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The term "capitalism" was literally only created for the purpose of writing criticisms of the (then) current system of markets/trading/taxing/investing. Try a

The term "capitalism" was literally only created for the purpose of writing criticisms of the (then) current system of markets/trading/taxing/investing. Try actually defining capitalism in a way that doesn't apply to basically any random society since the dawn of agriculture. Stuff like people buying and selling items using a currency for a price the individual chooses has been common to basically every human society we have written records for. The formalization of the process of buying shares in a company and receiving dividends/profits as a result is a bit newer, but the general concept of "I give you money, you use it to make something and sell it then give me money back" has been around for roughly the same amount of time as currency itself. Anyways, my point is that there is a lot of things to criticize about our current world/economy, using the term "capitalism" while doing so is too vague to be useful in any way. (Communism/socialism does have more of an actual definition, but very few people are aware of or use it, so it doesn't help all that much).

sebastiennight 3mo ago
> Try actually defining capitalism in a way that doesn't apply to basically any random society since the dawn of agriculture. .. feudalism? Which, AFAIK, lasted much longer, and is just not the same thing?
- wredcoll 3mo ago
  History.com says: > Feudalism is a term often used to describe the social, economic and political conditions that existed in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. At its core, it was a system in which a landowner, or lord, granted a piece of land called a fief to a subordinate known as a vassal. In return, the vassal pledged loyalty to the lord, providing labor, military service, payments—or a mix of these. And then the next paragraph goes on to say that historians think this is way too simple to describe what real people were actually doing. Either way, unless every single piece of property in the kingdom (including, like, plows and mill stones and spinning wheels) was granted by the king (or someone he had granted to) it seems like there's still a lot of room for buying/selling/investing. I mean, it's an interesting answer but my basic point is that the "real world" is far too complex for a term like capitalism to be at all useful. Even stuff like "free market", can a market be "free" if a government exists? What about monopolies? Etc etc. I just want people to be more specific when they criticize systems!
  - idiotsecant 3mo ago
    plows and mill stones and spinning wheels are excellent examples of exactly what a feudal lord owned. They owned the land, the major structures on that land, and the major implements on that land. If you wanted to use them you paid the lord in fees via goods, labor, etc. It's basically the gig economy - you will own nothing, your labor will be for his benefit, and if you want to keep participating you'll make it worth his while.
    - wredcoll 3mo ago
      That did occasionally happen but I don't think it was the majority case by any means. That being said, if we're talking about the lord owning the mill you labor at, how is that different than tesla owning the car factory you work at?
      - sebastiennight 3mo ago
        Tesla does not, AFAICT, also own the land you live on. They pay you in fiat currency that can be exchanged for other goods sold by any provider. A better comparison to support your "capitalism = feudalism" argument would actually be the era of company stores and truck wages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons
        wredcoll 3mo ago
        I agree about the company stores thing, but it's pretty common (right now in america) for someone to work at a factory, that they do not own, and live in a house, that they also do not own. The distinction between that and some kind of stereotypical medieval serf living on a farm he was granted by a lord and producing crops that he uses to pay his rents and so forth seems somewhat minor. Yes in general a modern american has more government enforced rights and protections, but at the end of the day a lot of rights aren't really all that relevant if you can't afford them in the first place. Musk and I both have the right to build a factory to produce electric cars, but one of us is going to have a much harder time exercising that right. (Not to say that we aren't living in a better world, we absolutely are, I would never trade places with basically anyone from "the past", but the point isn't that things aren't as bad as they used to be, the point is how do we improve what we have today)
danudey 3mo ago
Saw an interesting discussion on how capitalism has existed for as long as markets have existed, including ancient Greece, and how it inevitably leads to wealth inequality, monopolistic behavior, unsustainable resource extraction, and all the other negatives we see today. The only difference is that in Greece, all of these negatives would have been applied locally but now they're all being applied globally. Instead of one super-wealthy man being a pain in the ass for the local Athens economy, he can now ruin things for everyone everywhere.
- atmosx 3mo ago
  Nah, Ancient Greece has nothing to do with today’s capitalism. It’s a dumb example and the parallels will fall down to a close inspection. Different world.
- wredcoll 3mo ago
  I would more simply define that as "wealth inequality" rather than capitalism (or more broadly, power inequality) and perhaps go on to say that the real problem is that, while you can't realistically prevent/remove all inquality, most systems do a poor job of preventing the people with more money/power from using that to consistently increase their own share.
  - idiotsecant 3mo ago
    TIL: The bad parts of a system are some other isim, the good parts are the system.
    - bit-anarchist 3mo ago
      The problem is defining what is the system.
      - inigyou 3mo ago
        The system is only the good parts of the system.
thewebguyd 3mo ago
> Stuff like people buying and selling items using a currency for a price the individual chooses has been common to basically every human society we have written records for. That's a market economy, which may or may not be capitalist. Markets have existed for thousands of years under various economic systems. Agree on your other points though, 'capitalism' was coined to just describe and criticize the system they saw emerging, one of private ownership of the means of production, combined with wage workers who do not own their tools or the product of their labor, but instead sell their time. But its hard to have discussions around because too many people conflate "market economy" == "capitalism" but you can have markets in a feudalist, socialist, communist, any other society, that doesn't inherently make them capitalist. But I still think its useful as a term, but only to specifically describe who owns the capital.
- bit-anarchist 3mo ago
  Apply it to reality, and things get muddy really quickly. The major issue is the "private ownership of the means of production". While some argue it's a recent development, others (like me) argue it has been present since the dawn of civilization and, ignoring the "free market" and "voluntary transactions" part, one could argue both feudalism and socialism are capitalistic systems, with the latter often receiving the term "state capitalism", instead. And then there's the issue of "wage workers". Workers who own their means of production (i.e. freelancers) are still often considered "capitalists" themselves, as under the umbrella of "small capitalists", even if they rely more on their labor than their ownership.

sebastiennight 3mo ago

> Try actually defining capitalism in a way that doesn't apply to basically any random society since the dawn of agriculture. .. feudalism? Which, AFAIK, lasted much longer, and is just not the same thing?

wredcoll 3mo ago
History.com says: > Feudalism is a term often used to describe the social, economic and political conditions that existed in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. At its core, it was a system in which a landowner, or lord, granted a piece of land called a fief to a subordinate known as a vassal. In return, the vassal pledged loyalty to the lord, providing labor, military service, payments—or a mix of these. And then the next paragraph goes on to say that historians think this is way too simple to describe what real people were actually doing. Either way, unless every single piece of property in the kingdom (including, like, plows and mill stones and spinning wheels) was granted by the king (or someone he had granted to) it seems like there's still a lot of room for buying/selling/investing. I mean, it's an interesting answer but my basic point is that the "real world" is far too complex for a term like capitalism to be at all useful. Even stuff like "free market", can a market be "free" if a government exists? What about monopolies? Etc etc. I just want people to be more specific when they criticize systems!
- idiotsecant 3mo ago
  plows and mill stones and spinning wheels are excellent examples of exactly what a feudal lord owned. They owned the land, the major structures on that land, and the major implements on that land. If you wanted to use them you paid the lord in fees via goods, labor, etc. It's basically the gig economy - you will own nothing, your labor will be for his benefit, and if you want to keep participating you'll make it worth his while.
  - wredcoll 3mo ago
    That did occasionally happen but I don't think it was the majority case by any means. That being said, if we're talking about the lord owning the mill you labor at, how is that different than tesla owning the car factory you work at?
    - sebastiennight 3mo ago
      Tesla does not, AFAICT, also own the land you live on. They pay you in fiat currency that can be exchanged for other goods sold by any provider. A better comparison to support your "capitalism = feudalism" argument would actually be the era of company stores and truck wages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons
      - wredcoll 3mo ago
        I agree about the company stores thing, but it's pretty common (right now in america) for someone to work at a factory, that they do not own, and live in a house, that they also do not own. The distinction between that and some kind of stereotypical medieval serf living on a farm he was granted by a lord and producing crops that he uses to pay his rents and so forth seems somewhat minor. Yes in general a modern american has more government enforced rights and protections, but at the end of the day a lot of rights aren't really all that relevant if you can't afford them in the first place. Musk and I both have the right to build a factory to produce electric cars, but one of us is going to have a much harder time exercising that right. (Not to say that we aren't living in a better world, we absolutely are, I would never trade places with basically anyone from "the past", but the point isn't that things aren't as bad as they used to be, the point is how do we improve what we have today)

danudey 3mo ago

Saw an interesting discussion on how capitalism has existed for as long as markets have existed, including ancient Greece, and how it inevitably leads to wealth inequality, monopolistic behavior, unsustainable resource extraction, and all the other negatives we see today. The only difference is that in Greece, all of these negatives would have been applied locally but now they're all being applied globally. Instead of one super-wealthy man being a pain in the ass for the local Athens economy, he can now ruin things for everyone everywhere.

atmosx 3mo ago
Nah, Ancient Greece has nothing to do with today’s capitalism. It’s a dumb example and the parallels will fall down to a close inspection. Different world.
wredcoll 3mo ago
I would more simply define that as "wealth inequality" rather than capitalism (or more broadly, power inequality) and perhaps go on to say that the real problem is that, while you can't realistically prevent/remove all inquality, most systems do a poor job of preventing the people with more money/power from using that to consistently increase their own share.
- idiotsecant 3mo ago
  TIL: The bad parts of a system are some other isim, the good parts are the system.
  - bit-anarchist 3mo ago
    The problem is defining what is the system.
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      The system is only the good parts of the system.

thewebguyd 3mo ago

> Stuff like people buying and selling items using a currency for a price the individual chooses has been common to basically every human society we have written records for. That's a market economy, which may or may not be capitalist. Markets have existed for thousands of years under various economic systems. Agree on your other points though, 'capitalism' was coined to just describe and criticize the system they saw emerging, one of private ownership of the means of production, combined with wage workers who do not own their tools or the product of their labor, but instead sell their time. But its hard to have discussions around because too many people conflate "market economy" == "capitalism" but you can have markets in a feudalist, socialist, communist, any other society, that doesn't inherently make them capitalist. But I still think its useful as a term, but only to specifically describe who owns the capital.

bit-anarchist 3mo ago
Apply it to reality, and things get muddy really quickly. The major issue is the "private ownership of the means of production". While some argue it's a recent development, others (like me) argue it has been present since the dawn of civilization and, ignoring the "free market" and "voluntary transactions" part, one could argue both feudalism and socialism are capitalistic systems, with the latter often receiving the term "state capitalism", instead. And then there's the issue of "wage workers". Workers who own their means of production (i.e. freelancers) are still often considered "capitalists" themselves, as under the umbrella of "small capitalists", even if they rely more on their labor than their ownership.