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this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
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People just use the word capitalism to refer to any economic practice they don’t like.
No, detaining someone on a ship until they pay you is not capitalism. Capitalism is based on free markets. Being imprisoned on a ship isn’t a free market.
This is however, a practice that results from the government being effectively corporate controlled. Which is the end result of allowing your free markets to run wild and allowing corporations to acquire that much power, money, and influence.
A pure capitalist system actively selects for this kind of bullshit. The most ruthless and unethical companies end up winning in the end. And those same companies are buying our politicians.
People blame capitalism when the system clearly favours the rich over the poor to such a dystopian extent that a man is allowed to be held hostage by a corporation
Yes. Free markets eventually degrade into centrally-planned systems.
That does not mean that centrally-planned systems are an aspect of capitalism, any more than a pile of decaying bones is an aspect of a family pet.
Free markets degrade over time. That does not invalidate their utility; it just means they are like all other phenomena in being temporary.
Isn't that the end goal of capitalism? Winning is having control of all the capital right? How can you divorce the implied, if not explicit, end goal of a system from the system itself?
How is this not an aspect? It's the inevitable end of any living thing, much like capitalism and the heartless exploitation of literally everything
Isn’t the goal of a soccer tournament to score goals?
No, the goal of each team, in a game, is to score goals.
The goal of the soccer tournament is to create a space in which teams of players can play soccer.
This is to answer your first question.
No the goal of capitalism is not to control the government. Even for the individual players, the goal is more like “whatever goal you want”, which is why it’s called a free market: you get to act according to your own values.
And for capitalism per se, if it has any goals, the goal is to enable people to pursue their own goals. “Capitalism” though doesn’t really have goals. It’s like “sunny weather”. Capitalism is a set of circumstances.
A government who is working to maintain a free market, which is the closest I can find to what you’re asking, has the goal of enabling success for its citizens.
Basic idea is the goal of the player is not the same as the goal of those administering the game. Dungeon Master’s goal is not to complete the quest; it’s to enable the quest.
And as an individual, my personal goal is not to control government. My goal is to provide value, and if I ruin the consent component of my business dealings, by forcing people into trades with me, then I fail at my goal because I stop getting feedback about what’s valuable.
I didn’t say it’s not an aspect. I said it’s no more an aspect than the bones are an aspect.
If you want to argue that a family pet is basically the same as a rock, because its final state behaves the same way as a rock, you can, but it’s a waste of energy and yields no understanding.
All I'm getting from this is two things:
Free Markets need to be regulated
Capitalism is the process not the outcome, and you can't blame the sausage factory for making a sausage. The factory is just a set of circumstances that happens to produce sausages
If we’re using a factory and sausages as the analogy,
So yes capitalism is a process. I mean, it’s a situation where a process can take place. A free market is a situation in which free trade can take place.
Capitalism is also an outcome, of an upstream process which is establishing the free market.
Markets are naturally free when there isn’t much power differential between people, ie when coercion is difficult, expensive, and dangerous.
As civilization gets more and more advanced, the amount of power an individual or group can have over others grows, and more government input is necessary to maintain the free market.
This government activity to maintain the free market (ie prevent market domination) includes:
So yes. Capitalism takes energy to maintain — again, like all things — and is a process more than an outcome. But it’s also the outcome of other processes.