[DanielBMarkham]

There are a lot of other good points here. People bang on capitalism because it's easy -- and trendy.

One thing that most conversations miss is that capitalism isn't some optional thing you pick up and do like yoga.

Wiki defines capitalism as "an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit."

So what does "own" mean? How about "production" We can substitute in stuff that mostly works for us, but it falls apart. And it falls apart when try to remove capitalism.

Let's transfer everything to the state, all ownership. What happens? Money becomes useless and people hoard political capital. You gain a bunch of political support and you can build a new factory. You give out your political support to others so that they can "invest" it in other things.

You start collecting coins, or stamps. Suddenly you're trading your stamps with another guy for his political support for getting a new stoplight.

Capitalism isn't going anywhere. You can't kill it. The only thing you can do is acknowledge it and try to learn how to live with it. It will exist no matter what kind of social or government structure you want to implement. Always has, always will.

This is an important point because people who study capitalism are studying the way things are, ie existing systems. People who study other systems are studying the way things might be. Whatever the other system, there's always capitalism in there.

I'm not making a value judgment one way or another. Simply pointing out that there are two entirely different kinds of knowledge being discussed.

[aequitas]

"You start collecting coins, or stamps. Suddenly you're trading your stamps with another guy for his political support for getting a new stoplight."

If there is no ownership there is no concept of 'your collection' or trading for that matter. There are stamps on a shelf in a room in a house you currently locate yourself. As there is no concept of ownership, there is no concept of stealing. The other guy can just 'take' your stamps. As they don't belong to you.

I do agree that capitalism is not something optional. But that is because the fundamental traits of ownership are ingrained in our culture and biology as people. We evolved to where we are now because of this. We didn't decide on capitalism. It is more an explanation and reasoning about our current society. Other societal structures like ant colonies or 'primitive' humans might be different. But you don't see them because they are not part of the global economy bubble and frankly they don't see us or care about the system we use to govern ourselves. They just live.

[DanielBMarkham]

You own your opinions and decisions, right? Can those be removed from you? Your influence in the community?

You're correct on the stamps issue. I broadened the scope a bit just to drive the point home in a reasonable amount of text. If you own no physical objects, you can't accumulate or barter them.

But that doesn't mean you don't own anything. Or that scarcity goes anywhere. Or that you and other people can't pool/coordinate these non-tangible things you control to create and influence real, live, physical things. It's just easier to reason about when it's stamps. That's all. The beauty of money was that it allowed all of that pooling and coordination to happen in the abstract.

[nybble41]

> The other guy can just 'take' your stamps. As they don't belong to you.

He could, but he won't—not unless he is so much stronger than you that he has no need to worry about reciprocation—because there are things that he thinks of as "his" and doesn't want you to take. It's easier to just tacitly agree, between the two of you, that some things are yours and some things are his, and any changes in that status ought to be worked out on mutually acceptable terms.

This is why private property is one aspect of natural law. The concept arises naturally wherever there exist scarce resources to be allocated for individual use. Societies which recognize this trend and align themselves with it consistently tend to prosper, while others which either ignore it or actively reject the concept of private property struggle to rise above mere subsistence.