[mindslight]

It kind of does? I go back and forth on this - I do hate the trope of blaming everything on "capitalism", because doing so seems like a recipe for something much worse.

But the best good faith definition of capitalism that I can come up with is that it's a framework focusing on capital first and foremost. Contrast with focusing on free markets first and foremost. A lot of people hand wave away the distinction between those two and treat them as synonyms, but they can be strikingly different and even directly opposed.

For example, imaginary property. A focus on capital leads one to conclude that creating new types of capital out of whole cloth is a good thing. Whereas a focus on free markets sees imaginary property as a market intervention (whether justifiable or not).

Similarly, capitalism would seem to include regulatory capture and other purchased legislation as a form of business capital.

[Retric]

> Similarly, capitalism would seem to include regulatory capture and other purchased legislation as a form of business capital.

That seems to equate our current system as the only thing that qualifies as capitalism. Slavery or the abolition of slavery both seem happy to coexist in our definition of capitalist societies. We are happy to talk about ownership of the means of production without including the ownership of workers. The same presumably applies to the existence or non existence of individual elements like intellectual property etc.

Ie. The idea of patents of limited duration alongside copyright of seemingly endless duration both seem to qualify as capitalism.

[mindslight]

Capitalism is not uniform condition of a society, and private capital exists in societies that we wouldn't describe as capitalist. My point is that embracing "capitalism" creates a tendency to approach problems in terms of private capital, similar to how programming in an object oriented language causes a tendency to decompose problems into objects.

> The same presumably applies to the existence or non existence of intellectual property

If the two are orthogonal, why is it common for arguments against imaginary property to be characterized as anti-capitalist?

And is there not a general tendency for "capitalists" to push dividing up things that would otherwise be public commons or the purview of government, to parcel out for private ownership? eg water rights, radio frequencies, power grid, the Coase theorem in general. There have been varying amounts of success with privatizing each of these things, but the point I am making is that putting primacy on the private ownership aspect is a bit like putting the cart before the horse with regards to the overall quality of the outcome.

[Retric]

Calling things anti-capitalist is useful propaganda independent of it actually being anti-capitalist.

> private capital exists in societies that we wouldn’t describe as capitalist

Capitalism at its core is an outgrowth of respect for private property which creates incentives for further investment. A Neolithic hunter is going to invest time into better tools if he’s not worried about those tools being taken from them. As such, an inner city ghetto isn’t capitalist if people expect their stuff to be stolen regularly.

That’s the essential ground truth of capitalism, the minutiae isn’t nearly as important as the incentives. Civil asset forfeiture is directly anti capitalist in ways that changing specific IP laws isn’t.

[mindslight]

> Capitalism at its core is an outgrowth of respect for private property which creates incentives for further investment. A Neolithic hunter is going to invest time into better tools if he’s not worried about those tools being taken from them. As such, an inner city ghetto isn’t capitalist if people expect their stuff to be stolen regularly.

Is this not one of the main justifications for imaginary property, putting the concept solidly under the banner of capitalism? The only possible difference I see is that physical property is exclusionary, while imaginary property is not. So it depends whether you consider "taken from" and "stolen" to refer to copying of non-exclusionary information or not. But "owners" of IP capital certainly seem to think so!

I do basically agree with the thrust of this quote! But it's also important to acknowledge the limitations, as massive capital holders will not. Especially when they can benefit even more from not-investing (eg the sorry state of telecom infrastructure in places where competition is non-existent).

[Retric]

First, I agree regularly capture is highly incentivized in capitalistic systems but I am going to argue regularly capture is in fact anti capitalist.

Anyway there’s a common argument for IP as being capitalist, but there’s also many arguments that limitations on IP are also capitalist. Many musicians only want to outlaw the most blatant forms of copyright infringement as they feel imitation drives things forward. There’s a huge spectrum of arguments around the idea that various forms of IP is in fact government granted monopolies on culture which limit competition. Obviously companies with valuable IP want to extract as much money as they can from it, but that’s just profit maximization.

To be clear I am not arguing for any specific set of rules for what is or isn’t capitalist. There’s advantages to more freewheeling systems where constant minor improvements can quickly play out in the market (Chinese copycat electronics) and there’s advantages to systems which promote larger scale investments (cars).

IMO, it’s the results being consistently applied that’s most important. Both vary stringent environmental regulations and nonexistent regulations are capitalist. What you can’t have is insiders able to bribe enforcement so only one company can make a competitive product because then the market isn’t rewarding investment. Which is exactly what you describe in the telecom industry.

[mindslight]

I am trying to tease out what the term "capitalism" objectively means, because otherwise it's all too easily to do motte-and-bailey - where supporters of an -ism claim things that seem good while disowning things that seem not good. Perhaps it's ridiculous to think this is even possible in a world where a term can mean something different to each person. But if discourse is ever going to get past one camp asserting that "capitalism" is a great achievement of humankind and its detractors are fools that want to bring us closer to killing fields (plus the appropriate vice-versa for the other camp), then it is necessary to tease out the nuance of what "capitalism" actually means, rather than letting it take convenient credit for associated but distinct concepts.

> but there’s also many arguments that limitations on IP are also capitalist.

I've read plenty of them, and internalized them. After my infatuation with embracing the term "capitalism" faded, those arguments didn't really seem to be based on capital. Rather they bundled other often-associated concepts based on an assertion that they must obviously go hand in hand, while still carrying the "capitalism" banner most prominently. Your bit seems of the exact same vein - I agree musicians aren't generally IP maximalists, but most musicians aren't generally capitalists either, so that doesn't say much. Meanwhile the parts of the music industry that we would describe as the most capitalist are indeed IP maximalists, seeking to modify the law to maximize the scope of their capital.

Also I don't agree with your general assertion that any laws can be a foundation of a capitalist society as they're enforced consistently. A trivial refutation is a society that abolishes private property - no matter how consistent it is or what else it does, it could never be considered capitalist.