Comment by int_19h
2 months ago
We're talking about the same thing, actually. To be clear, I'm not pro-capitalism, quite the opposite. But the "festival of destruction and human misery" that you're talking about is caused by massive for-profit entities that only exist because the property rights system in capitalism allows and even encourages unbounded accumulation of capital (hence the name!), and with that, economic and eventually political power. That power is why megacorps can bend the law, and why their ignorance of reason does not lead to their immediate demise (as it would be in an actually free market, meaning the one with numerous meaningfully competing actors). Capitalism taken to its logical conclusion is the absence of free market because everything is monopolized.
I like your ideas and suspect we're far more on the same page than not.
Nonetheless I compare what we call "capitalism" to chameleon music artists like David Bowie (no disrespect intended to that wonderful artist), who change radically with time, constantly shapeshifting and reinventing. Our grandfather's "capitalism" is unrecognisable from its namesake today.
People often level the accusation against communism that "it has never actually been tried in practice", and I think the same is also true of capitalism. Maybe in the years before just before 1929.
Anyway, what I see today is not a recognisable ideology. It's just a bunch of criminals getting away with it and an effectively lawless USA.