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Capitalism isn’t an ideology. Capitalism is what people do when the government leaves them alone.
Capitalism is the controllers of the means of production exploiting the workers who do the actual producing. So, there is in fact something mythic about it in the Marxist teleology.
Full Disclosure: I haven’t watched the video, so pardon me if I’m restating the obvious.
I much prefer the term “free enterprise” to “capitalism”. I’m not sure I’m correct, it just seems to me capitalism includes things like monopolies while free enterprise is more compatible to equal access.
What we have now, crony capitalism, acts more like fascism than free enterprise.
What I mean about being correct is maybe I’m just parsing synonyms, but hopefully the reader will see my point.
I eschew the phrase “crony capitalism” because what it is, is cronyism. Capitalism is at best incidental to it — though socialists like to equate the two.
Furthermore, capitalism cannot include monopolies because monopolies can only form and endure with the connivance of the State. But again, socialists like to pretend that capitalism leads inevitably to monopolies.
In fact, socialism has almost always degenerated to monopoly cronyism.
Furthermore, capitalism cannot include monopolies because monopolies can only form and endure with the connivance of the State
Really? Are you sure about that, because it doesn’t sound right to me. I’ll freely admit though, I’m quickly out of my depth when discussing economics.
The enemy of a monopoly is competition. Without the (active or passive) support of the apparatus of government, all monopolies are eventually challenged and must either relearn how to compete, or fail.
By passive support, I mean that if Gigantua Corporation takes to gunning down the employees of Upstart & Co., and Upstart swears out warrants against Gigantua for its actions, the government either ignores the warrants (prosecutorial discretion) or dismisses the case on lack of standing.
Lets say you have a large company with a dozen outlets spread through several different markets. Someone wants to start a business that would find itself in competition with it in one of those markets. The large company could drop their prices to a loss where the smaller company can’t compete in that one market while still being able to stay in the black due to their other outlets. through this method a monopoly can be formed. I’m not saying that’s wrong necessarily, just trying to make a case for monopolies without government inducement.
Another area for an example where there could be a problem with pure capitalism is price gouging.
Just saying, the way I see it free market capitalism, that is, capitalism with lawful controls, is preferable to unfettered pure capitalism, for as we know business is amoral.
capitalism with lawful controls,
examples?
Um, I should have used “useful controls” instead of lawful maybe. Or reasonable?
I don’t know, those meant to discourage crony capitalism, if I may beg the question a tad….
That’s not monopoly. It’s temporary dominance in a single market that remains subject to challenge. Just because Upstart can’t crack it doesn’t mean it can’t be cracked.
Furthermore, if Upstart outcompetes Gigantua everywhere else, eventually Gigantua’s dominance in that one market is doomed.
That’s not a monopoly, I said by that method a monopoly can be formed.
Anyway, isn’t there (and shouldn’t there be) a standard of fair business practices?
I guess that’s what I’m babbling on about…
There’s no such thing as price gouging, except the politicians make it so.
In an aftermath of a hurricane, why is first come, first served a fairer way to distribute temporarily scarce resourceske portable pumps and generators than is ability to pay top dollar?
If you want supply to equal demand, you have to let prices find their own level, so to speak.
Otherwise you’re in Venezuala and wiping your ass with something that isn’t toilet paper.
resources like
Fair business practices, I believe, refers to things like business ethics … codes of conduct that deal with behaviors that should not be the province of law.
Legislation should always be limited (IMHO) to matters clearly criminal – theft, fraud (which is a form of theft), assault, criminal threat, libel, slander (also forms of theft).
Law is the floor under ethics, but ethics is something only individuals can embrace and embody within the culture of the businesses.
A monopoly cannot exist for any length of time except for two things – one is government influence or the other is consumer support (which is fairly fickle so the “hot stuff” of the moment may end up being “yesterday’s news” in weeks/months/years)
And, of course, it depends on what you mean by “monopoly.”
Legislation/govt covers contract law as well.
Govt’s proper role in contract law is to provide neutral judges and juries to settle disputes, but allow the parties the freedom to write those contracts any way upon which they agree.
yes
There is only so much a government can do and, more importantly, should be allowed to do.
You cannot legislate Ethics / Virtue. The best that can be done by a Sovereign People is to encourage teaching methods which ingrain Virtue into the hearts and minds of our children and for parents, or those acting in loco parentis to do the same.
A constitutional republic cannot survive if the Society within it is not, overall, Moral.
I much prefer the term “free enterprise” to “capitalism”. I’m not sure I’m correct, it just seems to me capitalism includes things like monopolies while free enterprise is more compatible to equal access.
Free enterprise covers just about any transaction that we might want to make. If my wife loves to knit, and her friend loves to quilt, then my wife can knit an extra pair of gloves and trade them with her friend in exchange for him quilting a top that she pieced together.
Capitalism comes into play when somebody wants to make a major investment that allows them to create better products more quickly. For instance, the friend could purchase a high-speed, automated long-arm sewing machine that would do ten quilts in the time it used to take him to do one by hand.
So capitalism is the investment of capital to improve the quality and/or quantity of one’s goods and/or services. These improvements, then, lead one to have an advantage when it comes to free enterprise, because most customers are going to want the quicker, better, cheaper offering.
I read an article a while back that explained the dire situation in Haiti as being due to the lack of capitalism. Free enterprise may be alive and well, as people barter with one another for good and services. However, nobody dares invest in new ventures, because anyone who scrapes together more than fifty bucks sees their capital stolen, either by local thieves or the official thieves from the State. So the people are stuck trading whatever they can cobble together with the tools at hand, without anybody even thinking about buying or building better tools.
Thanks Squid! Very helpful!
“voluntary collectivism”
and “property rights”