In search of a definition of Capitalism

I guess Joe Blow would say come and take it because that’s a free market. Idk, I’m arguing from the perspective of people I don’t think are that bright. From what I can tell, the only law they want is the law of the jungle, so if some corporation wants to take something of theirs, then they don’t want any laws to protect them. The reason they don’t want laws for protection is the laws would limit their freedoms to pirate and plunder as well.

He’s not alone. 90% of commenters on zerohedge agree with him. And the Molyneux crowd who are all anarchists.

Molyneux says anarchy will work if everyone follows the NAP (non-aggression principle). Idealistic if you ask me.

Bingo! Exactly! If there are no laws, then someone will rise to the top and become the state and then enslave the people.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men

The people must have a government to secure their rights.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

We must have a government but we must be on guard that the government doesn’t become tyrannical.

Whether or not the state was assisting him didn’t matter because he had the resources and alliances necessary to be the state.

I recently became aware of a plot in 1933 to overthrow FDR. timeline.com/business-plot-over … 59a012c32a

Here’s the man himself:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16uhS-Iqi7E[/youtube]

So the question is whether 500,000 men could have overthrown the government. I think they could have because in peacetime the military was ragtag and scattered throughout the country. By the time the army could have been mobilized to respond, it would have been over.

Right, if the state protects private property so that I do not need my own personal army, then the state is doing a service for the community. Others feel the state should not protect private property because they want the right to pillage and plunder.

If I go to my neighbor with guns drawn and kick him off his land, then the cops come, then I ask what business is it of theirs? Performing a service to the community is the only answer I can come up with. The community thinks it’s a good idea if the guy with the most guns, the least conscience, and requires the least amount of sleep doesn’t own everything.

Communism can only arise naturally, like with the natives. Communism cannot be forced. Communism is an effect of prosperity and not the cause.

^^^ watching the wolff video now. Love this guy’s narrative story telling style. Wolff doesn’t just give a lecture… he takes us on an adventure through history!

I suppose he could, though it’s not a very open market, and it’s certainly not capitalism.

I get that.

My guess is most of them don’t really realize how the infrastructure and regulations managing banking, contracts, ownership, etc. in capitalism are necessary parts of capitalism and capitalists expect the state to manage these rules or it is a corpratocracy where they act just like a state.

Wouldn’t they be radical libertarians, not anarchists. Anarchists tend to be lefty.

It’s a big if. A thought experiment. And perhaps one that can be achieved, one day, way in the future, if people are raised differently, and somehow outisde the influence of corporate media. Not that I blame corporate media for everything, but I also blame it.

Yeah, I agree. Though people with power want laws, they just don’t want to be subject to them. Recently read a great book on how this is happening more and more and is not reported on in the US. The elite classes are treated differently by courts. Not simply because they have better lawyers and connections, but because the courts themselves are now set up to view with empathy powerful people, but not regular working people. One of the examples in the book was this hedge fund guy who killed someone on a hit and run, but since he had such a huge business and also because prison would be such a shock to someone like him - I kid you not, the court reasoned this way - he shouldn’t do time. A plumber who did the same crime might be shocked to find out that courts think he will be OK in prison and his work does not matter. And this was not cherry picking examples, the book charts how this is the rule: powerful people and rich people are treated differently in taking things to court, in sentencing and pardons as a rule. It is a systematic change that has happened. The idea of one law for all is gone…

Yes, and to me capitalism has the idea of rights. Once you have rights in an economic system, you have something that sees to it that your rights are protected. A state.

I am by nature pro-secesssionist. IOW small governments. But yeah, you don’t have nations if you have no government. IOW there is no USA if there is no state. You simply have people in the same region - except for Hawaii and Alaska - who use power sucessfully or not to get what they want. I cannot see how some fiefdom in mountains in Montana is a part of the US. In waht sense`? They would be free to have their own traditions, a freedom maintained by their power. There is no country, just a swirling mass of stuff. Most of the freedom/free market crowd is also patriotic. I don’t see how those mix. No state, no rule, total freedom. There is no country. Not saying that is wrong, it’s just that patriotism goes out the window. I too wish there was an end to states, and like them do not wish for a one world government.

Well, that’s the thing. The US has been an oligarchy for a while. The Robber Barons and their like were merged with the state. And they all wanted laws. IOW they wanted taxes to pay for police forces to break up unions and put away criminals who took the RB’s property. And to build the roads to their factories and to go to war with other countries who did things they did not like and so on. So the individual RBs have always wanted states.

No idea on my part.

Also a service to individuals. see above about the rich.

And pretty much everyone has tacitly agreed to how this happens internationally.

Right. But it is generally not so easy to determine who that single person is. So the big guys like some stability also, so they can sleep at night. And the guy with the most guns could be taken over by an alliance. Rich people like stability also, even rapacious ones. They also want rules to keep the little people in line. So generally they also want a state, and then they want to ignore it personally as much as they can.

Yeah man I’m delighted to meet another Wolff fan :slight_smile:

Here’s one on Reaganomics that I like:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdCNGkZoIZw[/youtube]

And I keep coming back to this one:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXNrVaJJfHA[/youtube]

Especially this part:

39:01
so to keep the game going he has to
39:03
replace the tools and equipment and he
39:05
has to pay the workers, but he has to pay
39:09
the workers… here we go folks:
39:11
less than the value added by the workers
39:14
when they work. Or to use the technical
39:17
term economists like: he has to rip the
39:20
workers off. He has to steal from them
39:25
part of what their labor added. You know
39:29
what the lesson here is? For those of you
39:32
who imagined that when you graduate from
39:34
here you will get a job, in fact the only
39:37
job you will accept is
39:38
one that pays you what you’re worth. Uh
39:42
never gonna happen! The condition of your
39:46
employment is that you produce more by
39:50
your labor than you get paid.
39:52
Welcome to the capitalist system

40:03
The best way to
40:07
describe your work in a capitalist
40:09
enterprise is not that the employer
40:11
gives you a job, it’s that you give your
40:15
employer the surplus. The giver and
40:19
the getter are in reverse order from what
40:22
the language suggests.

:laughing: That shouldn’t be that funny but my face hurts from laughing.

There are a lot of things they don’t realize, like how giving back to the community is better for the selfish capitalists (like stores offering coupons translates to more profit for the store), but the root of the matter is they are willing to hurt themselves if they can hurt someone else (ie the poor) more.

Maybe. I just know there is a whole generation of people who have spent the last 40 years hating the government. Evidently they don’t want any laws whatsoever and just want the government to go away. They tout capitalism and free markets. I don’t know what label to put on them, but that’s how they are. They support your freedom to one day become a billionaire and don’t want any laws preventing that. I don’t think they care about social issues like homos getting married, pot, booze, religion n such, but they viscerally hate minorities and the poor, don’t have much respect for women, and pedestalize the robber barons of old: Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan, Ford, etc.

It’s more than a thought experiment for him since he’s made a career of it and people voluntarily send him money to support his ad-free youtube channel. He says the gov is guys with guns who steal by force which is a violation of his NAP.

Bingo again! You’re honing in on what I discovered: hatred of the poor and idolizing the rich. That’s the core of this issue. It’s a polar mindset: either you do or you don’t.

[i]The Nazis were hostile to the idea of social welfare in principle, upholding instead the Social Darwinist concept that the weak and feeble should perish.[71] They condemned the welfare system of the Weimar Republic as well as private charity, accusing them of supporting people regarded as racially inferior and weak, who should have been weeded out in the process of natural selection.[72]

Meanwhile, in addition to being excluded from receiving aid under these programs, the physically disabled and homeless were actively persecuted, being labeled “life unworthy of life” or “useless eaters.”[78][/i] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_o … l_policies

So the rich are obviously superior since they rose to the top in natural selection while the poor aren’t human. I have yet to meet a rightwinger who, after taking a machete to their intellectual thicket, are not found to harbor visceral hatred of the poor.

That doesn’t surprise me a bit.

I’m not sure you’d find anyone carrying the capitalist flag who’d go along with the idea of a state protecting rights.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XObcP69dhCg[/youtube]

“Government isn’t the solution to our problems; government IS the problem.”

I’ve been mulling the federalist vs republican position for months now and am no nearer a solution. On one hand, the only reason not to have a strong central government is for the division of rich and poor, but on the other hand, once we have a strong central government, a tyrant could easily take it over. For instance, if we did not have a federal government forcing min wage, the south would not have a min wage and the people would be veritable slaves serving the other states. It’s a good thing for the southerners that they lost the war. I’d be in favor of a global government so long as the people had strict democratic control over it because then it would mean that corps could not flee to low-tax and low-wage areas to circumvent government regulation. But man, if such government ever lost its democratic control, there would be no stopping it. So I don’t know where I stand between Jefferson and Hamilton.

Are you sure they actually wanted the state or decided to use the state once it was in place? If I were an RB, I can’t see wanting a state because the state would also protect my competitors. I’d rather employ a private army that only worked for me. If I couldn’t have that, then the 2nd best thing is taking control of the state police. This is like the mafia again where they buy cops, but would prefer there not be cops at all, if given a choice.

But primarily it’s a service to the community. The only reason to protect an individual is to protect the community.

I think ideally they want 100% control over the state, or to BE the state. I don’t think they want 70% control over a state that could turn on them, but will take the deal if that’s all that’s possible. This is why I say private army + pillage and plunder = 100% control.

When FDR came along, the New Deal is not what they wanted, but Reagan et al enabled them to eventually worm their way inside and take control of the government. It wasn’t the initial plan nor was it ideal, but they eventually got good enough control.

This seems to be our main point of contention right now. I am not sure, but I think they do in fact want a state. Very hard to test this, of course. Here’s why I think they want a state. It is cheaper for them to manipulate and mainly control the police and armies than to pay for them. There were advantages to sharecropper relationships between whites and blacks over the earlier slave relationship. The blacks had little or no power and could be used like slave labor, but the whites were no longer responsible for feeding any particular sharecropper. They outsourced slavery and allowed racist laws and already existing dispararities in power to maintain the power dynamic. Let’s say the Rockerfellers want WW1. In your model, they would prefer to have their own army take on the Germans, say. But it is much better for them to have a state they can manipulate, a state which taxes everyone to pay for a state army, that goes over to fight the Germans and this army then needs to be supplied with weapons made by arms manufactures, which are paid for by taxes. The soldiers are nto thinking they are employed by the Rockerfellers and also need never wake up from the bs propaganda and hate the Rockerfellers. It would be the politicians they would hate, the war also view in terms of honor and nationalism, not profit. Move that up to Haliburton and the Gulf wars. Then the corporations are not beholden to their mercenaries in any way after the war, health care and drugs and counseling also gets spread out as taxes on everyone, and the rich are good at minimizing their own tax burdens. They don’t have mercenaries demanding higher wages, the state deals with them (and generally not well).

Notice you say ‘they’ want…There is a they. It is a group of rapacious people. Not just a single Robber Baron. While they each might simply want to be King, they know that there are other potential Kings out there. And also, let’s say Rockerfeller makes the move to be King, he knows a coalition of the others, or even just two others, could challenge his Kingship, even if he, at th at particular juncture has the biggest army, biggest war chest, best arsenal.

These guys also like stability. There is a cost. It blocks each of them from becoming King. On the other hand, these guys have today more power to experience whatever they want than any king ever had plus they don’t have to worry much about other potential kings killing them. Sure, they need security, but Warren Buffet does not need the security he would need if Bill Gates saw him as a threat to his power. Then Warren Buffet would need an army, probably nukes - for a kind of personal MAD defense, and much larger intelligence departments, one’s analyzing military build ups and likely interrogating people and surveilling people in ways I sure they already do, but more like the CIA and NSA combined. It would always be war. The rich have outsourced much of their expenses to states. The price is they cannot necessarily do everything they want and they must jockey around with the other oligarchs, but there are security, stability, financial and other benefits that are really important.

I don’t think these people necessarily like each other, but it allows them to focus on their real enemies and those they parasite off of - regular people.

I am pretty sure if they had wanted a coup, the Robber Barons, they could have done it. Yes, they are not in full control and this can cause problems, but it has many advantages. And it makes it much harder to people to rise up. A Kingis a target. People know who the enemy is and Kings have been brought down.

Look at what they can do now. Politicians are the target. The members of the other party are the target and to blame. The hatred between the Trump advocates and the Hilary advocates is enormous. Regular people hating regular people.

They have outsourced the targets and a lot of the expenses a King needs to pay directly. And there is little chance they will be the target of assassaination attempts, either from the underclass or revolutionary groups or by other potential Kings.

It’s primarily win win for them as a group, even though each of them sets aside winning over all and being world Hitler.

Well, let’s test it by asking ourselves what we would do if we awoke in a jungle with no laws. Would you want to form a state that you’d have to wrestle with or would you rather be the state (the biggest guy around)?

Would you rather have general elections for positions of power funded by public taxation or to appoint a guy to power who is paid by you? I can see the manipulation of government to some extent, but I can’t see that being an efficient form of control.

I think Hitler is a good example if we consider him a guy with a private army who didn’t have to ask anyone permission for anything. He didn’t have to run plans by congress and hope they’d pass it. He didn’t have to worry about a supreme court. He seized every aspect of everything and appointed all positions of power. Hitler is about like the guy I’d imagine rising to the top in a laissez faire capitalist system then instituting a government under his total control and I think that’s indicative of the aspirations of the free market capitalist. Why would it not be the goal to rise to the tippy top and rule everyone else?

Yes I thought of this while pondering my last reply. I thought it would be cheaper to simply let a public army parasite off the people then boss it around, but if I have an army funded by someone other than me, is it really under my control? It seems better if the army were funded by me through pillage and plunder.

Yes, this is what’s going on now: the workers are slaves who are responsible for their own upkeep. But because of the gov through min wage laws and welfare, those slaves are expensive to own. The gov has increased the price of human life. This is not in the capitalist’s advantage.

Preferably, the capitalist would house his own slaves. I know a guy who did that: he’d get guys out of prison and move them into his trailerhouses. By the time rent and beer money was settled from throughout the week, they never saw a dime of money. Why allow workers to overspend on housing and luxury when you can be in total control and force them to get by with less? A government can only hurt the capitalist.

I think that’s still “making the best of a bad situation.” The only reason to want war is to make money, so they see a way of making money and opportunistically seize it. If the gov didn’t exist, then such plan would never occur to them.

Yes they are capitalists, class-oriented people.

I honestly don’t think they are smart enough to think far enough ahead to surmise that their own existence would be better if the slaves were allowed more resources because the main reason the capitalists are acting this way is brain damage to start with. If they could genuinely see that helping the poor helps them, then they wouldn’t be hard on the poor; that being a king of slaves in a technologically sterile desert is less of a life than simply being a rich guy in a more modern time.

Then a new king steps up, but the system doesn’t change. FDR was an aberration who changed the system. He increased the value of human life.

Ideally Limbaugh should be tried for treason.

If their plan included controlling the gov, then it’s about to backfire as the new demographic starts to dominate voting. Bernie, AOC, Abrams are just the beginning.

But at the end of the day, we can’t define both left and right desiring a government, so it should be exclusively a leftist thing to want a government representative of the people to secure the rights of the people in a democratic fashion while the opposite extreme would desire less government and less protection for the people and less democratic control. If both sides wanted a government, then what would be the difference? A government controlled by a minority is not a government, but a private army taxing by force, even if the army is quasi-public. A government controlled by the majority is my only conception of a government. Dictatorships, monarchies, etc are not governments, but one guy ruling the roost with a private army wearing a public label.

But that is precisely not the situation they find and found themselves in. They have seen the Kings fall and sometimes their heads fall and seen their power wane. They live in spaces with states already present. That is the situation. If society collapses, sure, come of them will strive to be kings and history will likely have to repeat itself.

These guys are not like Hitler. They are smarter than Hitler and they have less values. That’s right, less values. Which does not mean Hitler had good ones. But he was an idealist and a very impatient one and he did not listen to experts for many things he should have. I mean, ANY expert, not just consensus or maintream ones.

Armies turn on Kings. And as I said above, being King stop working…They know we know this too.

Yes, we have taken some steps back. Back to the factory store, worker barracks and not just with sex workers. And I think once the elites have the right technology, they make come out of the closet and try to get eveyrone in them. But they need more control. They don’t have it yet.

If they were the state, they sure would and they did, back when they Kings. And mafia leaders will go to war now and then against competitors.

I am not saying they want to be nice to the slaves. I am saying they know there are other ‘nobles’ out there. The state keeps them from beheading each other. Bill Gates becaomes King. Now he’s a target for others who want to be King. Not a target for just industrial espionage and smear campaigns and lawsuits. People will try to kill him. And the other ‘nobles’ will gang up to do this. And this is basic history. They are not smart in many ways, but this is pretty right on the table easy to see history. The era of Kings ended. For it to come back they must have technological solutions they may be close to but do not have yet.

I am in no way suggesting they want to be nice to poor people or even middle class people. They don’t-

Bernie bowed down to Hilary and fucked his voters over after the Democratic party fucked him and his voters and broke their own rules.

But sure, I see countertrends. even Trump, sick as he is, is a sign that things are shifting. He’s not what the tired with elites should have jumped for. But they jumped. Bernie an avowed socialist is also a radical exception. And that people talk about deep state and fake news and the mainstream media.

It is interesting times.

But the elites as individuals are safer than if they became king.

And here’s what the elites managed. They each don’t get to be the one king. They share with each other by taking as an interest group from everyone else. They hide within what gets called a democracy and very very smart well educated people, en masse, will say it is a flawed democracy. It’s not. I think poor people get it better that it is not a democracy. What they do with that insight is nt great.

The only reason for war isn’t money. If anything it originally was women. Money as a reason to own women is an objective, sure.

Now war over women is fared ideologically. The Left is the porn industry and the silicon valley opinion monopolists who cooped Communist sensibilities. It’s filthy.

Another reason for war is man’s desire to exert his force. Whoever denies that such desire is natural is surely not in touch with his force.

Solution? To keep fighting, as we will. The strong with honesty and the weak with hypocrisy.

The question. … whether honesty or hypocrisy is more “fit”; turns out dominant.

Capitalism is the art of getting your bread to work for you, so you don’t have to work for your bread.

Socialism is everyone having to work for their bread.

Communism is no one having to.

I agree. Recent US wars seem to me to also be about 1) extending privitization - as in they privitized much of the military in GW 2) the use of resources and better control of how they will be used. This is money, but also the spread of a particular kind of oligarchy based capitalism. The form matters to the movers and shakers also 3) The extending areas where free markets will rule. Or ‘free’ markets. The choice of citation marks or not dependent on one’s politics. 4) Distraction from domestic issues. 5) empowerment of the intelligence and military communities and also private versions of these in security, private intelligence contracters, etc. 5) The making of the world a certain way. IOW those who like hammers want a world where hammers are used and seem the tool of choice.

Of course many people on the ground and even in offices are in the wars for reasons less driven by stupid self-interest (and I mean that as something that is not the same as intelligent self-interest: it’s not the self-interest part that’s the problem)

There are are certainly many noble warriers, but they very rarely have anything to do with the decisions to have war. Of course there are many arenas to fight in, and at the national level, certainly these days, the chances of it being an honest war are next to nothing. Of course one can carry out one’s part with honor and honesty. But might as well find a place where the whole thing is honorable.

I quite agree with this.

Nah, if you run you lose your honor.

Didn’t say anything about running.

OK then what do you mean by “find”?

In general I think the problem is that whereas rich people can be pretty mean, poor people as a rule are even more eviler.

This is one of the main reasons to get rich.
To get away from the scum, the cunts, the dogs.

I thought the poor were the virtuous ones. What happened to “going back to a better class of losers”?

The idea that the poor are genuine people is the backbone of country music.

In 2009 in the United States, country music was the most listened to rush hour radio genre during the evening commute, and second most popular in the morning commute.[6] en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_music

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5R-T_YF-wU[/youtube]

Most folks don’t want to be rich, but just pay their bills. The love of money corrupts people.

That’s what’s wrong with capitalism.

7 For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.
8 And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.
9 But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.
10 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

1 Timothy 6

economictimes.indiatimes.com/we … 078320.cms

And then there the meanness by proxy. Like deciding a war is profitable.

lol, yep.

One friend has money and 7000 sq ft house. When he invites poor friends over, he bitches that he has to pay for everything.
Another friend is dirt poor and lives in a trailer. I can’t keep up with all the gifts. Every time he comes over he brings me something and he even bought me a rifle for christmas.

The guy with money wonders what he can get out of me.
The guy with no money wonders what he can give me.

Alright, you make some good points and I’ve been listening to Chomsky paint the same picture you’re portraying.

So, how do I shoehorn capitalism and socialism into diametrically opposed categories if both the socialist and a capitalist desire states?

Everything is a duality because everything is defined by what it is and what it is not. The socialist wants to spread wealth out while the capitalist desires to condense it into few hands. Where do I categorize the anarchists?

Its funny that Marx never once said: come on workers, we will create our own industries and make them really fair.

That would have been very easy to do with the sort of numbers that became available.

Except… maybe these numbers only became available because of the lure of stealing capitalistic projects.

The lure never was the noble work and the fairness. It was the free money, the theft.