What a bizarre connection! Disputing the divine right of kings had to be a private act or you faced the consequences; you and I, the consumers, ultimately decide the fate of the millions of businesses that constitute the system we call capitalism within a free market.
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She is talking about moving to a new system outside of capitalism, not causing a dip in profits for one particular company.
"Capitalism" is a system in which people are allowed to exchange and accumulate goods freely. Moving to a system "outside of capitalism" involves preventing this, and necessarily involves large scale violence both to take the accumulated capital of savers and to persecute anyone who still seeks to engage in the free exchange of goods. See for example the merchants in Maoist China and Stalinist Russia who were hung or shot for being capitalist traitors, and the landowners who were exiled or killed. It was literally illegal to own a shop, or to grow or make something and exchange it for something else.
Not really. Those are reasonable examples of what it takes to try to "force" an entire country out of capitalism "for their own good". Socialism as a part of a general economic or ethical philosophy - embedded within the liberal democratic system - is not quite as bad on its own. The fundamental ideas behind the movement led to things like universal public education, national investment in the sciences and arts, as well as universal public healthcare. These are all things which almost every modern nation recognizes as good ideas. Where it goes off the rails is when you formulate an entire political theory that can be summed as "We shall get a moral and dependable dictator to forbid people from engaging in Capitalism or owning excessive property, thus forcing everyone to work for the common good. This will eventually lead to people naturally working for the common good, because that's what humans naturally do.". The main problem with that one is obvious by word #8, but it contains a few extra fallacies beyond that.
Now, it's perfectly possible to embed socialized literature grants and "literary tenure" within a capitalist system if democratic society believes that is the best way of generating valuable literary works that are not likely to produce an immediate return of investment in the open market. We can even do that simultaneously with a publishing industry producing literary works with a focus towards profitability. Scientific research and some forms of artistic creation already work this way.
As for completely replacing capitalism, as opposed to just having a mostly-capitalist mixed economy? Well, I can't see it happening in a scarcity society, but I can imagine it happening in a post-scarcity one. Suppose we get to the point where robots farm food for us, robots gather natural resources for us and robots keep basic infrastructure working for us. Now, suppose that at one point we mostly trade in "services" and "ideas" (software, books, music, movies, 3D printable designs for all our physical stuff). At what point there does capitalism becomes silly? "Oh, I don't need money to live, I am designing this car to get paid so that I can buy the 3D printable design of my bed. Oh, wait, someone open-sourced the design for the bed I wanted, neat, let me print it. Guess I can open-source my car design too." "But hey, does that mean you are never making another car design?" "Are you kidding? I love designing cars and what else would I do with my time? Besides, I get a kick out of seeing people driving the car I designed!". The beauty is that we wouldn't even need most people to think that way, just a small fixed count from the population. Things like reputation and competition for real state might have to be solved differently in a society without capitalism, but lets be honest, capitalism is a poor system for solving those two anyways, as evidenced by rent prices in the Bay Area and "Am I a failure if I am not worth $1Bn by age 22?" questions on Quora.
Now, capitalism is probably still the best system we know of to solve resource allocation and promote technological innovation in the conditions of contemporary human society. But those conditions are subject to change. So, yes, "we need capitalism because people need to exchange and accumulate [physical, non-duplicable, scarce] goods freely" is true at the moment. But so would have been at a time: "we need the King to keep all the feudal lords and their peasants united in peace and organized in the case of barbarian invasions".
(Note: This rant turned longer than I expected. Also, HN might be the weirdest place on the net to do a Commie rant ;) )
>Well, I can't see it happening in a scarcity society, but I can imagine it happening in a post-scarcity one.
The thing is, scarcity in the economic sense is defined in terms of peoples' wants, which seem to be able to expand indefinitely. Short of discovering an infinite energy source, there will never be enough energy to completely satisfy everybody's wants. So a method will be needed of deciding whose wants get satisfied. This method can be exchange based: you do x for Joe, because Joe either did something for you or did something for someone else and has a scarce token (money) to prove it. Or, it can not be exchange based: somebody makes you do x for Joe, because Joe himself doesn't have anything to offer you to make you want to do x for him.
>Suppose we get to the point where robots farm food for us, robots gather natural resources for us and robots keep basic infrastructure working for us.
I think it's an open question whether we can get robots that are capable of doing almost everything for us without requiring those robots approach human intelligence levels. If the robots that do all our work for us need to be as smart as us to do so, then they probably wouldn't be willing to work for free.
> The thing is, scarcity in the economic sense is defined in terms of peoples' wants, which seem to be able to expand indefinitely.
It's unclear to me whether this is true. For most of history, "infinitely expanding people wants" was not a thing, at least in terms of material wants. Maybe because it was not believed to be possible? But there are plenty of examples of autocratic rulers in pre-industrial times who extracted less resources from their subjects than it's believed they could. So, did they balance that against some risk or the effort required? Or were they simply uninterested in maximizing their personal wealth beyond a point? I feel even in modern capitalist society, above a certain threshold (which varies from person to person and according to circumstances) people are more motivated by status and recognition than material wants...
> If the robots that do all our work for us need to be as smart as us to do so, then they probably wouldn't be willing to work for free.
Does being as smart as us require being as self-aware as us? Does it require free will? Does it beget human needs and values? If 000, my scenario holds. If 100, we might be faced with a serious moral dilemma. If 110, who knows what our relationship with such beings would be. If 111, I've re-invented slavery and it should be abolished again at once, but I sort of doubt the answer to all three questions will be true. All other configurations are hard to imagine.
> For most of history, "infinitely expanding people wants" was not a thing, at least in terms of material wants.
Economics addresses material wants exclusively, but with a broader view than many people take when informally using the term "material wants". The only situation in which economic scarcity would not exist in the general sense would be if there was no good, service, or change in condition which would improve experienced utility for any person.
Further, with real people rather than the basically omniscient beings modeled by rational choice theory, to have a non-scarcity society in any meaningful sense, you'd need instead for their to be no good, service, etc., which any person would expect, even irrationally to increase their experienced utility.
To be a non-scarcity society with regard to a particular good, service, etc. (or any class of such good, service, etc.), requires the same thing (for either the theoretical and practical interpretations as above), but only within the class of goods, services, etc. of interest.
While there's certainly evidence that there may be a certain level of wealth -- which a number of people in the modern developed world reach or far exceed -- beyond which increasing wealth has no net positive impact on experience utility on average, I don't think there's any evidence that at any point in history there has been an society that is non-scarcity either in the actual sense of no actual capacity for improved utility from increased supply of goods, services, etc., or the practical sense of no expectation of improved utility from such things. There's certainly times where economic growth was not the norm and so expectations didn't expand as rapidly, but infinite wants doesn't mean that expectations are infinite, its that more goods (even in excess of expectations) won't satiate the desire for even more goods on top of that.
> people are more motivated by status and recognition than material wants...
Status and recognition are basically services provided by other people in exchange for something done for those other people -- they are economic goods, even though they may generally be the subject of fairly informal exchanges that are harder to attribute monetary value than more formal (even barter) exchanges.
> So a method will be needed of deciding whose wants get satisfied.
There are other alternative methods besides exchange and coercion. One is gifting or Potlatch. [0]
I like that you acknowledge that the innate human drive to create is at least as strong a drive as the profit motive, yet are only willing to accept that it is a sufficient motive in a "post-scarcity" society (whatever that is supposed to be anyway - there will always be scarce goods, that's the nature of the universe). You also commit a common fallacy when you imply in your first paragraph that communism preventing people from accumulating capital is an act of unjust violence and oppression - it is not, and that is so for the same reason that preventing people from stealing from others is not an act of oppression either. I suggest to actually read one of LeGuin's books, mostly notably The Dispossessed.
The fundamental ideas behind the movement led to things like universal public education, national investment in the sciences and arts, as well as universal public healthcare. These are all things which almost every modern nation recognizes as good ideas.
There are many people who disagree 100% on that point.
Thanks, since the post I was replying to was clearly an example of this, I'll assume you're just being helpful.
> "Capitalism" is a system in which people are allowed to exchange and accumulate goods freely.
That is neither what the term was coined to describe nor what actual historical systems described with the term have been. If you look at both the specific systems the term was coined to refer to and the historical systems it has referred to (and the specific policies, even that haven't been actually implemented, advanced under the banner), I think there are a couple of defensible short rough definitions that apply well in general (though neither matches perfectly with any popular articulation of capitalism, including that by the socialist critics who coined the term -- the first, based on means, is closest to that typically espoused by proponents [though it strips away the fuzzy term "freedom" for the more concrete description underlying the capitalist understanding of freedom] and the latter, based on cui bono intentionality, is more like that typically espoused by critics:
1. "Capitalism" is a feature of a politico-economic system which is exists in a system to the degree to which that system favors fee simple property rights as the basis for allocating power.
2. "Capitalism" is a feature of a politico-economic system which is exists in a system to the degree to which that system seeks measures and maximizes social benefit weighted by the magnitude of the fee simple property holdings of those participating in the system.
Luckily there's never been any large scale violence within or around capitalism.
Everyone's freedoms - especially the freedom to get paid a fair rate for hard work - are quite safe.
If you add up Mao's and Stalin's bodycounts, that's 50-100 million people, so yes, compared to that we are quite safe. I don't know of any capitalist nation that's inflicted anything in that order of magnitude of deaths on its own citizens, and what deaths there are are usually caused by noncapitalist entities like the state police and army. Noncapitalist because they're not funded voluntarily; I suspect if the military was something we had to pay for as individuals like bread, computers, cars, etc. then it'd be a hellova lot smaller. Similarly I can't imagine many people would pay gangs of private detectives to go around locating and imprisoning drug users.
What violent acts of capitalism are you referring to? I suppose there is exploitation in the "3rd world", but it is not clear how that is caused by capitalism. How would other economic systems prevent that kind of thing? Or is that rather a problem of law and policies?
I don't think capitalism = everything is allowed as long as it makes money. You are not allowed to kill people because it suits your business in most capitalist countries, for example.
Socialism managed to suck the whole Aral sea dry, so I don't think it has any inbuilt mechanisms to protect against exploitation.
<blockquote>"Capitalism" is a system in which people are allowed to exchange and accumulate goods freely.</blockquote>
That's what the word means. But our capitalism? The one we have? It's not that. It's not optimal. It's not efficient. It's not even fair.
But then, the then-accepted concept of "Divine Right of Kings" was never what it purported to be either, was it?
> But our capitalism? The one we have? It's not that. It's not optimal. It's not efficient. It's not even fair.
There's no "our capitalism". You either have it or you don't. You mean "our political system". Feel free to find a name for it. Capitalism is taken, it means voluntary trade and savings. Stop listening to politicians trying to smear Capitalism. Wake up.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Sorry, but you're forgetting:
- shadowy allegations of conspiracies
- caricatures of corporations as all-powerful Machiavellian forces wielding the very levers of global history
- castigation of "overly" aggressive and "too" competitive behaviour
- refusal to consider the role of competition and consumer choice
- refusal to acknowledge the participation of all people as both buyers and sellers of goods on the free marketplace
- refusal to ignore the massive and widespread concessions and responses to populist demands evident in modern politics
- sole focus on the influence of abnormally wealthy entities on the political system (and refusal to admit that without a massive cultural change a human-run politic is impossible to insulate from monetary corruption).
It's important to keep the facts in mind before you go wild insinuating something absurd like the average consumer being anything more than a ragged brainwashed puppet of the corporocrat Illuminati.