And most of the time you'd be right.
this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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Wherever there is a need there is potential for exploitation by greed. Of course capitalists without a leash are going to wreak havoc on everything.
Capitalism by definition is about exploiting labor and extracting wealth. Commerce is the ethical application of purchasing goods and services.
Why do you say commerce is specifically ethical? I've always considered it more neutral and up to implementation.
Ethical as in it's goods and services for currency. Ethical in that no one is being exploited actively. Commerce requires legislation.
So the act of commerce is ethical but the source of the commerce might not be? I feel like I'm being really obtuse here and I apologize but goods and services could be stolen or forced and rarely is legislation enough. But I can totally see two unknowing people engaging in trade at their free will for items they don't know are stolen.
I feel so pessimistic about the world at times that I find materialism and ethics just don't mix.
Commerce deals with the distribution of value, production with the creation of it. So let's say there is a widget factory. If one person "owns" it and thousands work to make widgets, their production is stolen through ownership, which causes deeper issues beyond the obvious as well.
Commerce doesn't cause problems as it's just resolving a situation of swapping the widgets you made for carrots. Barring some market-twisting forces like the stock market for example, a simple free market where you're happy with the amount of carrots you get for the amount of widgets you get is fine.
The evil of capitalism is not that you can trade. The evil of capitalism is that you go to work, and receive a fraction of the product of your work while someone else who does not work at all receives a lot of it.
Technically the current capitalist western system would be socialist, if employment without ownership would be outlawed, and coops were the enforced norm.
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The greatest crimes are caused by excess and not by necessity.
Well, you're usually in the general vicinity of the root cause of any problem by that assumption.
I'd encourage you to expand your worldview - a lot of problems we attribute to capitalism are mostly because of hierarchy.
This is the neuance. Could there be a fair form of capitalism? It depends upon the systems and the people that run them. Centralisation of ownership is the next step beyond the centralisation of power, because after a while they become intrinsically the same. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, absolute wealth corrupts absolutely.
But also, the stock markets which can be beneficial are also forms of glorified gambling where the house always wins, the commodification of the housing market, the silly notion of shell and shelf companies (easiest, most effective way of side stepping regulations and laundering money), debt slavery, the price gouging of life saving medicine, the race to the bottom where costs, quality of product and salaries need to be cut, where the line between product and service becomes thinner for every day to the point where you retain less and less ownership by each year, which you can't really blame anyone for, because all of these systems are designed to be a constant, churning, soul killing rat race, turning the pace of life to a literally unlivable speeds, which also reveals that even the ones up in the hierarchy become degenerate with greed, mostly because they live so far up that their human brains can't fathom the effect they have down the chain, because it goes against their interests.
Instead of then going on another witch hunt, we need to look at these systems and the effects they have on the human psyche.
But hey, that's just my take.
No there cannot be a fair form of capitalism because it is centered on exchange. You have to center your life on turning your time into a profit to afford the whole rest of society's product also sold at a profit, at its most basic level it is unsustainable.
Yeah, that's pretty much it. Like the idea of shell and shelf companies is a capitalist concept, that and mother companies, daughter companies, etc.
I particularly dislike shell and shelf companies, because they are almost always used to sidestep law and regulations, as well as being used for money laundering. It's a system whereby you can easily move around money, back and forth, up and down, to the point where the money has been obsfucated in so many accounts that it requires a large team of exonomists AND all the accounts to figure out wrongdoing.
Because of this you could make a ton of profit off human trafficking, put that money into a south African shelf company, launder it for like a max 30% and boom: legal tender.
Capitalism causes tons of economic crime that can never be solved.
The word you're looking for is "commerce".
No, that's not it. You don't need all the gunk I wrote about to have commerce. In fact, you can still have commerce without it.
You strike me as one of those guys who thinks capitalism defines the concept of money and markets.
Capitalism is fundamentally hierarchy established in property rights. Doing away with hierarchy does away with Capitalism. Unless, of course, you're arguing for Anarcho-Communism or something.
Hierarchy is baked into capitalism. Your take is incorrect.
Not only capitalism entirely based on the hierarchy of ownership, but it also reinforces already existing social hierarchies as those in power receive more profits and capital, and thus more power and influence in a broader society. You cannot say hierarchy is bad and be pro capitalism. Leftist ideologies are ways to try to democratize the economy, which flattens hierarchy. Anarchism is inherently anti capitalist.
I think so too. If there is hierarchy someone will abuse it. But i also think that capitalism creates structures of hierarchy in itself.
Me when I see any problem anywhere:
Overpopulation
Overpopulation is also because of capitalism to a large degree
In the sense that it is fascist rhetoric sure.
Overpopulation is a myth.
unregulated anarcho-free market capitalism. THAT'S the problem.
In a real free market, the banks that committed so much fraud in 2008 that they crashed the economy wouldn't have gotten bailouts.
GM and ford both went bankrupt multiple times from their own greed and stupidity. In a real free market, they wouldn't have gotten bailouts. Or the airline companies, no bailouts for them in a free market either.
In a real free market companies will lobby the government to bail them out.
that wouldn't be a free market. The idea of a free market means that working hard makes you go farther. But our economy punishes hard work and rewards constant failure.
I understand what you're saying, but what a free market is supposed to be on paper isn't what we have. What we have is an oligarchy dicatorship.
No, in a real free market the banks would lobby to be bailed out. Removing even more regulation from it would result in more lobbying. Even with anti-corruption measures, without worker ownership or massive Unionization, eventually these protections will slide back once someone more opportunistic takes office.
Worker Ownerhship and decentralization are the correct path, rather than antidemocratic Capitalist production.