I Don't Hate Capitalism....

I think there are 2 interesting alternatives to the present system:
One is what I call "righteous equality". This is where you use rights as the fundamental principle of governance and everyone has equal rights. By using something like the universal declaration of human rights, it covers a lot of what Red Lila is proposing like health care, education, food, water, etc. These things ultimately boil down to human rights.

Another is democracy. Mondragon is an example of "democracy in the workplace". We all extoll the virtues of democracy but spend most of our lives in a dictatorship. The more places we can bring democracy, the more we can be involved in the decisions that affect our lives and put moral hazard in it's place. I don't think workers would decide to ship their own jobs overseas, they certainly wouldn't use toxins that are dumped into the river behind their houses, etc. They would make sure their pensions and company are solvent. It's in their own self interest to do so, and the free market would limit them from wasting or over-consuming.

Whyte Horse wrote: I guess we'll just agree to disagree on what the definition of capitalism is. Marx had the same problem with mainstream thinkers. I guess you just pick whichever one fits your world view.

If we agree to disagree on the definition, every value we put on the thing will be values put on different things thus rendering the discussion pointless. I'd much rather have a heated fight and learn something along the way than never engage in it in the first place. As for Marx and the slightly condescending assertion that I just pick the things that best fit what I believe anyway... Yea, with all due respect to Marx, I'm not sure his problems with mainstream thinkers (whatever those were) are of the slightest relevance. And also, I try and pick the one definitions that are most agreed upon - just enough to make it into textbooks on economy, politics, history, science, math and the like. And every single time I see I'm wrong, I actually do change my mind. I even appreciate people showing me I'm wrong, because I like to better myself and be right at least at some point.

Here's a definition by a PhD linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, political activist, professor emeritus at MIT:

Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level -- there's a little bargaining, a little give and take, but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward.

Again, here is a linguist (Noam Chomsky) writing in a book about Language and Politics (that's the title of the book btw), in a chapter about Universities and Corporations (chapter title) in a paragraph about the goals of society. And as if it weren't enough that the author doesn't even attempt to pretend being an authority on economy (which would be of peripheral significance even if he did), he even chooses to say that democracy cannot exist parallel to capitalism by definition (he says so, right before the quoted passage), which is ironic, given that his country of birth, work and activism is a prime example to the contrary (free market capitalism and modern democracy were both pioneered by the US among other places, and did remarkably well!). Now he is a respected critic of US economical and foreign policies and I applaud him for that in many respects, but to quote a linguist on a definition of an economic model while he was talking about the goals of society in a book about language, and above all made that definition right after the presupposition of a hypothesis that has been demonstrated to be incorrect repeatedly is really, really not the way to go only because quote-mining Adam Smith didn't work out. Thank you very much.

We could use the least restrictive form...
Capitalism = an economic system

And this is basically what you'll find in the dictionary with an added mention that ownership is private to distinguish it from other forms of economic systems, but does that really tell you what capitalism is?

Yes, sir, a definition of a term is designed to tell what the term means and to mark its borders [from latin 'fines'] in meaning to other terms. That's what a definition is.

Is that enough info to tell you that it is OK for millions of people?

No, its not, and that is not what definitions are good for. Opinions and evaluations of a system go beyond the reaches of definitions and a statement like "I don't hate capitalism" isn't a definition either. Now, if your opinion is that capitalism is anti-democratic in nature or divisive by design, that's where a wrong opinion can be, because that is an assertion about the definition of the term, not merely a value put on the term's meaning.

Anyway, if you use that definition, then you see Red Lila has just showed you what big pile of poo capitalism is. And maybe Socialism too.

I agree that capitalism (let alone socialism) is an unrefined and incomplete model and that reality doesn't operate in accordance to it which is why a society that starts off with capitalism usually gets to deviate from it from which all the flaws that are attributed to capitalism actually arise. By the way, since what capitalism is, is a matter of definition and not of fact, the nature of capitalism doesn't change. Reality changes and can have similarities to and deviations from the model, but the model remains as it is. Just like growing a fifth apple doesn't make four apples mean five apples. Rather you no longer have four apples, you have five instead - numbers, too, are a matter of definition, not observation.

Can you think of any other economic systems?

Yes. Virtually every system that is short of being a capitalist system is a non-capitalist system to at least the amount it deviates from it. Same with socialism. Only because there are two utopian models of economy doesn't mean there aren't realities of economy that are, let's say, neither.

Are you free to choose your economic system or are you forced to use one of the worst ones?

The former, of course. You don't have to choose how you build your economy from either one of two demonstrably unrealistic models. Most modern economies over here in the civilized world (including the US system, btw) just so happen to not be capitalist or socialist entirely, but different and ironically worse, because both capitalism and socialism are unrealistic fairy-tale models that are designed to work perfectly well, which of course, real systems can never achieve thanks to either limitations in technology or, as Lila pointed out, the selfish aspects of humans some of which get to be pronounced in a system that doesn't take them into account.

EDIT: Also, the structure within a company has no impact on the economic system within the society. You can have a democratic company in a socialist or capitalist society or a strongly hierarchical one, and the market wouldn't care a bit. The market's structure isn't resembled by or dependant on a participant's structure.

If capitalism didn't work so well it wouldn't exist. Talk all you want about it's flaws, it is a human system after all, but it works until something else comes along that works better.

Rickie The Grey wrote: If capitalism didn't work so well it wouldn't exist. Talk all you want about it's flaws, it is a human system after all, but it works until something else comes along that works better.

Sure it works, just ask a homeless person(44% of whom are employed), or an unemployed person, or a person who works full-time but can't afford food. Hey let's really look capitalism in the eyes and see how it works for half the US population living at or near poverty...Let's ask the 1 in 4 kids living in poverty "Does capitalism work for you?"

So that's just poverty, and as we all know poverty is linked to crime, violence, lower IQs, malnutrition, disease, etc. So basically capitalism doesn't work, it's an abysmal failure for the majority of people. We went along with it while there was a labour shortage and we had rising incomes but now, instead of delivering the goods, capitalism is delivering the bads: inequality, lower incomes, poverty, homelessness, starvation, depressions, recessions, foreclosures, bank failures, etc.

Persistence doesn't imply quality. Though Whyte Horse points out the inequality side, it doesn't address the reason for the persistence. Those that benefit from the inequality inevitably are those in power. That power persist and becomes more and more absolute and until the inequality becomes so unbearable that revolution tears them down. Unfortunately those who claim the new positions of power and wealth frequently either fall into the same cycle of exploitation or find themselves overthrown by those who still hold wealth but kept in the shadow of governments.

@Gisteron
OK so try this definition, again by a world-renowned linguist:

What is called capitalism is basically a system of corporate mercantilism, with huge and largely unaccountable private tyrannies exercising vast control over the economy, political systems, and social and cultural life, operating in close cooperation with powerful states that intervene massively in the domestic economy and international society.

I mean come on, the guy IS a linguist... presumably the foremost expert on language and the definitions of words like capitalism. Instead of relying on 400 year old writings about a magical wonderland utopian ideal of capitalism as envisioned by primitive humans. Even Marx's definition I gave a while back is a little dated but at least it included the reality of what capitalism enshrines.

Here's a present for you:

So okay, I'm not going to respond to all of the newly raised responses in detail, but rather comment on them. First, a little remark on the poverty thing (that, as I think I've made pretty clear already, can only indirectly be attributed to capitalism, if at all):

Let's not forget that the poor (maybe not the street dwellers, but just regularly poor) of today are as rich as rich people in the dark ages and the rich of today would have been about as rich as, say, some catholic church back in those days. Those were the days where all property belonged to the local land lords, back when free market wasn't even a consideration. Now that it is, the standards of living rose by incredible factors, even despite the fact that we have digged great gaps between the rich and the poor again, but they are nowhere near as great as back then. We are living in a time and a society where nobody must die of hunger or of bad teeth at age 25-30 or of a cold one december morning. We are living in an age where the species does so well, it has trippled its head counts in just the past 40-60 years, where calling exploitation of one's own countrymen would be an insult to both actual issues and actual exploitation. We are living in an age, where we have so much education, food, sex and luxury goods that arts like games and movies keep being released in amounts so great we can't even follow them all. The times in which we live are better than every single moment in history before and they keep getting better and better every day, and while capitalism as such never existed, the free market and at least the capitalism idea most certainly have had their contribution to that. Of course there will always be people who are worse or better off and of course we must never be satisfied with imperfection, but just keep in mind how bad we did back in the day when the systems we 'suffer' now didn't exist.

I'll skip the quote, because it is from the same author in the same book that isn't even an essay on the meaning of words but rather a political statement, and I think I've said enough about it. No, I won't be consulting a critique of modern day American politics for definitions of economical terms, much less a book that first describes (a caricature of) capitalism as an idea being most promoted by the Left, right before it takes Newt Gingrich as a prime example. Let alone the fact that now we have two not quite equivalent definitions of a term within the same book, and I bet a linguist clearly knows that when using a word in the same context, it should definately have the same definition, too. That goes to show that defining capitalism was not Dr. Chomsky's intent in either case.
Also, if I define a unicorn to be a horned horse without a horn, now I got something that exists, and now that I've done that I can reasonably argue that unicorns defined like that do in fact exist, but the moment I'm talking to someone else, all my fancy redefinition did was cause unnecessary confusion so I might as well restrict myself to universally accepted definitions of things, even if they describe something utopian like the definition of capitalism does.

Finally a quick response to the video:

I think I smell a false dichotomy fallacy underneath, and maybe that is at the root of this debate as well. It appears that Dr. Chomsky argues that compassion, solidarity and similar human attributes are irreconcilable with the pursuit of profit; that one of those must be chosen over the other. That is of course demonstrably false. Being decent to other people or to the planet is profitable and in fact, it is more profitable in the long run than, say, exploiting them. Now, of course, there are people who only care for their own generation or for immediate profit rather than long-term prosperity, but that doesn't render the pursuit of profit itself a wrong choice. Rather those people lack other attributes of decency or don't understand how beneficial those can be.
Besides, one can also be both a dick to other people and the environment and still don't care about personal gain. This condition is commonly referred to as 'sick' or 'evil' - being bad for badness' sake.
Anyway, I'm just saying that there is no binary choice between goodness and pursuit of personal gain by which one must be chosen and the other discarded.

Red Lila wrote: Persistence doesn't imply quality. Though Whyte Horse points out the inequality side, it doesn't address the reason for the persistence. Those that benefit from the inequality inevitably are those in power. That power persist and becomes more and more absolute and until the inequality becomes so unbearable that revolution tears them down. Unfortunately those who claim the new positions of power and wealth frequently either fall into the same cycle of exploitation or find themselves overthrown by those who still hold wealth but kept in the shadow of governments.

I agee. Excelent observation.

I wasn't implying quality.

I'll state again the golden rule, those that have the gold make the rules. If their smart,and I think they are very smart, the inequuality will never get to the point of revolution but then greed makes people dumb.

Gisteron wrote: Let's not forget that the poor (maybe not the street dwellers, but just regularly poor) of today are as rich as rich people in the dark ages and the rich of today would have been about as rich as, say, some catholic church back in those days.

WHOT EVAHR!!!!

Rickie The Grey wrote: If their smart,and I think they are very smart, the inequuality will never get to the point of revolution but then greed makes people dumb.

When I want something real bad, I usually try and come up with ideas on how to achieve it. If nothing else, its some creativity and ingenuity training. For the most part people who achieve wealth on their own are rather smart ones. Of course, many have the privilege of rich parents and don't need any brainz of their own, but I expect people who put no work into their property to also not be too caring and greedy about it - although there are numerous counter-examples, yes...

@Whyte Horse: Is that "WHOT EVAHR!!!!" some sort of response I ought to consider or learn something from? Just checking, coz its been so interesting before and that kind of disappoints a little...