It’s true that absolute democracy rarely works because it’s an inefficient use of people’s efforts. If everyone is busy running the government then very little non-governmental activity is done. Any society is better off when small groups of people each handle one aspect of the social and economic system, including governing the system.
But self-interest is a problem is any small group (or individual) runs the government and has no external checks on their power. They will inevitably begin governing the society in a manner that best serves the narrow interests of the small group rather than the broader interests of the society as a whole.
That’s why non-absolute democracy works. The people as a whole select the small group of people who will run the government. That small group can then handle the day-to-day operations of the government. But the people as a whole must retain the ability to replace that small group with a different small group if it begins to act in manner that doesn’t serve the interests of the society.
This is true. Generally speaking, the people who are receiving the most benefits in the current economy have no incentive to change the economy. As far as they’re concerned, the current economy is ideal and they want it to exist unchanged forever.
Economic progress doesn’t come from people who are currently rich. Economic progress comes from people who want to become rich. So if you want a society with economic progress you need to have a system that doesn’t seek to maintain rich people; it has to be designed to encourage rich people being replaced by somebody new.
I don’t feel we live in such a system in current America. I feel our system is designed more towards the maintenance of existing wealth rather than its replacement.
as an economic system and mode of production can be summarized by the following:
Capital accumulation: production for profit and accumulation as the implicit purpose of all or most of production, constriction or elimination of production formerly carried out on a common social or private household basis.
Commodity production: production for exchange on a market; to maximize exchange-value instead of use-value.
Private ownership of the means of production:
High levels of wage labor.
The investment of money to make a profit.
The use of the price mechanism to allocate resources between competing uses.
Economically efficient use of the factors of production and raw materials due to maximization of value added in the production process.
Freedom of capitalists to act in their self-interest in managing their business and investments.
Capital suppliance by “the single owner of a firm, or by shareholders in the case of a joint-stock company.”
That’s certainly the same sense I’m using it in this thread.
There’s some disagreement on exactly when it starts - either with the merchant capitalism of the late Middle Ages, or later with mercantilism. Some time between 1400 and 1600, is a good bet.
Sure, but the feudal system it replaced, at least in Europe - although it was present by different names in many other parts of the world as well - was even worse. Other than in small societies (small enough where everyone knows everyone else), I struggle to think of any historical society that had an economic system that was more fair than some of the better current systems like the Scandinavian countries.
So the goal, IMHO, should be a capitalist system where the government has enough power to force the large owners of the means of production (people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, etc.) to bear the brunt of funding social spending.
I think the fundamental shift between mercantilism and capitalism was the idea of investment. The central tenet of mercantilism was that there was a fixed finite amount of wealth in the world; wealth was things like land or gold and you couldn’t make more wealth. So becoming rich was a matter of getting as large a share of that pile of existing wealth as you could. And when you became richer it meant somebody else was becoming poorer.
Capitalism developed the idea that you can create new wealth. You could invest some of your existing wealth and create a system of producing new resources than hadn’t existed before. Becoming rich was no longer just a matter of taking wealth from a common pile. You could become rich by creating new wealth and making the total pile of wealth bigger than it had been. This meant it was possible for everyone to become richer.
Worth noting that as the Wiki on the History of Capitalism points out, there is a strain of thought that agrees with DrDeth that capitalism is a natural outgrowth of any trade or commerce and hence dates back millenia. Not being much of a classic economic liberal myself, I tend to reject that overly broad reading.
This makes very good sense. One can argue whether capitalism is exploitive or not ideal for human thriving, certainly. But capitalism is at least in part how all of us get our bread. Disrupting it entirely would lead to human suffering on an unimaginable scale.
Disregard for that suffering is why I tend to dismiss most “revolutionaries” who tell us that things will magically work out for the best. This does not scan as naivete to me - I believe they know exactly how bad the suffering will be. They tell themselves that those who suffer deserve it because they’re bourgeois counter-revolutionaries, or simply that you have to break some eggs to make an omlette. They seem a lot more excited about the egg-breaking than the omlette-making.
Exactly. That’s why those who emerge victorious from anti-capitalist revolutions tend to be people like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, and so on. That’s why I think what we need is not a revolution, but an improved version of capitalism that spreads the wealth around to those who do the work that creates wealth rather than concentrating it at the top.
Worse for some. Arguably not worse for, say, the inhabitants of the Congo Free State.
You mean the strongly social democrat Scandinavian countries? I’d argue that they’re better because they mitigate their capitalism with strong collectivist tendencies, like strong trade unions and the prevalence of many of the aforementioned co-ops.
Somewhat. The other thing was breaking the power/blood tie to some limited extent.
Disrupting it all at once without any replacement system certainly would, yes.
Which is why you listed all those places that were so effective at “erasing the unfair advantage of inherited wealth” when asked to back up what you were saying…
If I’ve misquoted you, or you had counterarguments, you’d make them. All I’ve gotten from you is tone policing, and zero actual debate.
Sure, but those people didn’t have a say in the matter. When someone gets conquered by a foreign nation, it doesn’t matter whether that foreign nation practices capitalism, feudalism, communism, or any other economic system. Those that get conquered are going to suffer by virtue of no longer having a say in how they live their own lives.
Yes. They aren’t perfect, but they are a step up from a country like the United States. Which is why I think the answer is to move in that direction. Set up a system where the owners of the means of production contribute the most to paying the costs for running the nation. The alternative (well one of the alternatives, but seemingly the front runner as far as that goes), a country that has an economic system that is supposed to be communist but is governed in an authoritarian manner, has no good examples to follow. As far as I can tell, there hasn’t been a single success story from any countries that have tried that, with maybe Vietnam coming the closest to having a good outcome.
The best thing about capitalism, ISTM, is that it massively encourages innovation by promising great personal profits to someone who comes up with a better way or better technology. This has lead to great advancement in technology, including agriculture and medicine, which have provided great benefit (and certainly many downsides as well) to humanity. For those who think there’s a better system (and I believe there probably is – I just don’t know enough to define it or provide details about it), would your preferred system maintain a similar motivation for innovation that capitalism provides? If someone wants to come up with, say, a cheap and easy way to purify water and make it safe for drinking, would they have the possibility of greatly benefiting personally? ISTM that such a replacement for capitalism would need to retain this motivation, or a rival capitalist society would easily be able to overpower and exploit them.
Like most of these discussions, the OP has broadly defined “capitalism” as a synonym for “greed, manipulation, and societal injustice”. Thus opening the door for leftists, disgruntled employees, and other people unhappy with their economic situation to espouse the so-called “benefits” of Marxist ideologies.
The problem with any economic system is that they are run by people and, by and large, people are greedy, selfish, and stupid.
Libertarians and “pro-capitalist” people are often idiots because they think the system inherently works because it works for them.
Liberals and leftists are often idiots because they think they can create a better system if everyone was just nice to each other.
IMHO, you need a system where the free market will incentivize those with ability and ambition to pursue profit generating activities that create the products and services that improve standards of living for all while having proper oversight with checks and balances to prevent fraud and corruption, account for services that are still needed but may not best be provided by free markets, along with adequate social safety nets.
This weekend, we took the family on a tour of the Lackawanna Coal Mine in Scranton, PA. it was very cool, but working in a 19th / early 20th century coal mine looked like one of the worst jobs ever.
Now I also wonder would working in a Soviet mine or any other mine during that era in any economic system be radically different? Some manager in some office is looking at a ledger and determining that it’s more cost effective to replace a worker than a mule.
I don’t know enough to answer that… but the personal-profit motive has certainly helped develop a lot of technologies that have improved access and the utility of the internet.
But isn’t modern history replete with people who have gotten rich from inventing something? Sure, many of them got rich by stealing someone else’s invention, but that’s not all of them.
And for the internet, haven’t many people gotten rich by inventing something that greatly improved access to, or the usefulness of, the internet?
This is a useful list because you can see how by sufficiently tweaking different elements of it, an alternative to capitalism could arise. Some good, some bad.
E.g.: What if we ditch capital accumulation and the profit motive in favour of the co-op or social enterprise model where surplus is accumulated in order to be spent on improving society somewhat. I will admit I’m a little fuzzy on how the behavioural and psychological shifts necessary for this come into being will happen, but let’s say that Bill Gates style philanthropy takes hold, the cul-de-sac of Effective Altruism is abandoned, and in part as a reaction against increasing levels of rentier capitalism, a consumer ethos takes hold that disfavours profit-oriented enterprises in favour of those that do measurable good with their surplus. What would that look like? Would it be better? Would we trade increased inefficiency for more equitable outcomes?
On a more dystopian note, let’s take a sledge-hammer to wage-labour. Various local labour monopsonies (e.g. mining towns) have already had a damn good go at replacing cash wages with company scrip. Maybe that takes hold again, tying workers to jobs, reducing their economic power massively, handing control of the price mechanism to the capitalist class. What then?
Those are somewhat hyperbolic but inherent in the OP’s question about an alternative to capitalism is a mechanism by which at least one of these factors would change into something sufficiently different that what was left was no longer capitalism.
If I can be so bold, I’ll propose the following system:
US style government/economy, except the following:
Guaranteed health care. Guaranteed income, with low income housing, basic healthy food, and other basic life necessities, subsidized to the point that everyone has a place to live, enough to eat, etc. Guaranteed education through vocational/technical/professional. Very progressive taxation, whether from work income, capital gains, inheritance, or other method. Reparations to the most disadvantaged and historically oppressed populations. Extensive social services for anyone not brought up to decent life by the above.
The same motive exists for innovation – you can still greatly profit, though if you make many millions, your taxes will be very high. But you’ll still have enough for a luxurious living.
.