| Thanks for such a breakdown at that scale. I appreciate it. (sorry for my slow reply). I think my view of Capitalism is over-indexed to the human to human level. Although as I zoom up to ownership and 1 to many relationships, it gets more complicated but still fits in my consent view. Regarding your beef machine example. What you present as the owner having control over the others still seems like consent to me, in that for them consent is something they has to opt into. What I see is the leverage has changed. Ie the machine owner can chose to fire a worker. But that is them no longer consenting to work with that person. I guess we could say, 'but the worker consented to work in an environment where they thought they had some protections' for instance. Is that how you see it as being non-consensual, or am I misunderstanding? The point on keeping the profits also makes sense to me still. If I want to take risk, I can start a business, where I reap the rewards and bear the losses. If I don't want to take risk, I can agree to work for a fixed rate, but miss out on the rewards.
For sure I can imagine to some people, they want to make a collective and share all (rewards/losses), but that still seems like either require opt in (capitalism / collective structure).
So it's no longer peer to peer, but still seems consensual at a 1 to many scale to me. I think there is a natural valuation drop off at scale.
For instance if only one person sells coffee, I really want to trade with them. If 100 people have coffee, I'm not that fussed about an individual vendor anymore. Then they loose leverage and I gain it. Haha, sounds crass to write it in those terms, but sure you know what I mean. Regarding this part:
> It is hard to imagine the end of capitalism, because people believe capitalism is a natural facet of human nature. It is not; it is a big beef machine. Does my analogy of buying coffee from one person or picking from 100, fit in with the big beef machine dynamic you point out here? Or how come not? I don't think the analogies line up perfectly, but can't put my finger on where they don't align. Separate line of thought (but to the same end), curious what you think: If humans are nature, and humans have capitalism, is capitalism not natural? Haha, easier to talk about these things in real life, appreciate your time/efforts here anyway. |
To this, however:
> Separate line of thought (but to the same end), curious what you think: If humans are nature, and humans have capitalism, is capitalism not natural?
I don't care? Cancer is natural, Bifocals aren't. I don't think it's a useful framing on the question. My opinions would be the same on capitalism if it were a plot from the moon-beings of Andromeda IX vs. it being written explicitly written into our DNA. In the context of the quote, it is meant as in "It is not an objective facet of our existence, or something we must endure."
"“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”