[pastacacioepepe]

> And how would you suggest that someone could become and stay wealthy, if their only legal means to acquire wealth is to provide value to society?

The possibility of "someone" becoming wealthier than others has no value to me. I care much more about the possibility of people starving or living a terrible life due to lack of basic material needs.

> Would you rather take what you desire by force, under the pretense that you somehow deserve to own what others have peacefully acquired? That would be the mentality of a street thug.

Capitalism thrived during Nazism and Fascism. An entire economy was born out of the extermination of the Jews, and capitalists made tons of profits out of it. They also profited immensely from the now cheap and union free labor force, all thanks to the fascist police beating and arresting any unionist.

There were also wealthy people during periods where only birth right could give you wealth, and those aristocrats would not hesitate to abuse of the population with violence.

It is clear that the existence of wealthy people does not guarantee free and voluntary exchanges. If nothing, it usually pushes for the opposite.

[_0ffh]

> The possibility of "someone" becoming wealthier than others has no value to me.

In a system of voluntary exchange ("capitalism") they can only become wealthier if they are freely given their wealth by someone, even if that someone's not you.

> I care much more about the possibility of people starving or living a terrible life due to lack of basic material needs.

I hold with Kropotkin, we are a social species. As long as there is sufficient wealth, people will be cared for. The best way to make sure that is the case is to maximize that wealth. That's what free, voluntary exchange does. It's not a zero-sum game but it's always win-win. Only the economically illiterate would claim otherwise.

> Capitalists thrived during Nazism and Fascism. An entire economy was born out of the extermination of the Jews, and capitalism made tons of profits out of it.

Nazism and Fascism both were self-avowedly anti-capitalist Ideologies. Insofar as neither cared for peace nor for property rights, this self-assessment must be judged entirely correct.

> There were also wealthy people during periods where only birth right could give you wealth, and those aristocrats would not hesitate to abuse of the population with violence.

Hence not capitalist. I argue for voluntary exchange and your counter-argument is "thugs, murderers and slave drivers existed, therefore capitalism bad"?

> It is clear that the existence of wealthy people does not guarantee free and voluntary exchanges. If nothing, it usually pushes for the opposite.

That was not the argument. You got it exactly backwards.

[pastacacioepepe]

> Nazism and Fascism both were self-avowedly anti-capitalist Ideologies. Insofar as neither cared for peace nor for property rights, this self-assessment must be judged entirely correct.

This is just refuting historical truth without providing any evidence. It doesn't matter that Hitler used a kind of anticapitalis rethoric before getting in power. What happened once he did, is that the capitalist of the country got cheap and obedient labor force provided by the nazist police. They got rich out the war and the extermination of Jews as well.

> Hence not capitalist. I argue for voluntary exchange and your counter-argument is "thugs, murderers and slave drivers existed, therefore capitalism bad"?

No, not really. You argue for the possibility of becoming wealthy. I tell you that I don't think a right to become wealthier than others should exist, nor that people being wealthy is a guaranteed benefit for society, as shown in my examples.

You also keep mixing capitalism and voluntary exchange, and again as I've proven you those are not necessarily linked. I restate this, capitalists thrived during nazi germany due to the subjugation of the labor force.

> As long as there is sufficient wealth, people will be cared for.

This has been disproven time and time again, you're ignoring the matter of wealth inequality. The existence of wealth improves the general life conditions of the people only if such wealth is properly distributed. All the reductions in poverty we've seen in recent times are due to the conquests of the social movements, taking from the wealthy things like healthcare, retirement, decent working hours, safety on the job, unemployment benefits, public education, etc.

[_0ffh]

That you do not agree with the definition of capitalism that was given at the origin of this exchange does not mean that I have to abide by yours.

You can argue against your strawman-capitalism all you want, I do not care. If you insist that capitalism is not about protecting everyone's right to their property, I see no point in carrying on.

[pastacacioepepe]

That's not my definition, it's the Wikipedia definition. Where does yours come from?

Also would you answer to my initial request to explain how transactions can be voluntary in a capitalist system where most people dont own property, the means of production.

[_0ffh]

Even the very same Wikipedia article you quote admits that central characteristics of capitalism include competitive markets, private property, property rights recognition, and voluntary exchange.

Neither National Socialism nor Fascist corporatism had strong protection of

- competitive markets: markets where heavily regulated and great parts of national production and ressources where directed and allocated by the government, preventing competition and free exchange

- property rights: lots of property was outright stolen from their rightful owners, the means of production were ultimately controlled by the government

- voluntary exchange: lots of people where forced into slave labor, which is decidedly involuntary

So yes, these were state socialist societies, not capitalist ones.

[mftrhu]

Oh, you probably meant "state capitalist". The definition of that fits to a tee.

> State capitalism is an economic system in which the state undertakes business and commercial (i.e. for-profit) economic activity and where the means of production are nationalized as state-owned enterprises (including the processes of capital accumulation, centralized management and wage labor). [...] Other examples include Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew and Turkey, as well as military dictatorships during the Cold War and fascist regimes such as Nazi Germany.

[jostylr]

Look at where there were massive famines with people starving to death. Were those capitalist societies? How many people have starved to death in the semi-capitalist countries such as the US? How many starved to death in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea? When China pivoted to a kind of capitalism, did people start starving or did they start prospering? Allowing individuals to accumulate wealth by being of service is the key to general prosperity. This is the heart of capitalism.

The more a society is capitalist, the more wealth gets created and that wealth is spread out to all. The less a society embraces capitalism, the more desperate the poor become. Inequality does increase with capitalism which is a problem for stability, but the government exacerbates that issue by imposing laws that prevent competition and take from the poor to give to the rich. In a freer society than we have in the US, it would be harder for the rich to become super-rich. They have to keep being useful in such a society.

[socialismisok]

Plenty of famines happened because if capitalism. Millions of people died in the Bengal famine. Ireland was starved, Cuba was starved.

The dust bowl in the US was hugely disruptive and at least partially caused by capitalism.

It's absurd to claim capitalism prevents starvation.

[jostylr]

Begnal famine: Controlled by the British during WWII with rice imports blocked due to Japanese occupation of Burma, wartime inflationary policies, trade barriers imposed, food forcibly diverted to those important to the war effort, etc. These were not capitalist policies, but rather statist policies.

Ireland: Reading the description of Ireland, it sounded like aristocratic English landlords brutalizing tenants. I could not find a definitive claim about how the land was acquired, but it did not sound like capitalist acquirement of lands, but rather forceful appropriation. A significant factor was the inability of tenants to profit from improvements which could be taken away from them at anytime by the absentee landlords except in Ulster which then prospered more than the rest. It should be noted that the migration of the Irish to a much more capitalist society (US) is what helped minimize the deaths of the famines. This can certainly be a warning about potential dangers of massive land holdings and could arise from capitalist accumulation, but it is not clear that it actually was such a thing. Rather, it seems more akin to imperialist extraction.

Cuba: Not sure what you mean. Do you mean the various periods of famine under communist rule? Are you blaming the US statist policies of trade embargos? I found the following article to be a succinct and seemingly balanced history of Cuban farming in the past few decades: https://www.anywhere.com/cuba/travel-guide/agriculture Despite embargos, the US has supplied a lot of food to Cuba. Cuba got out of some of the worst famine by doing half measures towards privatized farming though they never let the markets really work as they should.

Dust bowl: I can't find any statistics about deaths. There was massive migration to more profitable areas which allowed these people to survive. It isn't pleasant, but it is better than starvation. This is how capitalism works when disaster strikes. It doesn't prevent the problems, but it does mitigate them by allowing people the agency to adjust their lives to maximize their chances for success. Is your blame on capitalism about the bad farming practices employed? I am not sure that any other governing ideology would have had different outcomes. But the farmers learned what needed to be done and have implemented it such that those conditions have not returned for almost a century. It should be noted that the 1930s time period coincided with strong federal government intervention in the economy as they implemented work restrictions, price controls, wage controls, and explicit governmental crop destruction policies. In fairness, they also implemented measures to deal with the underlying problems causing the Dust Bowl.