[pbhjpbhj]

You appear to have defined a universal practice as "capitalism", a person in a commune walks to a field, they "risk capital" (their very person) as they could be killed en route. Everytime you plant a crop (build a factory, launch a satellite, write a program,...) you risk capital in hopes of future gains, I'm struggling to see how a human society can proceed without doing that.

In short, your definition of capitalism seems extraordinarily deficient.

To attempt to get a little closer:

Capitalism is the funding of an activity by people who are otherwise uninvolved in order to take some of the gains without direct application of work/effort.

Society could collaboratively endorse actions, eg through democratic choices, but instead those who have inherited power, acquired through past violence, get to decide on the application of resources and cream off the benefits of the workers whom they have used to action their (the Capitalists) chosen activities.

Many actions (in a just society) would have been chosen in any case, things like delivery of water to each person; now the Capitalist gets to make delivery of water something for which they claim the right to profit from, ultimately extracting worth from the inherent nature of people's needs.

[nosefurhairdo]

Let's work with your definition of capitalism.

> Society could collaboratively endorse actions, eg through democratic choices...

There is nothing about capitalism which prevents this from occuring. People can be allowed to invest while simultaneously participating in a democracy which elects to provide all sorts of publicly funded goods and services.

What has never existed (to the best of my knowledge) is a society which prevents "the funding of an activity by people who are otherwise uninvolved in order to take some of the gains without direct application of work/effort," which is not also a terrible place to live.

[runarberg]

What you are describing is basically social democracy and exists in large parts of Europe.

That said capitalism is a state enforced system, which is protected with violence. Every attempt to topple the system and provide an alternative has been met with violence by the state, and every successful revolutions have been through violence. It is hardly a scientifically pristine environment to provide a fair comparison of alternatives, is it?

There will come a time in human history where capitalism is a thing of the past, and only then will we have the tools to judge alternatives. As of now, we can clearly see that early attempts at capitalism were horrible, and resulted in travesties for the common working population. This is the same story of any system that preceded it. I have a feeling future peoples will largely blame the current system for the climate crisis, and deem it equally bad—if not worse—than our historic alternatives.

[nosefurhairdo]

The correctness of your argument is predicated on your ability to predict the future.

> That said capitalism is a state enforced system, which is protected with violence.

As opposed to the hands-off, peaceful Soviet state which flourished without horrible capitalism.

[runarberg]

Like I said, all successful alternatives to the capitalist systems were made with violent revolutions. And were then further met with violent actions from other states. Cuba is still to this day suffering from an embargo despite it being 65 years since their revolution. Any alternative system is going to have to be violent or suffer being reverted back to capitalism. This is no basis in which to weigh alternatives.

My observation about the future is merely historical, not a prediction. Forever is a long time, and there is 0 chance that capitalism will be the dominant system for the remainder of human history. There are many systems of governments which exist in the past which we today look on favorably. However there has been no world—or even regional—dominating economic system enforced with violence which has survived the scrutiny of history. They all suck, though some more then other.

It is arrogant to think that capitalism will be any different, especially as we are now facing a potentially societal collapsing climate crisis which our economic system is not handling well, and the political class is reluctant to act on fearing damage to this very system.

Even in the short history of capitalism, history still does not look kindly on earlier attempts at the same system. The Laissez Faire capitalism of the late 19th and early 20th century yielded a series of depressions, and treated workers horribly. Attempts to reform the system yielded the great depression. It was only through severe regulations of Keynesian economics where this system had some lasting success, but this success was not to last as deregulation of neoliberalism took over. History doesn’t even look kindly on Reaganomics which isn’t even a 50 year old system.

My prediction about the future is just about as plausible as someone looking at the Sun in the post Galilean heleocentric universe, and predicting that perhaps one day humanity will discover that the Sun isn’t at the center of the universe either.