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Actually capitalism has no point. It's just the natural system free and selfishly motivated societies develop overtime--it needs regulation to ensure that the

Actually capitalism has no point. It's just the natural system free and selfishly motivated societies develop overtime--it needs regulation to ensure that the utility produced is allocated towards the common good

jheriko 13y ago
actually, capitalism is an idealised philosophy which is easy to follow. its not especially natural as the development of society up until the popularisation of capitalist philosophy will show. some of what we do now under capitalism is quite considerably worse than anything that came before... specifically around the treatment of unemployed, homeless and 'bottom end of the spectrum' type people where we actively harass them and stop them from surviving because... well i don't really understand that particular desire for blind law and order to the letter, so i don't know. unemployment was never a real problem until capitalist economy became the norm. a lot of the thinkers of the time foresaw that particular change as well...
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > actually, capitalism is an idealised philosophy which is easy to follow No, its not. Its a system that evolved organically without any coherent philosophy, was criticized (and, in the process, named) by 19th Century socialists (who did have a coherent philosophy opposed to it), and since has evolved a number of different after-the-fact defenses (which often aren't even defending the same system, despite using the same name for it.)
  - Double_Cast 13y ago
    Whenever I hear someone mention "Capitalism", there's about a 50% chance they really mean "laissez-faire" rather than "private ownership". I assume it's an artifact of the Cold War.
    - jheriko 13y ago
      for me everytime i hear it or say it, i feel like communism must be involved somehow. :)
  - jheriko 13y ago
    its probably best to simply consider it a convenient label i guess. i am not however thinking about 19th century socialists at all, even if they coined the term... it may not have had a name as such but there were people in the previous centuries who researched and promoted the philosophies. adam smith's wealth of nations comes to mind as a sort of canonical example of such work... i'm sure it evolved organically in the sense that it happened 'naturally' but i do disagree that it is the default human position - its a recent fad. its taking natural behaviour to one extreme interpretation of it. not being utterly self-motivated, or altruism, is a very well attested human trait and we have a lot of the vital aspects of civilisation and society as a result of that drive. the ideal of pure capitalism could utterly inhibit such things from forming at all imo...
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > adam smith's wealth of nations comes to mind as a sort of canonical example of such work... You mean, the same Wealth of Nations in which Smith urges, in government affairs, particular suspicion of the proposals of the merchant class (because their interest are not aligned with the common good) and argues that the general interest is most aligned with the interest of the landholding class, not merely reflecting, but advocating the value of the even-then fading feudal economic land-tenure structure which capitalism displaced as the capitalist class became both landholders and merchants? Defenders of capitalism may like to quote Smith, but Smith was as much of a before-the-fact critic of capitalism (while certainly seeking change away from mercantilist protectionism) as Marx was an after-the-fact critic of it, and in many cases for similar reasons.
steveklabnik 13y ago
This ignores an incredible amount of imperialism by capitalist countries. If capitalism is so natural, why must it be forced on so many indigenous peoples? Furthermore, appeal to nature is a fallacy. Most of human history could be viewed as us trying to do BETTER than what's natural.
- pyrrhotech 13y ago
  I think you missed "selfishly motivated". Not all societies place emphasis on the individual. Those that do move towards capitalism; those that don't move toward communism. Obviously there are many shades of each, but indigenous societies were basically communists. They didn't believe people should be able to own the land; they lived together, used reciprocity instead of markets as the trade system. As for why some societies are more selfish and some more communal--that's a good question. I think it comes to which religions they develop. Abrahamic religions place great emphasis on the individual whereas many polytheist and indigenous religions are the opposite. Now as to why those religions developed, that's anyone's best guess. Probably sheer luck and climate conditions
  - steveklabnik 13y ago
    I've seen most people declare humans are inherently selfish; if you're drawing a distinction between two, then yes, my apologies. Capitalism came out of the industrial revolution and the process of enclosure by Britain, I'm not entirely sure that I buy it being a given, exactly, though it of course did happen.

jheriko 13y ago

actually, capitalism is an idealised philosophy which is easy to follow. its not especially natural as the development of society up until the popularisation of capitalist philosophy will show. some of what we do now under capitalism is quite considerably worse than anything that came before... specifically around the treatment of unemployed, homeless and 'bottom end of the spectrum' type people where we actively harass them and stop them from surviving because... well i don't really understand that particular desire for blind law and order to the letter, so i don't know. unemployment was never a real problem until capitalist economy became the norm. a lot of the thinkers of the time foresaw that particular change as well...

dragonwriter 13y ago
> actually, capitalism is an idealised philosophy which is easy to follow No, its not. Its a system that evolved organically without any coherent philosophy, was criticized (and, in the process, named) by 19th Century socialists (who did have a coherent philosophy opposed to it), and since has evolved a number of different after-the-fact defenses (which often aren't even defending the same system, despite using the same name for it.)
- Double_Cast 13y ago
  Whenever I hear someone mention "Capitalism", there's about a 50% chance they really mean "laissez-faire" rather than "private ownership". I assume it's an artifact of the Cold War.
  - jheriko 13y ago
    for me everytime i hear it or say it, i feel like communism must be involved somehow. :)
- jheriko 13y ago
  its probably best to simply consider it a convenient label i guess. i am not however thinking about 19th century socialists at all, even if they coined the term... it may not have had a name as such but there were people in the previous centuries who researched and promoted the philosophies. adam smith's wealth of nations comes to mind as a sort of canonical example of such work... i'm sure it evolved organically in the sense that it happened 'naturally' but i do disagree that it is the default human position - its a recent fad. its taking natural behaviour to one extreme interpretation of it. not being utterly self-motivated, or altruism, is a very well attested human trait and we have a lot of the vital aspects of civilisation and society as a result of that drive. the ideal of pure capitalism could utterly inhibit such things from forming at all imo...
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > adam smith's wealth of nations comes to mind as a sort of canonical example of such work... You mean, the same Wealth of Nations in which Smith urges, in government affairs, particular suspicion of the proposals of the merchant class (because their interest are not aligned with the common good) and argues that the general interest is most aligned with the interest of the landholding class, not merely reflecting, but advocating the value of the even-then fading feudal economic land-tenure structure which capitalism displaced as the capitalist class became both landholders and merchants? Defenders of capitalism may like to quote Smith, but Smith was as much of a before-the-fact critic of capitalism (while certainly seeking change away from mercantilist protectionism) as Marx was an after-the-fact critic of it, and in many cases for similar reasons.

steveklabnik 13y ago

This ignores an incredible amount of imperialism by capitalist countries. If capitalism is so natural, why must it be forced on so many indigenous peoples? Furthermore, appeal to nature is a fallacy. Most of human history could be viewed as us trying to do BETTER than what's natural.

pyrrhotech 13y ago
I think you missed "selfishly motivated". Not all societies place emphasis on the individual. Those that do move towards capitalism; those that don't move toward communism. Obviously there are many shades of each, but indigenous societies were basically communists. They didn't believe people should be able to own the land; they lived together, used reciprocity instead of markets as the trade system. As for why some societies are more selfish and some more communal--that's a good question. I think it comes to which religions they develop. Abrahamic religions place great emphasis on the individual whereas many polytheist and indigenous religions are the opposite. Now as to why those religions developed, that's anyone's best guess. Probably sheer luck and climate conditions
- steveklabnik 13y ago
  I've seen most people declare humans are inherently selfish; if you're drawing a distinction between two, then yes, my apologies. Capitalism came out of the industrial revolution and the process of enclosure by Britain, I'm not entirely sure that I buy it being a given, exactly, though it of course did happen.