If you wish to end the discussion thats fine, but the definition of capitalism is as follows.
Capitalism refers to an economic and social system in which the means of production are predominantly privately owned,[1][2] are operated for profit,[3] and in which investments, distribution, income, production and pricing of goods and services are determined through the operation of a market economy. It is usually considered to involve the right of individuals and corporations to trade, using money, in goods, services (including finance), labor and land.
Seems like thats all ordered around economy to me.
Monetary wealth is not subjective. If you tell a man that you belive a penny to be worth more than a pound he wont give you your bag of sweeties.
If you wish to make a real point of this you will need some reasoning behind your statements.
Actually its the system that virtually every economic system adhiers to, wether by choice or not.
Your definition of capitalism is useless. Its first failure is when it says “predominantly privately owned” because it effectively describes every single economic system.
Unless you can objectively delineate when something is “predominantly privately owned” and “not predominantly privately owned” – a delineation which can not be made – the definition is useless.
There are other failures in the definition too but there is no point addressing them if you can not grasp the first.
Actually the definition tells us what a capitalist sysem is it says nothing for the ecompassment of all economies not that it realy matters. Its quite simple to see if an economy is predominantly privately owned, I belive that all businesses must be registered, so it would be fairly easy to find such information if you had the right contacts.
Either way the point that I orriginally made still stands. Dont belive me? lets see what the dictionarry says then
Capitalism:
An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.
Still Just talking about economy here. Unless you are able to provide a definition that encompasses the other areas you speak of, I’m afraid we cant realy continue this conversation
Didn’t we have this conversation about five months ago? I think I had a different user name then, maybe BA3OB something-rather, H.C.? Anyway, I agree with you; this happens a lot, good intentions used for wicked purposes, look at how the Children’s Rights Movement has actually stripped children of every liberty and freedom; or how the Clean Water Act or the Clean Air Act have done the exact opposite of what they would seem to be intended for-- or how Social Workers have become an arm or the police. This has been my thinking for the last week; I sent some money to a kid I know in Cambodia for her schooling and general welfare, for her, not via an NGO. But at the same time I cry for what is happening to Phenom Penh; the Koreans are even planning to build a forty-story office tower in the middle of a city that five years ago cars were rare in. A decade from now it will be another impoverished, polluted Asian mega-city without any character or freedom. So; if this girl I Western Unioned the money to goes to school, she has semi-decent English, maybe five years from now she gets into a local University and studies Management; and what have I done? I’d like to help the kid out, but the money is only going to fuel development; and if there is any one thing that I’ve come to hate in the last few years, it’s development; this article is a strawman ( capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4709 ) because the factory worker’s life is only better in relation to being a starving teen in a mega-city; she would have had a much better life back in her village if she hadn’t been tempted into the city in the first place by the lure of shoes and a hand-phone and literacy and all this other crap that no one really needs.
Capitalism does nothing. It is a description of behavior. It is not a person nor an acting agent.
Of course you should. You now understand why: there is not intelligent delineation between “predominantly privately owned” and “not predominantly privately owned” in your textbook.
Shit, you even have the opportunity to cheat here. Go get your textbook, look it up and copy it out – if you can find it.
However, I bet your textbook is just filled with hullabaloo and vague concepts.
Wrong. Unless you can define what “predominantly privately owned” means at the exclusion of other things, that definition is useless.
Are you kidding??? Is that the best you can do???
You just described what happens under communist states – all businesses must be registered!
Forgive me but you really do not understand what you are talking about.
Now, you are going to regurgitate from the dictionary.
That is a slightly better definition than your previous one.
Now, take it a step further: you need to define “corporately owned” and “proportionate” for that definition to be useful. Good luck.
[I am pointing out these words because in our current State of affairs, the concept of “corporate status” is at odds with a free market and “proportionate” is subjective.]
Now you are changing your argument. Before you were insisting on a monetary focus. Economics encompasses more than statist accounting and monetary accumulation.
Fine. I will define capitalism: Capitalism is using capital and capital is physical matter. It really is that simple. Now, you are going to accuse me of the same thing that I accused you — my definition includes everything under the Sun and more. That is fine. It does and it should. Making it more complicated – in other words, incorporating state monopolized financial markets and money – creates clutter among various schools of thought. [Marxists and libertarians are at odds with the definition of capitalism and my definition puts them together. Marxists call modern Western economies evil capitalism and at the same time they rail against the “free” market. They are confused because there is no free market in the world.]
What YOU described is more properly called State capitalism or crony-capitalism because of State influence on business. Here is a realistic definition of The State for the sake of completion.
There needs to be a distinction between State capitalism and Free-Market capitalism for intelligent discourse. Your definition clutters the two concepts.
The mode of capitalist economy, the “discourse” involved in commodity production and consumption, most certainly influences people’s desires. The beauty of it is that part of its design guarantees that you don’t notice that. There are very definite, subtle psychological effects which result from the contexts, and which influence your desires as a consumer.
Not really. Capitalism is the process of crediting surplus commodities with a value that exceeds the costs of the production of those commodities. “Money” does not exist. It is a symbolic representation of labor force. The capitalist is functionally described as a parasite, because he does not work. He takes what others produce, and sells those things to other producers. When the value of an object exceeds the costs of producing it, commodity fetishism is occurring, and this enables the capitalist to sustain his own existence by purchasing commodities he himself had no hand in producing. So essentially this is what it pans out to: you pay more than the capitalist paid to buy something he himself needs as well…but doesn’t have to work to get. He has a shirt made for one dollar. You buy it for two dollars (because it has a picture of Ice Cube on it and is supercool). He takes that dollar (the capital) and buys a shirt himself. The difference is…you worked for the money you used to buy that shirt. He didn’t.
It could be asked why exactly you’re hanging around IlovePHILOSOPHY then…
No. It doesn’t. The most base desire of people is to survive and procreate the best that is possible. Capitalism is a system that makes it possible to do so in a certian way, communism is another.
It’s a system. When the system is in play, it DOES do something…it makes interactions between people work differently than they would in a different system.
…Because the relationships between people work differently in a Capitolist system than they do in a Communist system. It’s not too complicated. In the same way that being in water makes people behave different than being in boiling chocolate, being in a Cap. system makes people behave differently than being in a Com. one.
Holy crap. You had no idea how deep and old the bullshit really is.
Bob it is critically important that you don’t read this. The results could be fatal for you. You’ve been fooled for so long now…it might be better if you just ride it out.
What do you mean? The religion forum isn’t for anarchists? Shit, Tolstoy would be here all day if he had internet. Dude I’d like to see that. Tolstoy vs ILP’s religion club. I bet Tolstoy would take them all in less than four pages.
Look, I’m not saying it is okay to be a Christian anarchist. I just wanted you to know such a camp exists. You can pretty much add Christianity to any of your ists or isms. This is because of ambiguity. It is so malleable, it can be made to mean just about anything. Hell, I’ve even heard of Christian Satanism.
Damn. I think I thought we were in the religion forum when you posted that no fly zone bit, Joker. I get mixed up all the time. The forums around here are like one big blur to me.
Smoke another one, manic, whydoncha?
(that was a rhetorical question to myself, by the way)
You have brought this thread to a pointless tangent, it seems that your just being perdantic. Money is a representation of a physical asset and this representation is used to simplify the market economy. Still your rant says nothing for the subjective element that you were previously concieving. Dispite this, it realy has nothing to do with the thread. It appears you ot all hot and flustered over somthing that is blatently obvious.
