[mindslight]

> On the human level, sure. On the level of "fundamental economic system" (which is, I believe, the line of discussion), there really aren't.

One of the problems with this whole "debate" is that defenders of the status quo apply a huge motte and bailey to the definition of "capitalism". Both strawmanning any criticism of it as a rejection of all aspects claimed by capitalism, and also giving capitalism credit for systems that share some aspects of capitalism even though they haven't gone all-in and let capital run roughshod over everything else.

This dynamic is so common it has become a trope - kneejerk cries of "socialism". The original link that kicked off this comment tree was basically doing the same thing in more words.

The distinction between the motte and the bailey is easiest to see when aspects that we associate with capitalism end up in direct opposition to capitalism itself. For example, free markets can be directly opposed to capitalism, like in the context of imaginary property. A capital-centric view says that inventing a new form of capital out of whole cloth is the right thing to do. A market-centric view says that competition should drive the cost of information to within an epsilon of the copying/distribution cost.

[Kamq]

> One of the problems with this whole "debate" is that defenders of the status quo apply a huge motte and bailey to the definition of "capitalism". Both strawmanning any criticism of it as a rejection of all aspects claimed by capitalism, and also giving capitalism credit for systems that share some aspects of capitalism even though they haven't gone all-in and let capital run roughshod over everything else.

This is a fair call-out, given that there's so much drive-by arguing on the internet.

I'm pretty sure I'm using a standard definition, but let me state the definition I'm using just to be as explicit as possible: A system is capitalist if it has private ownership of the means of production.

So, to give an example, a country would be a capitalist country regardless of their tax scheme/welfare spending so long as the means of production were privately held. Another country that nationalized industries (the oil industry is a common one) would be, at the very least, a mixed-economy, regardless of how free their markets are.

Given the above comments on Europe, I would argue that European countries do meet the definition of capitalist for the most part. While some European countries do completely nationalize a handful of industries, it's rare, and the majority of industries are privately owned, even if they are highly regulated.

[mindslight]

I don't know that is a great definition any more. A straightforward implication is that China is capitalist. Which isn't necessarily wrong, but rather demonstrates that it's focused on yesterday's arguments.

Meanwhile I'd say most critics of "late stage capitalism" aren't bemoaning the private ownership aspect itself. Rather they're criticizing the wealth concentration, industry consolidation, and government corruption that large accumulations of capital symbiotically buy and benefit from.

[Kamq]

> A straightforward implication is that China is capitalist. Which isn't necessarily wrong

But it is wrong. The Chinese government has demonstrated repeatedly that they are the de facto owners of, effectively, all of the wealth in the country.

Meaningful ownership isn't a legal status, it's the power to do... well... whatever you want with the thing in question.

Which I suppose puts ownership (and thus also capitalism) on a spectrum and makes it all messy, but all real life things are messy.

> Meanwhile I'd say most critics of "late stage capitalism" aren't bemoaning the private ownership aspect itself. Rather they're criticizing the wealth concentration, industry consolidation, and government corruption

And they can criticize all of that they want. I'd, frankly, like a less corrupt government along with a more decentralized world. But equating that to capitalism itself is roughly as lazy as the old boomers who think that socialism is when the government does anything.

But capitalism is the only system of economics I'm aware of that doesn't seem to have periodic famines, which I have a vested interest in preventing (I enjoy eating). And until I see serious evidence to the contrary (and several smaller scale experiments), I'm going to keep pushing it.

[camgunz]

China hasn't had a famine since 1962, just after the great leap forward and not too long after the US dust bowl.

[Kamq]

Which is an excellent example.

Comparing absolute numbers isn't fair to China, but look at the percentage of the population that starved in each country during those relative time periods.

[camgunz]

I just don't think any of that is related to the economic system. It's pretty clearly the result of China having a lot more subsistence farmers when they industrialized.

[mindslight]

> The Chinese government has demonstrated repeatedly that they are the de facto owners of, effectively, all of the wealth in the country... Which I suppose puts ownership (and thus also capitalism) on a spectrum and makes it all messy, but all real life things are messy.

There is plenty of this messiness in the US as well. Which puts the judgement solidly in "I know it when I see it" territory, leaving that definition pretty useless. This is also bordering on giving capitalism credit for the rule of law.

( considering China as capitalist would seem to make for more productive analysis. We can then start criticizing things we don't like about their system within the context of capitalism, rather than othering it and pretending we can't have similar problems )

> But equating [corruption] to capitalism itself is roughly as lazy as the old boomers who think that socialism is when the government does anything.

I'm not drawing this connection lazily in general, but rather due to specific forms of corruption that seem like "private" ownership run amok and are thus reasonable to pin on capitalism itself. I already mentioned imaginary property, which is a form of ownership/capital invented out of whole cloth, under the idea that its better to have more forms of ownership rather than unowned commons. But rather than stopping at creating the general concept, we get things like the DMCA that privilege large accumulators of capital over distributed individual ownership.

There are also our overfinancialized money markets, which have paperclip maximized their way to creating financial assets from of any future rent stream they can. This is backed up by governmental help from the federal reserve supplying an endless stream of money for creating said financial instruments, such that the first-order asset ownership of most of society hardly matters in the larger economic picture.

And I haven't even touched upon "private" entities themselves promulgating paradigms that reject the concept of private ownership (eg "trusted" computing, SaaS/platform sharecropping). Those seem solidly in the realm of capitalism trumping/abhorring free markets and freedom in general.

In a different context I can see myself arguing that these things aren't "true" capitalism (the centralized vs distributed distinction I made elsewhere), and if only the government held truer to the concept of private ownership we'd be in a better spot. But I'm also sympathetic to the argument that mass accumulations of capital will inevitably change the rules of the game to benefit themselves, despite those changes going against other people's private ownership interests. In a way it seems that corrupt legislation and precedents are themselves forms of capital that have been invested in because they facilitate rent streams, at the direct expense of our distributed societal freedom.

The general thrust of my critique is why should we put the philosophical focus on capital itself defaulting to the label of "capitalism"? Why not private property, free markets, the rule of law, personal freedom, etc? It feels like a propaganda push from large centralized capital holders to privilege themselves over those other ideals.

[Kamq]

> This is also bordering on giving capitalism credit for the rule of law.

I'd rather go the other way, and give rule of law credit for capitalism. Probably one of its better effects. Capitalism requires an external neutral enforcer (for varying degrees of neutrality, but generally more neutral is better) to enforce property rights. Otherwise you end up with capital owners that need their own security forces, which morph into de facto states (see medieval feudal lords for an example). This state control of the means of production may work well on a 5-10 year period occasionally, but it's disastrous in the long term.

> considering China as capitalist would seem to make for more productive analysis

I think you can look at them in that lens post Deng or so (and they've had significantly fewer famines since then). Although with the recent consolidation of power, I'm not sure if the lens of totalitarianism might yield a better light. The union of political, military, and economic power completely within a single institution has certain properties that don't hold true for any single one of those.

> ...rather due to specific forms of corruption that seem like "private" ownership run amok and are thus reasonable to pin on capitalism itself.

Might I ask you to elaborate on this? Because the failures I see in China tend to pattern match more towards the patronage networks you see crop up in public systems. But I'll admit to not having a perfect understanding of China, and am willing to hear a case be made.

> I already mentioned imaginary property, which is a form of ownership/capital invented out of whole cloth, under the idea that its better to have more forms of ownership rather than unowned commons.

I'll give you this one. Intellectual property is dumb, as there's no scarcity requiring an efficient distribution of goods. You can argue private ownership of (non-intellectual) property is an evil, but I would argue that it is a necessary one (on the level of taxation). And one we get quite a bit of benefit from.

> There are also our overfinancialized money markets, which have paperclip maximized their way to creating financial assets from of any future rent stream they can. This is backed up by governmental help from the federal reserve supplying an endless stream of money for creating said financial instruments, such that the first-order asset ownership of most of society hardly matters in the larger economic picture.

So, I mean... let them fail. They've been trying to fail since the 80s or so with the bond crisis back then, and we keep propping them up. I'm gonna be honest, blaming capitalism for the actions of politicians feels like an unfair slight. Propping up ventures well past their point of usefulness because of political necessity is one of the hallmarks of a politically owned system, not a privately owned one. One that has happened over and over (see the soviet army's capture of the USSR's budget, or Lysenkoism).

You could say that the capitalists pressure the politicians, which is fair on some level, but seems like a symptom of a political system corruption. I would argue that as long as you have that, none of your economic systems are going to do what you want, though I will still argue that being as capitalistic as possible will, generally, still perform the best.

> But I'm also sympathetic to the argument that mass accumulations of capital will inevitably change the rules of the game to benefit themselves

This is probably the best argument here. Nobody, least of all me, argues that capitalists are supremely ethical. In fact amorality is generally one of the big points of it. There does need to be some sort of external arbiter.

I guess, the general avenue of my counter-argument is that it works well. Sure, it has downsides, but we have billions of lives riding on this. Show me a system that has a decently scaled example of working better.

> why should we put the philosophical focus on capital

Because capital + labor is how you make stuff, and we need a bunch of stuff made. And since the industrial revolution the majority of the advancement has been from the refining of capital rather than throwing more labor at the issue.

[davidw]

If people actually bothered to read the link I posted, it is all about the lazy blaming of a wide variety of problems with specific solutions on a very hand-wavy "capitalism".

I know a fair bit about about the housing shortage for instance, and it's not "capitalism". It's a specific set of rules and institutions that cause the problem.

[mindslight]

Sure, but that's the strawmanning I'm talking about. Citing tweets from people trying to be edgy with Marxism and pointing out their intellectual laziness isn't actually addressing the legitimate complaints about late stage capitalism.

To me, the root causes of the housing crisis are zoning and the endless supply of newly created money from the Federal Reserve. Both of these policies are direct results of those who own housing (aka capital owners) politically insisting that the value of their "investments" continually go up. That's capital acting on the meta-system to optimize for capital itself. It's sensible to lay the blame for this on capitalism itself, and doing so doesn't mean I'm looking to somehow blow away the entire system in favor of some completely different -ism.

I'd personally make my own distinction of centralized capitalism versus distributed capitalism. But that's more of a constructive argument of how to specifically reform the system, while still sharing the general criticism.