[polyphonic01]

Capitalism is not a choice.

Given the nature of the human mind and the material state of the world, the equilibrium state of human economies is capitalism.

To see what I mean, consider any complex system. There will be certain patterns and processes that naturally unfold in that system, while other patterns and processes do not manifest without external energy. The reason is because the former states are closer to the equilibrium state of the system while the latter are comparatively farther away.

Capitalism is like an equilibrium state, and all attempts to control capitalism require external energy. What is a concrete example of this?

Regulation has a tendency to be repealed if the public or government loses sight of why the regulation was passed in the first place. On the other hand, companies usually want regulations repealed by default. This tension between opposing forces must resolve itself, and it does in favor of companies because not only are they constantly applying pressure against regulations, but the public is often allured by the fact that many regulations lower potential levels of economic growth. Therefore it's more likely than not that regulations be repealed in the long run.

[nerdponx]

Perhaps, but this might have more to do with the the public's ability to govern themselves soundly.

Marx actually had quite a bit to say about the "reproduction" of capitalism depending on the indoctrination of new generations. We have been witnessing this play out over the last 40 or so years in the USA, starting with the revival of right wing political movements.

Head on over to a hard-right corner of the Internet, and feel your jaw drop in amazement as you realize that they simply do not share the reality that you inhabit. This is the result of a successful decades long brainwashing campaign.

[TheCoelacanth]

This seems like a ridiculous assertion considering that humanity predates capitalism by about a hundred thousand years and civilization predates capitalism by about five thousand years.

[polyphonic01]

"Given the nature of the human mind and the material state of the world"

The material state of the world my friend.

[antidesitter]

> Regulation has a tendency to be repealed if the public or government loses sight of why the regulation was passed in the first place. On the other hand, companies usually want regulations repealed by default. This tension between opposing forces must resolve itself, and it does in favor of companies because not only are they constantly applying pressure against regulations, but the public is often allured by the fact that many regulations lower potential levels of economic growth. Therefore it's more likely than not that regulations be repealed in the long run.

The evidence suggests the complete opposite: It is harder to repeal regulations (including bad ones) than to introduce them. By default, the number of regulations on the books will tend to increase over time. In particular [0]:

> America’s underlying regulatory problem long predates the 44th president. Between 1970 and 2008 the number of prescriptive words like “shall” or “must” in the code of federal regulations grew from 403,000 to nearly 963,000, or about 15,000 edicts a year, according to data compiled by the Mercatus Centre, a libertarian-leaning think-tank. Between 2008 and 2016, under Mr Obama, about the same number of new rules emerged annually.

> The unyielding growth of rules, then, has persisted through Republican and Democratic administrations (see chart). Several factors explain it. First, Congress has neither the staff nor the expertise to write complex, technical laws. So lawmakers happily let experts in government agencies fill in the blanks. What Congress does write itself, it writes sloppily. In 2015 the Supreme Court found “more than a few examples of inartful drafting” in the Affordable Care Act. One such error nearly saw the court strike down crucial parts of law; only semantic gymnastics saved it. The “Chevron deference”, a doctrine from a 1984 court ruling, gives agencies wide latitude to interpret laws when they are vaguely written. (Neil Gorsuch, Mr Trump’s nominee to the court, is not a fan.)

> Second, America’s division of powers makes it easy for interest groups to defend any one regulation, tax break or policy. That forces administrations to solve problems by taping yet more rules onto whatever exists already, rather than writing something simple from scratch. Over time, this gums up the system, resulting in what Steve Teles of Johns Hopkins University has dubbed a “kludgeocracy”. This explains, for instance, why over half of Americans have to pay a professional to fill out their tax return for them (in Britain, for comparison, most people need not even complete one).

[0] https://www.economist.com/united-states/2017/03/02/too-much-...