This is quite interesting, of course, because all the way back, Adam Smith was essentially warning that this was a problem. I feel that whilst on the one hand Smith was describing the advantages of capitalism, he was at the same time sort of saying "For heaven's sake, regulate it".
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Dude, you forgot to add money to your list here. If some company has more than another, it can do a variety of things to crash the other company. Also, as can be seen with the GFC or SBF, your value can just be made up if you have a good enough accountant. And, of course, if you have more money, you have greater access to a variety of things like loans, lower repayments, lower cost of production like buying in bulk etc.
There are so many ways to manipulate the market that you start to realise that maybe the market isn't really real
Well, I would say, as someone else pointed out, a free market does NOT mean an unregulated market as originally intended
It's one of the biggest differences between American Libertarians and normal ones. Like normal, the Ameican ones want to access the market but be allowed to block others
That it was coined by it's critics?
I mean, I would agree for whenever Capitalism is used for today situation. Because it's not really Capitalism. I don't mind people making distinctions between the two because it shows the problems of what we have currently. Which is the first step to fixing it
I understand the issue. It's like when Soviets are called Communist... which is clearly a misunderstanding because Communism isn't meant to have states as one example. I'd also not blame the critics here too much because it's mainly Lenin's fault that Soviets aren't acting like Communists.
That depends on the libertarian. Many libertarians are deeply suspicious of the market as it currently operates, and think businesses - usually big ones - are certainly rigging the system to their benefit. Of course they also argue that this is the fault of government and so government should be drastically trimmed to prevent it, in my view not really thinking through the consequences of immensely powerful private organisations having even less oversight and restriction.
A lot of the problem, I feel, is that the difference between "free market" and "business-friendly policies" are often elided by the political right. The two are not the same: as Schadrach notes, the aim is to climb to the top of the heap and then support barriers to prevent others getting there.
Disagree there. 'Communism' has a set of prerequisites-- a classless society, worker ownership of the means of production, the abolition of the state-- which were not met by the Soviets. That's not to say the Soviets themselves weren't communists, as plenty of communists espouse that transitional states must exist. Its only to say that communism was not attained (and its pretty certain that cynics such as Stalin and his successors had very little intention of transitioning away from centralised control).
But on the other hand, the requisites for "capitalism" are certainly met by most modern countries. A little bit of regulation, or a mixed economy, do not preclude a country from being capitalist.
In the right light even this makes sense, in that the biggest corps in a lot of spaces essentially write their own government regulations designed to create a barrier to entry for new producers.
No, that's not it. The word "capitalism" was invented by socialists, and the original meaning was effectively "a system that empowers the wealthy". That word was retroactively applied to philosophers like Adam Smith, dubbed "the Father of Capitalism", for his writings on wealth and free trade, but Adam Smith wasn't advocating for a system called "capitalism", that word didn't exist until decades after he died, and was essentially invented to criticize his ideas. As it turns out, having a singular word for "an economic system built on property rights of private ownership and free trade" is nice to have, so the word "capitalism" has taken on a new meaning, though the original usage has seen a major resurgence with the increasing number of unapologetic Stalinists on the internet.
I was surprised to see Seanchaidh acknowledge this history, as Stalinists love to double-speak this sort of thing. They like to found groups called "anti-fascist", and accuse you of supporting fascism if you disagree with them. But if you then get them to define "fascism", it's any system that allows people to be wealthy. The historical Stalin definition of fascism is "any sufficiently developed capitalist system", which to translate further becomes "any well-established economy based on private wealth". Because to them, private property and free trade are just a temporary transition period between monarchy and inevitable communism, and if you want to maintain those things indefinitely, you're a fascist.
None of this really matters - it's just really "fun fact" semantic territory that doesn't have much deeper meaning. Whether "capitalism" as a word was coined by socialists and backdated all the way to Smith, the theories and workings of the modern "capitalist" economies exist for appraisal independent of the word's etymology. (Also, one might note that numerous criticisms of capitalism from socialists are accurate.) Then, capitalism is necessarily a broad church; it is subdivided into more descriptive categories to represent different flavours of the same basic economic principles - much like any similar construct common in economic, politics, philosophy, etc.
Nor have modern criticisms of capitalism much to do with Stalinists, because there barely are any Stalinists. Capitalism is becoming a dirtier word because of the huge widening of the wealth cap since the 1980s, slowed wage growth for the poorer elements of society (or even slower growth generally across society) and related problems like unaffordable housing, because more and more people cease to see the socioecononic and political system as working for them. You could contrast today with the capitalist postwar heyday to the 1970s, where it was providing huge increases in wealth and human development across rich and poor alike.
Where you have the most logic is that people are not necessarily objecting to capitalism. If people see that they appear to be the losers in societal economic distribution, hostility grows to the system generally. As the system is fundamentally capitalist, "capitalism" suffers by association, even if people aren't truly objecting to capitalism's core principles. As someone or other said of Keynes: he came not to destroy capitalism but to save it, and that was by seeing that it delivered clear benefits across all of society. But that's not a filthy socialist ("Stalinist") trick, it's just the human cognitive habit to tend to transfer feelings about things to other things by assocation.
Yes, it has a superficially sound logic. If someone argues that the powerful subvert the government to their advantage, remove the government and it removes a level of the powerful's control over others. However, it fails to take into account what the powerful can do without any power at all constraining them. I would argue a better tactic is to restrict the means by which the powerful can gain privileged access to government.
Of course, one could with libertarianism have alternative power structures: like, labour unions. Freedom surely includes the right to organise and co-ordinate with one's colleagues to withhold work. Although how many libertarians have you encountered that like or support labour unions? Personally, for me it's been very few.
Let's not pretend I'm using inaccurate language talking about Stalinists. There are people in the world, many on reddit and twitter, at least one on the escapist, who position themselves as communists while flying the antifa flag and defending Russian military imperialism. I am not saying they represent a majority of people anywhere, but they exist, and have a way with words that is very good at deceiving large numbers of people. How many millions of people have unironically repeated "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" without even having clear definitions in mind for most of those words?
They're not the only ones defending Russian military imperialism, though, are they? In fact, they're not even the majority of people defending Russian imperialism, because that's the far right who very clearly see one of their own and like it. Major figures on the far right (e.g. Meloni, le Pen, Tucker Carlson) have the sense to temper their own and supporters' pro-Putin sympathies with wider political pragmatism, whereas some such as Orban are less unambiguous.
And did that come quotation come from a "Stalinist"? Or was it an environmentalist? An anti-poverty campaigner pointing out something to do with sweatshop workers? An anarchist, or other form of socialist? Or just some random wit? That's precisely the issue: capitalism isn't popular among a large number of people, the vast majority of whom are definitely not Stalinists. Any of them could have fired that particular shot.
No. Just no. Not even Orban is pro-Putin.
I disagree, because almost everyone would have phrased it differently. Most people trying to make that statement would say something like "within capitalism", to say it is an economic system we take part it. But that isn't the meme, the meme is "under capitalism", to say the system is imposed and we are subjugated by it. And like, think of the sentiment: "there is no", no exceptions. A local farmer on land they manage themselves growing organic, heirloom crops using sustainable practices sells you a tomato to feed your hungry child? Nope, still not ethical, no exceptions. The only ethical option allowed by that statement is the end of capitalism. Not even most socialists would suggest that anyone not ending capitalism is immoral.
He is not pro-Putin broadly because he is so heavily limited by the need to align closely enough with the EU. His sentiments, however, could not be clearer.
Honestly, this paragraph is just primo, hot bullshit: it's just a refusal to imagine how anyone might think or do differently from you. As a result, it carries no weight at all.
It is the sort of thing that might be said to someone who repeatedly leaps to the dumbest interpretation of something that he can think of.
Dude, the quotation you are citing is - as far as I'm aware - a snappy social media rejoinder.
To sit there and muse about how the author did not supply a welter of caveats and careful phraseology based on and accurately reflecting an in-depth philosophical understanding of economic systems merely tells everyone you have not stopped to consider what people are doing with snappy social media comments.
On the contrary, breathlessly catastrophizing about the moral implications of a statement in a hypothetical situation that is beyond the originally intended scope demonstrates a mastery of social media commentary. Not so much the snappy part in this case; not brief enough. In any case, I have no doubt tstorm823 can wield a pitchfork with the best of them.