So, you are a Capitalist?
Capital is a broad term for financial, physical, or human assets that provide value, generate income, or are used to produce goods and services. It represents resources employed to create wealth or drive economic growth, including cash, machinery, property, and intellectual property.
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It is interesting, because people see capitalism as a political position, with the opposing force being socialism. Fair enough I guess, but I think that the problem with that differentiation is that the capital people generally speak about at its core, is money, which is highly conceptual and therefore, easy to manipulate in multiple ways. The reason that gold is considered a safe haven, is that it is physical and even though there is a lot of influence exerted through market forces on the price, the fact is, gold is there, regardless of price.
Key Aspects and Types of Capital:
- Financial Capital: Cash, equity, and debt used by businesses to fund operations, pay expenses, and invest in growth.
- Physical/Real Capital: Tangible, manufactured assets like machinery, buildings, and technology used in production.
- Human Capital: The skills, knowledge, and experience possessed by individuals.
The big problem with capitalism is that it eats itself by the very nature of how it operates. Essentially, it is always moving with increasing concentration toward a monopoly, and the only reason it doesn't get there is that the imbalance and inequality is so high, that revolutions overthrow powers and redistribution of some kind is forced in an "off with their heads" process.
Automation and now AI is the capitalist dream, because it is about creating efficiencies so that the cost of production keeps decreasing, and profits therefore can increase. However, this is just a catalyst that drives capitalism to eat itself faster, eventually creating a situation where no matter how efficient a corporation is, there is no longer enough of a market to generate demand. Because the thing with business is that it needs customers and once the customer base is too thin, the entire supply chain collapses. Even if people want a product, if they can't afford it, they can't buy it.
I want a Ferrari.
I can't have one, unless I steal it.
And this is one of the major issues with using a token as capital, because it isn't an indicator of the reality of the situation of the market. Tokens really are a brilliant mechanism so that trade can happen between items of unequal worth, but as soon as the token became the product, it entered into a death loop, because while tokens are unlimited, physical resources are scarce. To get around this, more tokens are issued, more inflation created, but the same physical reality exists.
In a hypothetical but also possible world where all base tasks for human need is automated and generated without human intervention, we as a species would have to entirely recalibrate our understanding of value. We'd have to do this, whether the corporations want it or not, because in that scenario, there wouldn't be enough people earning to support business operations. Even if there was a basic income of some kind, the books just don't balance.
The only true economic balance is in the physical world.
We can create all the fancy algorithms we want, but at the end of the day, the only thing that matters in terms of capital, is what is physical. The resources we have available to us, and what we are able to do with them. Whether it be natural resources, or human resources, the physical world really is all that matters.
As said many times before, the problem with the profits currently is that money is the goal, because it is capital that can be used to generate more capital. However, what really needs to happen is that rather than a token as the marker of success, wellbeing should be the "profit" of business activity. The more wellbeing created, the more successful the business. But as you can see, that means that there is no token, so success is no longer tied to an imaginary concept, but a physical outcome. That creates problems for corporations, right?
Absolutely.
But as said, if the only thing that really matters is the physical reality in which we live, that change has to happen and it starts to look somewhat like a socialist system. However, What I think we should start doing is moving away from the political sides entirely and instead start becoming more humanist in our approach, where life is about generating value through meaning, scientific discovery, and improvement of the self, and the community.
Money isn't required in that scenario though, so it will never start to shift that way, until it is likely too late to recalibrate humanity for survival and thriving.
Taraz
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There are several types of capitalism depending on the policy adopted.
UK Post war (1945) economics was about the wellbeing of the nation as a whole right up until 1979. The country was bankrupt from the war and the only way to recover was by raising the living conditions of the masses.
We are currently in the death throws of the trickle down nonsense espoused by Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman Reagonomics and Thatcherism. A particularly vicious form of economics where greed has been encouraged and glorified.
Labour swapped for mechanisation and the subsequent automation of mechanical methods of production replacing labour entirely. As you pointed out this is a dead end.
No wages = no buyers for the most part.
There are many countries where inequality of the above nature exists. They tend towards higher rates of violence and corruption.
Compare Canada with the USA and we can see both economic options simultaneously.
Thanks for the prompt. It spurred me to comment 👍
Edit: typo
It does trickle down, but it is blood mixed with tears and faeces.
Yes. And I think that over the last decade and a half especially, we are seeing it spread onto "developed" streets. Social media and media in general has catalysed the shift more.
Always a pleasure!
It fascinates me how the rich (and delusional) play the self-serving game of branding socialism as a bad word.
Specifically in the USA, you hear constant rhetoric like “greatest country in the world” like it was some sort of competition. Fine, they are competitive but when you look at the scoreboard, they are losing by 530,000 every year (that’s how many families go bankrupt from medical costs each year) when that number is zero in ‘lesser countries’. Capitalism certainly appears to be an agent of deteriorating the greatness of a country by 5 million families every decade! Talk about eating itself from within
I feel I enjoy the benefits of both a capitalistic system as well as socialism with our healthcare and social systems. I want my taxes to go toward taking care of people and don’tthink capitalism should eliminate helping one another out.
Maybe that is humanism and that brand needs a little support.
Absolutely failing and claiming victory seems also
Yet, people buy into the BS they are fed, and double-down on it. I don't think I have ever met a country (as a whole) so unable to look in the mirror.
I don't know, but we should be putting human advancement and wellbeing first. Not technological for profit advancement, but actual improvement.
All economic systems involve capital and pabor, with the differences being in who gets to decide how it is employed. "Capitalism" is used to describe everything from laissez-faire to fascism, while "socialism" is used for everything from welfare states to totalitarian communism. Without defining terms in relation to consent and coercion, it's a meaningless argument with people shouting past one another.
Fiat money is the driving force behind inflation, systematic wealth transfers to the politically-connected, and the warfare state, but because our modern systems are described as "capitalist," this is used to condemn commodity money, property rights, and market exchange.
Corporate collusion with government is clearly in the sphere of coercion, not free trade. The military-industrial complex replies on government funding via tax revenue. People who voted for Trump hoping for a peace president got screwed, and now must fund what they opposed. Democracy is a counterfeit of real choice.
People condemn profits as inherently exploitative, but real free trade is mutually-beneficial. Voluntary exchange requires both parties to consent, and it is not a zero-sum game. If we had a commodity money again, ideally silver for practical day-to-day uses and no fixed bimetallism exchange to gold, it would transform many of the abuses in our financial system and cut off the inflationary process used to covertly fund things the people oppose.
Imagine that all the taxes stayed the same, but 50% of it went to basics - infra, edu, health etc. And then the other 50% was user allocated. To go to war, it couldn't be done on debt, it would have to get enough allocation from tax payers, who could also use it in other ways, including what benefits them locally. Would it make a difference?
For so many reasons.
Would definitely make it better.
I'd argue if any government program can't be funded via Kickstarter/Indiegogo/GoFundMe, it should wither away entirely. Make consent transparent.
I think it's funny how so many people are opposed to monopolies (for good reason), but they don't realize half the companies they support in one way or another are all some kind of monopoly.
I remember watching a documentary called Food Inc and in the US it was something like 5 companies control 90% of the food supply.
I believe it, it's pretty crazy!
@tarazkp Reading Capital Punishment is like looking into a broken mirror —a curse that will last seven years—... An uncomfortable truth about the real world in which we live. Laying bare the essential paradox: that capitalism, in its quest for efficiency, is digging its own grave by stripping those who should sustain it of their purchasing power, is perhaps a utopia.
I’ll stick with that compass you propose, pointing towards the physical, towards the real and tangible. As long as money is a phantom we chase, we’ll keep tripping over the same stone —but man is the only animal that constantly trips over the same stone—.
Beyond political labels, it is a matter of urgent common sense —but the majority, the ordinary citizen, simply doesn’t care!— Perhaps the true revolution is not about seizing power, but about recognising that we are bodies, not algorithms; that value is not a number displayed on a screen, but the life we manage to sustain and dignify —the harsh reality of every day—.
With all the intelligence and sensors we have created to make our lives easier, we still can't see what is at our feet.
To see this, one has to have lost enough though.
There are going to be some "interesting" times ahead... This new AI dominated era could be the biggest change for humanity since the invention of fire...
That thing you read really did shift your perspective it seems :)
That and working with it every day...
You're one of the biggest capitalists on Hive. Capitalism can be good if you upvote not only the big fish but also the small fry :) At the same time, your share of influence in the blockchain is constantly growing, meaning that capital is being concentrated.
Yes. Capital isn't the issue. The issue is the usage of resources. Thanks for the tips.
As far as im concerned, capitalism didn’t fail because of greed or anything like that, it succeeded exactly as designed. Wealth concentration is not a bug of the system, it’s the end goal or end game.
Yep. It only has one ultimate end. It gets interrupted by revolution and war.
That explains a lot.
Not if you're expecting corporations or governments (you know the people that should be responsible and doing this kind of thing instead of being completely and utterly selfish) to drive it. From where I am some people are going to be infinitely frustrating but others have been more willing to at least listen to ideas which will hopefully get something moving down the track.
It moves so incredibly slowly, because there is the understanding, but also the willingness to act outside of the system that is required. People can "know" but not be willing to do.
That's where I get annoyed by the constant requiring of social proof before anyone dares to budge an iota, so I just try to be the social proof.
We have to have workers, we don't have to have dollars.™
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread
The reading will have to be for another day, but don't you find it interesting that the goal has become dollars at all cost?
This one is an easier read being fiction, but it plows much of the same ground.
IF you want to take it in small bites, I recommend this one: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexander-berkman-what-is-communist-anarchism
Its chapters are not long and cover complete topics in workaday language.
He was a student of Kropotkin's.
I wasn't expecting this, the way you connected a token with this discussion.
I agree with your thoughts and I think we have witnessed such a system being failed/collapsed where wellbeing wasn't the centre of the philosophy - USSR before cold war era. I could be wrong in my assessment though.
Perhaps wellbeing has never been at the center of economic activity, or even most human activity - but we should be smart enough by now to move in that direction.
I read a little about the rule of Caliph Umar but not in enough depth that I can give you example to oppose to.
I could only say - Agree.
I think If we continue down this path of automation without addressing income disparities, we may find ourselves facing significant societal challenges.
We are already.
For me, capitalism is more of a strict kind of system in relation to ruling not just only business and enterprise, it is a one end control system, one end decision making system, almost every thing is from a single system. Which made me feel more interested in socialism more, because that free will, that option of withdrawal is easy, the rate of interaction between parties is high,
All these are just on the humanly behavioral aspect. Yes capital is another name for money, been control just by one entity isn't that disturbing? What if a wrong move is about to be made?. Well I like the break down you did @tarazkp I now know better, thank you.
Socialism as we have seen it so far, is an absolute monopoly. The epitome of capitalism, disguised.
yup. the whole reason the have lots and lots of HIVE or numbers in a bank database, is that it turns in REAL stuff. physical (yes.. i mean that kinds of physical too) assets!!
One day I will work out how to make it real
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STOPI'm not a capitalist, but an ordinary citizen living in a non developed country. I don't understand much about economics. However I often hear that capitalist possess large capital, factories everywhere, and thousands of hectates of land. Capitalists goals are the same as those of traders. Seeking substantial profits. Their economy revoles around capitalism. Banking emerged,and it's possible for capitalists to have their own Banks to regulates financial flows. Perhaps some countries can be used with capitalism, some countries adopt a non-capitalist approach. Such as a mixed economy. That's my opinion and comment. Thank you @tarazkp.