I’m not following. To what/who is this post directed?
Yes and that video is old and before the bulk of the global central bank money printing. Coincidentally, this just posted today zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-0 … ere-doomed
We have to keep in mind that capitalism is absence of regulation. As soon as even one regulation is imposed for the good of society, it is socialism.
Once you concede one regulation, then it’s a matter of how many are appropriate.
So to really get a picture of what capitalism is, we have to go back before regulations were in place.
As you can see, the wild west was not that dissimilar than today and the true prosperity existed due to FDR and the regulations he imposed. The downfall began with Reagan and continues to this day.
The benefits you mentioned have been in spite of capitalism and not because of it.
The only way to get the money from the top back to the bottom is to redistribute because trickle-down is not enough to offset the deluge up. Money creation can help if it creates inflation, but people will only demand so much toilet paper regardless how much money is printed (and demand drives prices outside of supply changes). Now we have tshirts for 33 cents as automation continues the deflationary spiral to the disgust and consternation of central bankers. All the bankers are accomplishing is exacerbating the problem by giving printed money to the top rather than the bottom. The only hope is tax reformation, but as long as republicans are in charge, the curve is going to get flatter and further exacerbate the problem. All forces are pointing to the same end: revolt.
No, capitalism is not the absence of regulation, that is nonsense. Capitalism is targeted regulation for the purposes of allowing the principles of capital-ism to flourish according to their own nature. Capitalism is meritocracy in a field of enforced equality of opportunities such that the use of force to destabilize and overpower higher-order merits is banned (some dude cannot simply stab you and take your money when you made a contract or economic transaction with him, for example). Without law and order, economy is impossible, so are human rights impossible. Capitalism requires basic legal regulations against theft and fraud, and requires a courts and police system to enforce that law.
Anarchy (absence of all regulation, of any laws) is not capitalism but the absence of capitalism, indeed the absence of civilization as such. Socialism (extreme regulation that destroys capitalism and culture) is far closer to anarchy than capitalism is close to either socialism or anarchy.
Whoever thought up the relation between anarchy and capitalism was a useless worm. A pathetic will to nothingness whose nihilism and personal weakness and cowardice ruled his desires to strip everything away from everyone, so that “equality” could reign as gross inequality. “We are all equally savages in the wild”, that is the dream of the absurd anarcho-capitalist.
Laws that protect rational human rights and that limit government to its proper functions are good laws. Laws that go beyond that are not good laws, and are indeed a slippery slope into socialism. Socialism is when the state usurps and owns the individual. The trick is not to have no state but to have a wisely limited state; you cannot get around the necessity of law. It is simply those whose ressentiment in having no power in law has taken over that you find this anarchist urge.
Then why do they call it “free market capitalism”? And how is socialism distinct? We can’t have overlapping definitions.
On the far left is communism where the state owns all means of production, then fascism is totally regulated private ownership, then socialism is private ownership with less than total regulation, and finally capitalism is private ownership and complete lack of regulation. Each definition must be distinct.
Capitalism is regulation for the purpose of allowing capitalism? Self-causation?
Capitalism is no regulations because capitalism is for the individual (characterized by private ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined by competition in a free market merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capitalism )
The free market is essential for capitalism just like lack of regulation or intervention is essential for natural selection in evolution. It is the total lack of artificial laws. Now, just as you can’t claim natural selection is indeed natural if you’re meddling with it, similarly you cannot conclude a free market is free if there are regulations. Therefore, capitalism is the total lack of regulation and even one regulation makes it socialism, not capitalism.
That is incorrect. That is like saying your garden is a free market system even though you cut down all the trees and pull the weeds, giving your plants an unfair advantage. Capitalism does not seek to determine what is fair, but allows whatever is natural to take its course.
Well, anarchy is a broader term including laws that are not economic in nature, but capitalism is economic anarchy and, yes, I agree that it’s determinantal to civilization.
No, that’s a connotation people have about socialism. Extreme socialism is extreme, but socialism can also be very mild. Fascism and communism are extremes of socialism that are often destructive, while the socialism that existed in the US during the 50s and 60s worked quite well.
Throwing mud already?
Right, they are for the social good; hence, socialism.
Agreed. Too many laws are too many.
Well, now I know I’m right! LOL!
“Free” meaning “free from government control”. But government still maintains the general protection of society so as to allow for free trade.
Correct
Correct. We could say it is a form of socialism that is not related to economics.
Incorrect
Any interference at all is not free.
The purpose of freedom is to allow competition and if gov takes any action to protect free trade (or anything else), then it’s not the fittest who are surviving but the chosen of government or those working under the constraints of an artificial system of regulation.
The purpose of competition is to not presume we know what is best. That begs the question of whether we actually DO know what is best. I think, concerning some things, we do; other things, we don’t.
The reason we aren’t still monkeys in trees is that we fell out and began taming our environment. Clearly, farming is better at sustaining a population than hunting/gathering and it argues strongly for a managed system rather than leaving things to natural selection. Then again, we mustn’t get carried away and overmanage. The best system is a balancing act or a muddling along as conditions and considerations change.
So you believe that football, for example, should have no rules at all.
Interesting.
Humans regulate or intervene. That shows clearly that the natural selection can be circumvented, and that the free market has never existed in human history (but only a relatively free market).
That’s a good point. I never thought of that. Well, define “human”. I assumed the moment we left the trees to begin hunting was when we took the first degree of control from nature. Cooking came next, where we learned language because we had leisure time from the abundance of calories in the meat. As we became more agrarian, we had more and more time to contemplate science and art. As time moved on, we took increasingly more control from nature. This is where it gets philosophical: is that a good thing or bad thing? Are “we” part of nature or are we artifical?
If aliens observed us, they would conclude what we do is natural. When a beaver builds a damn, is it natural or artificial? We, being higher lifeforms, proclaim the beaver’s actions as natural. It appears that it’s based on perspective. But why should that be so? Well, if a lower lifeform exists, it must know something useful… and it wouldn’t be cognitive. In other words, there must be some intrinsic aspect to the universe that enables their success and I think we call that natural selection. It’s probably safe to assume that every species is the optimal design of that species for what that species does, right? So, for example, a shark has not gotten more intelligent in 400 million years; therefore, we can conclude that the shark is optimally intelligent and we know that because it exists. However, if we were to design a shark, I think we would err on the side of intelligence (because I know how humans think) and surely that would be a detriment to the species or else sharks would already be that way, right? Our meddling could actually cause their extinction! That appears to be a good argument for natural selection, yet we persist in taming nature. I don’t know… what do you think?
It seems if we say meddling is bad, then we are artificial… and how could we justify that?
Rules, in that case, define the game and they actually may have evolved by natural selection over time into what they are now.
But I think you misunderstood me somewhere… I’m for a mild socialist style like what the US has now except with an FDR-style tax structure because there has to be a mechanism to get the money back to the bottom so it can flow up again. The way it is now, money only goes up, leaving the bottom going into debt in order to replenish the supply of money at the bottom. Truly, most of the people paying taxes should not be taxed because it makes no sense to redistribute money back into the same class. The purpose of taxation is the engineering of an economy. But people don’t want to hear that because they want everything to be “fair” and don’t realize the government could print its own money in unlimited quantities and therefore doesn’t need taxes at all. If anyone doubts that, just look at what the fed, ecb, boe, and particularly the boj and snb have been doing lately… only the money is going straight to the rich, bypassing the poor. I mean, the SNB is a major shareholder of Apple, for crying out loud! They printed Francs then gave them to Apple shareholders when they took possession of the shares. The BOJ is steadily buying japanese ETFs until it owns the entire market, it seems. Again, money is going straight to the rich. They should launch a Universal Basic Income (UBI) so that the money goes more towards the bottom instead of printing yen to buy stocks. That’s why those idiots never got the inflation they’ve been targeting for the last 30 years. If one of those banks ever try UBI, they’ll have more inflation than they could believe as the printed money is quickly put to work in the economy, bidding prices up through increased demand. Giving money to Goldman Sachs doesn’t do shit… except increase the wealth divide. But the reaganites claim Goldman will lend the money out to businesses. Baloney! They will put it on deposit at the fed drawing interest. Besides, loans are dirt cheap and banks are full of cash and do not need more to lend.
Dipper, your “definitions” are invalid. Reality doesn’t care about however you want to narrowly define something, then cling to that definition at the expense of… reality. And also of logic, and deeper thought.
For a quick example, a free market requires some regulation to come into being: I already alluded to this with my comment about the dude who, rather than pay you the agreed upon price for your good or service, just gets a few of his thug buddies to rob and murder you. Yeah, that’s not a free market, that lawless anarchy.
A market requires agreed upon and enforceable rules; laws. The fact you don’t understand this is actually quite appalling.
Humans are both natural and cultural (“artificial”). Humans are partly their own selectors, also the selectors of pets and many other living beings, and they can survive in very extreme and artificial environments, thus in environments that are not natural.
Source: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=190270&p=2604589#p2604589 .
Source: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=188393&hilit=selection+principle&start=375#p2608881 .
Source: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=188393&hilit=selection+principle&start=375#p2608882 .
Source: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=188393&hilit=selection+principle&start=400#p2635325 .
As for the relatively free market or relatively unfree market: humans have always had rules (“laws”) in order to regulate their markets.
If you want to have a “capitalistic” system, you need rules; if you want to have an “anti-capitalistic” system, you need rules.
If one “wants” for anything, one must have rules to obtain it. 
Without rules, one gets whatever comes without any consideration from others - every man for himself and by himself. And no such thing as “money” or time to try to make it.
Oh? By what reason or rationale? Proof? Anything? Oh, that’s right, ur god now; you can make proclamations. 
Definitions do not exist in reality and all definitions are manufactured by constructs of imagination.
LOL! Oh yeah? So if I kill a beaver and trade it to a guy who has distilled some alcohol, by what regulations are we abiding?
Nope, I gladly trade the beaver for the booze instead of simply shooting the guy because I want him to continue his trade because I like his product. What you say makes no sense. Why shoot those who provide services to you?
The immorality of the capitalist system enters with employment, which is taking advantage of someone’s hardship to make him a slave for the enrichment of the master and then calling the act a “service to the community”.
I just gave example to the contrary.
Slander is the tool of the loser.
Why is culture artificial?
Birds select mates based on colors and nest-building ability, so are they not their own selectors?
Are not lions selecting the evolution of deer by eliminating the weak? Likewise with the jackals who threaten them?
Animals can’t interfere with natural selection because they ARE natural selection, but somehow when humans interfere, it is not called natural selection anymore. Why are we distinct?
Some bacteria thrive in nuclear reactor cores. Are they artificial?
Humans are actually quite vulnerable to extremes and our existence is owed to the very mild and stable environment whereas the cockroach, for instance, is more adaptable. Natural events such a meteor impacts, volcanoes, or a swing in climate could end humanity but the cockroach will survive even a nuclear war.
I am not sure. Thinking back to the pioneering days where economies were based on trade, there were no laws that could be enforced. I think the mountain men and native americans would have laughed at the idea that anyone could tell them how to operate. They simply traded the goods and services they had for the goods and services being offered and the value was determined at the time of the trade with no rules or laws or preconceived notions. If you wanted to shoot your trading partner, there was nothing stopping you… except that then you’d have to find a new partner. The economy worked naturally and with no regulation because there was no mechanism (ie army) to enforce any regulation.
All that changed when there were too many people to be fur-trappers, smiths, coopers, farmers, etc and therefore many people needed to be employed under someone else and that’s where economic structure entered the picture. Employment is what necessitated regulation. As societies grew, more regulations were necessary to protect the safety of food, for instance. Then we needed regulations to protect children, elderly, and the sick. Now we’ve gone as far as protecting people who are sexually confused.