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> capitalism was never reviewed or updated according to new science about anthropology, sociology, and economics? If taking a human-science view, then one in

> capitalism was never reviewed or updated according to new science about anthropology, sociology, and economics? If taking a human-science view, then one interesting take on capitalism is that it isn't a thing at all. It's the absence of a thing. It's a positive freedom. There can be no "science" of capitalism. It allows the direction of excess human psychological energy. It is the absence of regulation of anti-social criminal behaviours, by creating an allowable "grey area" between moral and wicked behaviours - what so many business people like to call "amoral". But that same energy is innovative, creative - the destruction of what is old and weak is part of any finite-sized system. The need to destroy, dominate and exploit is strong in a significant percent of the population. Any decent study of criminology is continuous with "business". William James, in The Moral Equivalent of War [0] suggested that we coped with this in the past by having every few generations of males kill each other in wars - and of course implied that it's mainly a gendered issue. During frontier times, as the European settlers conquered America and other lands, there was ample "space" for exploitation as that energy was directed against "nature" (and the indigenous folks who were considered part of "nature" as opposed to "civilisation"). Now we've run out of space. The only target left for that energy is each other. Social-"ism" etc are projects to try controlling that nature by reducing "individualism" (and insecurity-based consumerism is an obvious first target). It's major fault is that the anti-social criminals tend be want to be the ones doing the controlling - just wearing the mask of civility and preaching the primacy of "the group". If we cannot change human nature we must find a new outlet for that energy. Space exploration as a new frontier always looked good, but in reality it's something we are unlikely to achieve before self-destructing the technological civilisation needed to support it. That leaves little else but a kind of cultural revolution. The pharmaceutically catalysed version of that in the 1960s is worth studying to see where and why it went wrong. See Huxley. Any realistic systematic change would need to address this "problem" of the individual ego, creating some new focus that is the "moral equivalent" of war. [0] http://public-library.uk/ebooks/65/5.pdf http://public-library.uk/ebooks/65/5.pdf

immibis 1y ago
Capitalism is a positive choice to grant the positive right of extreme property ownership. Light property ownership is when this toothbrush is mine. Normal property ownership is when my house is mine. Extreme property ownership is when your house is mine, that section of airspace over there is mine, precisely four tenths of the revenue generated by the billboards on the Eiffel tower is mine - using a heavy dose of the legal system to artificially extend the principle of ownership to all sorts of things that aren't naturally property and things that would naturally be someone else's property. This is a positive action done on purpose by the legal system, not merely natural default like me owning my toothbrush. --- Did you know one of the common pesticides in the USA but banned in the EU interferes with hormone levels in certain species, making them way more individualist? One of those species is humans. Still a positive freedom?
int_19h 1y ago
> capitalism is that it isn't a thing at all. It's the absence of a thing. It's a positive freedom. This is very wrong. Capitalism fundamentally requires abstract property rights (i.e. someone can own a thing they have never even held or seen, much less used), and it requires a state to provide very strong protections for those abstract rights. In the absence of the state imposing such a property right regimen, you wouldn't have capitalism, since it'd be impossible to accumulate capital if the only way to own property is to physically use and/or occupy it. Importantly, capitalism is not the same as free markets! Humanity has had free markets in one form or another for most of its history, but capitalism is very recent historically speaking. The notion that socialism is always anti-individualistic is also wrong. Left-wing libertarianism is a thing, and goes back to the earliest anarchist writers (who literally invented the term "libertarian" as a political label - and they didn't have the likes of Ayn Rand in mind when they did that). There's even free-market left-wing anarchism.
- nonrandomstring 1y ago
  We're talking about two views of "capitalism". I think you're talking about the kind in textbooks on economics and Marxism etc. I'm talking about the lawless, insane festival of destruction and human misery we see today. To my mind, it is a an absence; the absence of law and reason.
  - int_19h 1y ago
    We're talking about the same thing, actually. To be clear, I'm not pro-capitalism, quite the opposite. But the "festival of destruction and human misery" that you're talking about is caused by massive for-profit entities that only exist because the property rights system in capitalism allows and even encourages unbounded accumulation of capital (hence the name!), and with that, economic and eventually political power. That power is why megacorps can bend the law, and why their ignorance of reason does not lead to their immediate demise (as it would be in an actually free market, meaning the one with numerous meaningfully competing actors). Capitalism taken to its logical conclusion is the absence of free market because everything is monopolized.
dostick 1y ago
You’re right and those are interesting books. And yes, people will not be able to live with alternative to Capitalism. That’s why, I think the only way for human race to survive is to have multi-generation transition plan, people must understand that in their life time it’s not going to get better and fair. It would happen in maybe two generations, or over 50-100 years time span. And it would have to happen in one country first and then propagated to others.

immibis 1y ago

Capitalism is a positive choice to grant the positive right of extreme property ownership. Light property ownership is when this toothbrush is mine. Normal property ownership is when my house is mine. Extreme property ownership is when your house is mine, that section of airspace over there is mine, precisely four tenths of the revenue generated by the billboards on the Eiffel tower is mine - using a heavy dose of the legal system to artificially extend the principle of ownership to all sorts of things that aren't naturally property and things that would naturally be someone else's property. This is a positive action done on purpose by the legal system, not merely natural default like me owning my toothbrush. --- Did you know one of the common pesticides in the USA but banned in the EU interferes with hormone levels in certain species, making them way more individualist? One of those species is humans. Still a positive freedom?

int_19h 1y ago

> capitalism is that it isn't a thing at all. It's the absence of a thing. It's a positive freedom. This is very wrong. Capitalism fundamentally requires abstract property rights (i.e. someone can own a thing they have never even held or seen, much less used), and it requires a state to provide very strong protections for those abstract rights. In the absence of the state imposing such a property right regimen, you wouldn't have capitalism, since it'd be impossible to accumulate capital if the only way to own property is to physically use and/or occupy it. Importantly, capitalism is not the same as free markets! Humanity has had free markets in one form or another for most of its history, but capitalism is very recent historically speaking. The notion that socialism is always anti-individualistic is also wrong. Left-wing libertarianism is a thing, and goes back to the earliest anarchist writers (who literally invented the term "libertarian" as a political label - and they didn't have the likes of Ayn Rand in mind when they did that). There's even free-market left-wing anarchism.

nonrandomstring 1y ago
We're talking about two views of "capitalism". I think you're talking about the kind in textbooks on economics and Marxism etc. I'm talking about the lawless, insane festival of destruction and human misery we see today. To my mind, it is a an absence; the absence of law and reason.
- int_19h 1y ago
  We're talking about the same thing, actually. To be clear, I'm not pro-capitalism, quite the opposite. But the "festival of destruction and human misery" that you're talking about is caused by massive for-profit entities that only exist because the property rights system in capitalism allows and even encourages unbounded accumulation of capital (hence the name!), and with that, economic and eventually political power. That power is why megacorps can bend the law, and why their ignorance of reason does not lead to their immediate demise (as it would be in an actually free market, meaning the one with numerous meaningfully competing actors). Capitalism taken to its logical conclusion is the absence of free market because everything is monopolized.

dostick 1y ago

You’re right and those are interesting books. And yes, people will not be able to live with alternative to Capitalism. That’s why, I think the only way for human race to survive is to have multi-generation transition plan, people must understand that in their life time it’s not going to get better and fair. It would happen in maybe two generations, or over 50-100 years time span. And it would have to happen in one country first and then propagated to others.