Posted on 01/16/2023 6:29:08 AM PST by SeekAndFind
It is a shame that, in the country that invented capitalism, we can’t explain it. Perhaps that is a reason we are losing it to socialism. Ask any conservative, or even an economist, and they are likely to describe it as “free markets.” Barter societies in the Middle East are free markets and they are mired in poverty.
Capitalism is not simply free markets. It is a designed, self-accelerating economic system that reduces prices and poverty. It was gradually designed, in the United States, from 1793 to 1914. Before we can understand capitalism’s benefits, we must define wealth and poverty in comprehensible economic terms.
The wealth of a nation is its amount of usable goods, just as poverty is a lack of usable goods. Poverty in a society is created by a lack of clothes, food, vehicles, housing, etc. If the supply of these usable goods is low, naturally, there is not enough to go around. This creates the divergence of wealthy and poor. It gets worse; those who can afford the limited supply of usable goods bid up the price, creating even more poor. A large supply of usable goods brings prices down so that more people can afford them. As the supply of usable goods rises, poverty declines.
The United States grew to be wealthy because we created far more usable goods than other nations. But how did that happen?
All usable goods are created by manufacturing. It is not the amount of money that manufacturing employees earn that is of value; it is the millions of shirts, hammers, and cars they produce that create wealth in a society.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
RE: The voluntary exchange of goods and services.
With or without government regulations?
The unseen hand is now artificial interest rates, government grands, loans, bacsktops, the Fed and other forms of government largess.
She spells it all out in detail.
Nothing more than: A transaction between two parties believed to be mutually beneficial that doesn’t violate anti-trust laws.
The United States invented capitalism? Come on.
… With or without government regulations? …
With. Governments role is to PROMOTE the voluntary exchange of goods and services by protecting individual liberty. Modern government is FAR outside its lane.
Maybe they’re confused between capitalism and corporatism.
That said, the original form of economics in this country was laissez-faire and it should continue to be so.
All economic activity requires energy consumption. Money is just an abstract representation of energy. The free market is super energy efficient, with the greatest rewards going to those that use energy the most wisely. Big government is maximum energy inefficient. As a government interferes with the free market, short circuits and resistive loads develop, and energy efficiency quickly goes out the window. Economics is really an overly abstract way of studying energy. It's sort of important to think of it that way, as Demonrats attack our limited energy resources on all fronts.
Thanks to the fact that I have a pre-communist webster’s dictionary, there are very simple definitions:
Capitalism = an economic system where production and distribution are controlled privately.
Socialism = an economic system where production is private and distribution is government controlled.
Communisum = an economic system where production and distribution are government controlled.
Capitalism is actually a word coined by marx so should not be used by freedom loving people.
The best way to describe it is free markets and limited government. Sorta what the US Constitution was trying to establish.
Whatever ELSE it is... for sure it has to include ....”You worked, you earned it...it’s YOURS!”
“Capitalism” is a Marxist term.
What characterizes the Western Free Market is not just the right to buy and sell, but also the role of government in protecting private property, and not allowing arbitrary seizures by the powerful.
RE: Governments role is to PROMOTE the voluntary exchange of goods and services by protecting individual liberty.
If a corporation makes a product while polluting the air and water, even as people still buy their product voluntarily, does the government have any role in this matter?
Capitalism is the free employment of capital resources in business and governmental affairs
It’s what originally distinguished Western societies from Third World economies where businesses have to pay off politicians for permission to do business.
Falling away from that ideal is why the US economy is failing.
I will argue that you speak of commerce.
Capitalism is more about the acquisition of assets that can be relied on to produce a return on invested capital.
It is those assets, be they hard assets like real estate, or precious metals, or corporate shares or even fine art that are the deployment of capital that produces a return.
Those assets produce commerce.
Capitalism is more about the acquisition of assets that can be relied on to produce a return on invested capital.
The wealth of a nation is its amount of usable goods, just as poverty is a lack of usable goods.
If one has read the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Wealth is also a philosophy.
Adam Smith hated lawyers and govt bureaucracy but recognized they were needed in LIMITED quantities.
He hated lawyers and govt because they were a consuming activity that generated no wealth except in appropriate cases.
When computers came out we used them to improve our decision making, that was the main focus. Not any more.
Take a look around. People don’t want to think, They want a prescription so they know what to do.
...basically the "solution" is created by corrupt/greedy/power-hungry cretins...predators looking to create/capitalize on loopholes for their OWN benefit.
...think Adam, Eve, apple tree.
“Nobody alive has lived under capitalism.”
The closest thing to true capitalism these days is the black market—wherever it appears around the world.
The transactions are not taxed or regulated since they are illegal.
While there are obvious issues that get a lot of headlines most of the time for most of the participants it works rather well.
My own experience was obtaining Cuban cigars by mail order from European vendors.
No taxes.
All high quality goods delivered as promised.
Fair prices.
Win win.
(Nowadays the prices are too high—because the Cuban economy has collapsed and produces only about a third of the pre-Covid output.)
You have hit the nail on the head but there is one more step.
The economist Hernando De Sota in “The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else” does the most excellent job of explaining why “free trade” alone is not the sufficient answer to the question, what is capitalism.
Westernized understanding for property rights and property transfer play the integral part in transporting trade into capital that can be used by individuals.
Everyone, please see this excellent essay or read De Soto’s book.
I really disagree that Middle Eastern barter markets represent a “free market”! A “tolerated market” maybe, but certainly not free! Middle Eastern societies have always been characterized by a lack of a personal right to private property. For example, at the naval of Battle of Lepanto (One of several battles that saved Europe from the Ottomans\Islam!) Ottoman officers carried their entire fortunes along with them to battle because they couldn’t trust it wouldn’t be arbitrarily confiscated by the state if they left it behind.
Wasn’t “capitalism” a derogatory term hurled at nongovernment controlled economic activity by socialists?
Perhaps a better term is just one word “freedom”!
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