this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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Greed ruins every economic system
Capitalism was supposed to avoid all the problems we face.
I'm really unclear what that means.
Are you saying that capitalism was supported to avoid all the problems we currently have under capitalism?
I'm seriously asking because I really didn't understand, and no offense is intended.
Yes; under Mercantilism the nobles could sit around all day and their wealth would increase off the backs of the workers
Enter Capitalism where you no longer have generational wealth and pay is based on how many hours you put in. The goal is that the artisan will be the richest in society because they spend their life working
Or at least in theory; it fails when you add capitalists which just occupied the nobles branch before
I mean, are capitalists really added in? They're baked in the system, from where I stand. How did it ever try to solve generational wealth, when wealth can be accumulated/inherited? When was it ever about wages, and not about profit incentives and private ownership of production? And is "spending your life working" the thing we want to encourage as a society?
If we change systems then people with wealth and power will erode it or seize the power vacuum created
Also you are correct in saying you can’t have a Capitalist nation with inheritance
A more recent example is Communism where every country that claims to adopt it doesn’t do that, instead they tend to adopt more authoritarian measures and centralized governments
Going back even further you can look at Christianity where people are supposed to be banned from having wealth but they needed to get the elite on board for it to spread
Huh? There is no country that has ever claimed to have adopted communism. The "Communist countries" are so-named because they are ruled by the Communist Party – similar to calling Canada a "Liberal country" because the Liberals hold power – not because they have actually achieved communism or believe they have achieved communism.
Those countries often claim that they are working towards post-scarcity (the precondition of communism), but that's quite different.
Canada is considered a liberal country regardless of the party in power
This point of view always leaves me scratching my head. What's the point, exactly? Are we genuinely arguing that we are not living in a capitalist society?
We live in a mixed economy. We do have private ownership of capital (capitalism), but we also have community ownership of capital (socialism).
Is that still a capitalist society? Formal definitions of "capitalist society" suggests to me that you must have a capitalism economy and also a government that I think most people here would call "libertarian". That does not describe Canada.
This is a very narrow definition of capitalism by which I can't think of a single country that would qualify. I'll be honest, it's the first time someone argues with me that our modern world of Keynesian macroeconomics isn't fundamentally capitalist.
I also strongly disagree that having social components to your market economy makes you not Capitalist. Free Market is not all Capitalism is.
Capitalism most definitely has nothing to do with free markets. Capitalism is very specifically the state of having private ownership of capital. Nothing more, nothing less. Clearly you can have capitalism and regulated markets. There is no market in Canada that is not regulated, but we still manage private ownership of capital just fine.
"Capitalist society" is something else, but not well defined, so that is where the question stems from. You disagree with the definitions I could find, which is fair, yet failed to offer your own. Is there a reason you are running away from the question and going on weird random tangents?
The point is that you’re not going to get rid of the problems unless you get rid of the people that seek power