see this across human societies, and across time. Capitalism is a product of human choices. It exists as a set of human behaviors and legal protections. It is not a natural phenomenon like gravity because unlike gravity, it didn't exist until the 14th or 15th centuries[1]. Capitalism would not exist if legal protections(namely the legal construct of private property) ceased to exist. Laws, like many other products of human production, are dependent on humans for their existence. 1. Depending on whether you want to start with the Muscovy Company or the British East India company.
- freeopinion 5mo ago
  Some might say that Capitalism (with a capital C) was born in Wealth of Nations. IIUC, you argue it was birthed by Muscovy or BEI some centuries earlier. I argue that capitalism (lower-case) is as old as humans. Was not the shift away from hunter-gatherer a capitalist choice? (Thank you for your comment. I know a discussion about capitalism is completely off-topic, and an explanation of reification is even more off-topic. But I've enjoyed you bringing it up and exploring the tangent.)
  - kelseyfrog 5mo ago
    I debated distinguishing the behavior of Capitalism and when we actually started calling it Capitalism and went with the former. Before we get too far into the weeds, I want to be very specific about Capitalism. I am referring it to be the ability to buy and sell portions of a company[the capacity to produce]. The conception of company as property. This didn't arise until the events mentioned. From what I gather, it's not a particularly contested definition. Happy to correspond elsewhere! Contact available in my bio.
  - komali2 5mo ago
    > argue that capitalism (lower-case) is as old as humans. Was not the shift away from hunter-gatherer a capitalist choice? What's the difference between capitalism and Capitalism? Are you just describing the act of exchanging resources as capitalism? The Soviet Union fed its workers (usually lol), was that exchange of resources "capitalism?" This isn't a really accurate use of terms, and imo is an example of the hypernormalization of capitalism, or as the op said, reification. There's a tendency in people to believe that things that existed as recently as a day before they were born, have existed for essentially forever, and are as certain as gravity. In reality, capitalism, which is the private ownership of the means of production in service of accumulating capital, is as stated very young. We have about 25,000 years of human society operating without capitalism. Trade is not capitalism, nor did the switch to agrarian society represent a capitalist choice. It's frankly a bog standard example of primitive communism. Fields were owned in common by a society, worked in common, reaped in common, consumed in common. Depending on the society, you might have elders, matriarchs, patriarchs etc that determined how resources would be allocated (e.g. successful hunters getting more, spiritual leaders getting more, assholes getting less), but those people weren't "owners" by our capitalist understanding. Nobody paid them rent. Furthermore, one village trading with another e.g. ox for squash or whatever, isn't capitalism. Even if the ox were "privately owned," and exchanged for e.g. a dowry, the land on which the ox feeds is still owned in common, and such resources were still generally expected to be shared in emergency or for religious or cultural events. Depending on the society of course, but it's a pretty common thread throughout history - the gift economy, and primitive communism. I think it's very important to keep clear on terms and our history, because dogmatism can cast our feet in concrete and prevent us from trying new, exciting things that are possibly more well suited for the times. One could argue that the global takeover by capitalism is evidence of its effectiveness in all aspects of organizing society, I would say it's more likely to be evidence at its effectiveness of spreading and consuming societies while regulating them just enough to prevent their collapse. Efficient? Hardly - look at the wealth disparity between Apple shareholders and the factory workers that throw themselves off buildings after making the phones that generate apple's fat profit margins. How is that efficient? Therefore I want to push back on this idea of capitalism as gravity to leave us room to explore new ideas.
wolvesechoes 5mo ago
> Capitalism is like gravity We created capitalism, we didn't create gravity. Humans are conscious political actors and can decide how they want to organize their society. > Capitalism is just a set of observations about those interactions. Capitalists can be selfish or generous (or both). Capitalism it social, material and symbolical structure, not some set of observations. Sorry, but what you write is pure ideology. You naturalize something created socially and politically.

kelseyfrog 5mo ago

> Capitalism is like gravity. This is a very reified stance. What that means is that it expouses a position that has gone through the process of reification. It is a human behavior that takes an idea, usually social, and simultaneously does two things. It forgets the authors and substitutes nature/the universe/reality as the basis/authority for its existence. We see this across human societies, and across time. Capitalism is a product of human choices. It exists as a set of human behaviors and legal protections. It is not a natural phenomenon like gravity because unlike gravity, it didn't exist until the 14th or 15th centuries[1]. Capitalism would not exist if legal protections(namely the legal construct of private property) ceased to exist. Laws, like many other products of human production, are dependent on humans for their existence. 1. Depending on whether you want to start with the Muscovy Company or the British East India company.

freeopinion 5mo ago
Some might say that Capitalism (with a capital C) was born in Wealth of Nations. IIUC, you argue it was birthed by Muscovy or BEI some centuries earlier. I argue that capitalism (lower-case) is as old as humans. Was not the shift away from hunter-gatherer a capitalist choice? (Thank you for your comment. I know a discussion about capitalism is completely off-topic, and an explanation of reification is even more off-topic. But I've enjoyed you bringing it up and exploring the tangent.)
- kelseyfrog 5mo ago
  I debated distinguishing the behavior of Capitalism and when we actually started calling it Capitalism and went with the former. Before we get too far into the weeds, I want to be very specific about Capitalism. I am referring it to be the ability to buy and sell portions of a company[the capacity to produce]. The conception of company as property. This didn't arise until the events mentioned. From what I gather, it's not a particularly contested definition. Happy to correspond elsewhere! Contact available in my bio.
- komali2 5mo ago
  > argue that capitalism (lower-case) is as old as humans. Was not the shift away from hunter-gatherer a capitalist choice? What's the difference between capitalism and Capitalism? Are you just describing the act of exchanging resources as capitalism? The Soviet Union fed its workers (usually lol), was that exchange of resources "capitalism?" This isn't a really accurate use of terms, and imo is an example of the hypernormalization of capitalism, or as the op said, reification. There's a tendency in people to believe that things that existed as recently as a day before they were born, have existed for essentially forever, and are as certain as gravity. In reality, capitalism, which is the private ownership of the means of production in service of accumulating capital, is as stated very young. We have about 25,000 years of human society operating without capitalism. Trade is not capitalism, nor did the switch to agrarian society represent a capitalist choice. It's frankly a bog standard example of primitive communism. Fields were owned in common by a society, worked in common, reaped in common, consumed in common. Depending on the society, you might have elders, matriarchs, patriarchs etc that determined how resources would be allocated (e.g. successful hunters getting more, spiritual leaders getting more, assholes getting less), but those people weren't "owners" by our capitalist understanding. Nobody paid them rent. Furthermore, one village trading with another e.g. ox for squash or whatever, isn't capitalism. Even if the ox were "privately owned," and exchanged for e.g. a dowry, the land on which the ox feeds is still owned in common, and such resources were still generally expected to be shared in emergency or for religious or cultural events. Depending on the society of course, but it's a pretty common thread throughout history - the gift economy, and primitive communism. I think it's very important to keep clear on terms and our history, because dogmatism can cast our feet in concrete and prevent us from trying new, exciting things that are possibly more well suited for the times. One could argue that the global takeover by capitalism is evidence of its effectiveness in all aspects of organizing society, I would say it's more likely to be evidence at its effectiveness of spreading and consuming societies while regulating them just enough to prevent their collapse. Efficient? Hardly - look at the wealth disparity between Apple shareholders and the factory workers that throw themselves off buildings after making the phones that generate apple's fat profit margins. How is that efficient? Therefore I want to push back on this idea of capitalism as gravity to leave us room to explore new ideas.

wolvesechoes 5mo ago

> Capitalism is like gravity We created capitalism, we didn't create gravity. Humans are conscious political actors and can decide how they want to organize their society. > Capitalism is just a set of observations about those interactions. Capitalists can be selfish or generous (or both). Capitalism it social, material and symbolical structure, not some set of observations. Sorry, but what you write is pure ideology. You naturalize something created socially and politically.