Wouldn’t your comment equally apply to being a small business owner (let’s say blacksmith) under feudalism? As a good blacksmith, you will earn more clients and prestige, while poor blacksmiths won’t get repeat business. You might be able to expand your forge and hire more people to do the tedious work of making chainmail or whatever.
Yup. “Capitalism” has become a punching bag for people who are frustrated about some form of government protectionism or lack of interventionism. If you ask someone to define it, you’ll get wildly different answers based on whatever they’re frustrated by. The real problem is cronyism, where the “haves” get special treatment from those in power so both sides benefit.
Example w/ Musk and Trump
As an example, look at Elon Musk buddying up to Trump. There are two explanations (probably more) here:
Musk actually thinks Trump is the best thing since sliced bread
Musk wants protectionism in the form of more EV tariffs, which will absolutely benefit his cash cow, Tesla
This all happens under “capitalism” because Musk is motivated to get more capital, but it’s happening through government, which ends up essentially as a government subsidy of Tesla (and other domestic EVs) using taxpayer dollars (in this case tariffs). It’s not a direct handover of cash, but when your foreign competition needs to charge twice as much as they normally would, there’s less motivation for your company to drop prices.
Capitalism is intended to be a system where the market is largely separate from the government, but everything is co-mingled and people point to the knotted mess as “capitalism,” when really it’s a mess of different political ideologies all messing with market forces. What we actually need is for more capitalism, as in less government interference w/ the market, so market forces can actually fix things.
Potential solutions to better use market forces
This means:
less protection for corporations - rich people using tactical bankruptcies indicates a broken system
fewer regulations, but higher penalties - regulations reduce the penalties for bad action to a fine, we need lawsuits and jail time
fairer tax system - we currently reward capital gains far more than earned income, we exclude a significant amount of inheritance from taxation, and we have structures (trusts and whatnot) to further protect money from taxation; the tax system should be drastically simplified to reduce abuse
enforce anti-trust more consistently and frequently
There’s certainly more we could do, but the above should significantly help correct the major problems we see today. Right now, it takes a massive scandal for a wealthy person or very large business to fail, and the above would dramatically reduce the scandal needed to cause one to fail.
“More capitalism” doesn’t mean screwing over the poor either. In fact, if you look at the Nordic countries, they’re actually more capitalist than the US ins many ways, and they have solid social programs. The difference is that there are clearer boundaries between government and the market, so you don’t end up with as much weird “collaboration” between companies and the government.
I personally believe in UBI/NIT (Universal Basic Income/Negative Income Tax) instead of most welfare programs (perhaps keep Medicare/Medicaid, but replace Social Security, food/housing assistance, etc) to minimize the disruption of natural market forces. That would be a very capitalist-friendly solution where the government and the market stay in their own lanes.
Thats a pretty thorough reply which gives some further insight into the issues we’re facing. While the ideas certainly makes sense in a vacuum (especially with governments and markets staying in their lane), there is a major issue in that the very politicians managing the government would have a pretty big conflict of interest which would prevent the sort of reforms necessary, as most politicians would fall under one or more of the following:
They own/run businesses from prior to running for a political position- there’s always going to be a subconscious bias towards playing favours especially as they can go back to said business if they don’t last a term
They have a stake in the businesses that are in the free market
They could be receiving gifts and/or contributions from businesses that have a vested interest in having a politician that aligns with the business’ political agenda, including having a position for a politician if they lose a re-election bid
It’s really difficult to see how the government can be separated from the free market if the politicians are closely involved with the businesses, which can later be deemed as “too big to fail”.
Your reforms sound good, but aren’t pragmatic. Today’s system requires you to have lobbyists to push an agenda through. Who is going to fund the lobbyists to make these reforms happen.
Also, even in an ideal capitalism, there is still an injustice at the heart of the system. The employer-employee contract violates the tenet of legal and de facto responsibility matching. The workers are jointly de facto responsible for production, but employer is held solely legally responsible.
You seem to be a bit confused about what exactly capitalism is. Capitalism is the ideology of private ownership, specifically with regards to the means of production. It is contrasted with socialism, which is the ideology of public ownership of the means of production.
Capitalism is the ideology that allows for someone to own a factory, for example. It allows for them to possess it, in some nebulous way, and to therefore be entitled to the fruits of labor produced there. Even if they themselves did not work to produce those products. Capitalism is the ideology of private wealth accumulation and the ideology of class. It is the ideology of wealth inequality (as opposed to wealth equality where capital is shared equally among all). It is the ideology that creates markets out of supply and demand, specifically designed to collect as much capital as possible from people seeking products. Capitalism is protected by the state, which creates justifications for its existence and prevents the working class from uprising against capitalists. The state colludes with capitalists. They exchange political power for capitalists’ labor power. In this way, any party that is not explicitly anti-capitalist is necessarily pro-capitalist. To allow capitalism to exist is to protect it. In this way, capitalism is not just private ownership itself, but it is also the politics that protects such ownership and the states that choose to allow it.
Contrasted with socialism, the ideology of public ownership. Socialism is the classless ideology. Socialism is social welfare, including ideas like social assistance or UBI. Socialism allows for means of production, like factories, to be publicly and equally owned by all. It allows the fruits of labor produced in those factories to be shared by all. Like capitalism, socialism produces its own political ideologies. Socialism as a state of being requires some form of protection (much of the debate on the left can essentially be seen as “how should we protect an established state of socialism?”). As socialism is classless, and as its production is communal, it is open to encroachment by capitalists who will seek to establish private ownership and markets there. Most agree, some state or state-like entity must be established to protect the socialist society. In this way, any politics that are explicitly anti-capitalist must be socialist.
It’s basically UBI, but with income caps. So if you make above a certain threshold, your benefits reduce and completely disappear by a second threshold.
Wouldn’t your comment equally apply to being a small business owner (let’s say blacksmith) under feudalism? As a good blacksmith, you will earn more clients and prestige, while poor blacksmiths won’t get repeat business. You might be able to expand your forge and hire more people to do the tedious work of making chainmail or whatever.
I don’t know that anyone can ever provide an “objective” source on capitalism. Anyone who writes on the topic has inherent biases. Here are a few: https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-at-Work-Cure-Capitalism/dp/1608462471
https://www.amazon.com/Slow-Down-Manifesto-KOHEI-SAITO/dp/1662602723
https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/doughnut-economics-paperback/
https://www.amazon.com/What-Wrong-Capitalism-Ruchir-Sharma/dp/1668008262
https://www.amazon.com/There-Are-No-Accidents-Disaster_Who/dp/1982129689
https://www.amazon.com/Deaths-Despair-Future-Capitalism-Anne/dp/0691217076
Yup. “Capitalism” has become a punching bag for people who are frustrated about some form of government protectionism or lack of interventionism. If you ask someone to define it, you’ll get wildly different answers based on whatever they’re frustrated by. The real problem is cronyism, where the “haves” get special treatment from those in power so both sides benefit.
Example w/ Musk and Trump
As an example, look at Elon Musk buddying up to Trump. There are two explanations (probably more) here:
This all happens under “capitalism” because Musk is motivated to get more capital, but it’s happening through government, which ends up essentially as a government subsidy of Tesla (and other domestic EVs) using taxpayer dollars (in this case tariffs). It’s not a direct handover of cash, but when your foreign competition needs to charge twice as much as they normally would, there’s less motivation for your company to drop prices.
Capitalism is intended to be a system where the market is largely separate from the government, but everything is co-mingled and people point to the knotted mess as “capitalism,” when really it’s a mess of different political ideologies all messing with market forces. What we actually need is for more capitalism, as in less government interference w/ the market, so market forces can actually fix things.
Potential solutions to better use market forces
This means:
There’s certainly more we could do, but the above should significantly help correct the major problems we see today. Right now, it takes a massive scandal for a wealthy person or very large business to fail, and the above would dramatically reduce the scandal needed to cause one to fail.
“More capitalism” doesn’t mean screwing over the poor either. In fact, if you look at the Nordic countries, they’re actually more capitalist than the US ins many ways, and they have solid social programs. The difference is that there are clearer boundaries between government and the market, so you don’t end up with as much weird “collaboration” between companies and the government.
I personally believe in UBI/NIT (Universal Basic Income/Negative Income Tax) instead of most welfare programs (perhaps keep Medicare/Medicaid, but replace Social Security, food/housing assistance, etc) to minimize the disruption of natural market forces. That would be a very capitalist-friendly solution where the government and the market stay in their own lanes.
Thats a pretty thorough reply which gives some further insight into the issues we’re facing. While the ideas certainly makes sense in a vacuum (especially with governments and markets staying in their lane), there is a major issue in that the very politicians managing the government would have a pretty big conflict of interest which would prevent the sort of reforms necessary, as most politicians would fall under one or more of the following:
It’s really difficult to see how the government can be separated from the free market if the politicians are closely involved with the businesses, which can later be deemed as “too big to fail”.
Your reforms sound good, but aren’t pragmatic. Today’s system requires you to have lobbyists to push an agenda through. Who is going to fund the lobbyists to make these reforms happen.
Also, even in an ideal capitalism, there is still an injustice at the heart of the system. The employer-employee contract violates the tenet of legal and de facto responsibility matching. The workers are jointly de facto responsible for production, but employer is held solely legally responsible.
@technology
You seem to be a bit confused about what exactly capitalism is. Capitalism is the ideology of private ownership, specifically with regards to the means of production. It is contrasted with socialism, which is the ideology of public ownership of the means of production.
Capitalism is the ideology that allows for someone to own a factory, for example. It allows for them to possess it, in some nebulous way, and to therefore be entitled to the fruits of labor produced there. Even if they themselves did not work to produce those products. Capitalism is the ideology of private wealth accumulation and the ideology of class. It is the ideology of wealth inequality (as opposed to wealth equality where capital is shared equally among all). It is the ideology that creates markets out of supply and demand, specifically designed to collect as much capital as possible from people seeking products. Capitalism is protected by the state, which creates justifications for its existence and prevents the working class from uprising against capitalists. The state colludes with capitalists. They exchange political power for capitalists’ labor power. In this way, any party that is not explicitly anti-capitalist is necessarily pro-capitalist. To allow capitalism to exist is to protect it. In this way, capitalism is not just private ownership itself, but it is also the politics that protects such ownership and the states that choose to allow it.
Contrasted with socialism, the ideology of public ownership. Socialism is the classless ideology. Socialism is social welfare, including ideas like social assistance or UBI. Socialism allows for means of production, like factories, to be publicly and equally owned by all. It allows the fruits of labor produced in those factories to be shared by all. Like capitalism, socialism produces its own political ideologies. Socialism as a state of being requires some form of protection (much of the debate on the left can essentially be seen as “how should we protect an established state of socialism?”). As socialism is classless, and as its production is communal, it is open to encroachment by capitalists who will seek to establish private ownership and markets there. Most agree, some state or state-like entity must be established to protect the socialist society. In this way, any politics that are explicitly anti-capitalist must be socialist.
First time hearing negative income tax but sounds like an idea i had after a nice walk after the edible kicked in lol
It’s basically UBI, but with income caps. So if you make above a certain threshold, your benefits reduce and completely disappear by a second threshold.
Milton Friedman was a pretty notable supporter.