[jacknews]

The basis of capitalism is private ownership of production, by definition.

The basis for why this is at all acceptable as a system to organize society is that competition, government restrictions, etc, whittle down private power to somewhat tolerable levels. There must surely be a better system which we haven't thought of yet though.

[iForgotMyPW]

do you think capitalism would still be the base of that system?

[jacknews]

It's complicated, but I think, no.

Many people, especially Americans seem to confuse capitalism with 'trade', 'competition', 'markets', etc, whereas I mean it as the private ownership of production, the profit from other people's work, etc. That seems fundamentally immoral in some ways from the very start.

Eg, I read an article about working with Elon Musk recently (https://www.businessinsider.com/working-for-elon-musk-spacex...), where they said "If there are employees not aligned with that vision, he will chew them out and he will do it in a vicious way, which is his right as owner.". I mean, no, we really should not be enshrining that, or even really tolerating it, in a decent society.

The question then is how should we allocate resources (capital), how should we incentivize risk, innovation, hard work, etc, What kinds of ownership are moral, etc.

I suspect we'll be stuck with some form of capitalism for a while though - like democracy, it's the worst system, except for all the others, for now.

[iForgotMyPW]

interesting