[teachrdan]

> people have the option to refuse to accept your money...

This is the contradiction, isn't it? A free market that you or I might define requires safeguards like a social welfare net to make sure individuals are truly free to decline an offer that is harmful to them. Without such a welfare net one is compelled to accept an offer that is harmful (to one's health, morality, etc.) because the alternative is to lose your dignity and all of your belongings, or worse.

But then the owning class has every incentive to reduce or remove the safety net. Not least because they will be paying a lot for it! But even more so because that safety net is what gives people some small amount of power to say no to them.

[pdonis]

> A free market that you or I might define requires safeguards like a social welfare net to make sure individuals are truly free to decline an offer that is harmful to them.

That depends on how the safeguards are implemented. If they are implemented through coercive taxation, you don't have a free market, because people don't have the right to refuse to pay taxes, even if they disagree with how the money will be used.

> Without such a welfare net one is compelled to accept an offer that is harmful (to one's health, morality, etc.) because the alternative is to lose your dignity and all of your belongings, or worse.

Can you give an example?

> the owning class

What you're saying here is something different from what you said above. The problem you're now pointing to is not that rich people have power because they're rich, but that they have power because own too much other than just money. For example, they might own all the housing in the area you want to live in, so you either have to look elsewhere or accept renting on whatever terms they offer.

The solution for that isn't a "social welfare net". It's to restrict how much non-monetary property a rich person can own. And also to make it easier for people who aren't rich to own more things--for example, to own homes.

By the way, your use of the term "owning class" implies that ownership is somehow a bad thing, or that it's naturally restricted to a certain class of people. But that's not how things should be. Ownership gives you control. For example, if you own the home you live in, you're much better protected from various possible bad things forcing you to move, than if you rent. But that also means people need to be willing to accept the responsibilities that come with ownership. It appears that many people in our current society aren't--but they also don't want to accept the tradeoffs of giving up ownership. That's not a stable situation. You can't get something for nothing. And the best "safety net" a person can have is to own as many of the things they depend on as possible.

[nielsbot]

People like to talk about politically tyranny, but forgot about the tyranny of capitalism.

We've financialized servitude is all.

[Supermancho]

Many people decry the tyranny of capitalism, but this site tends to lean into it and defend it at every turn because capitalism is painted as the tide that lifts all boats, despite the bodies on the ocean floor. Some believe, wholeheartedly that a few regulations is all that is needed to establish a fair free market, despite evidence to the contrary. ANY niche market where a world-spanning monopoly can be established, makes a mockery of regulation time and time again.

[bpt3]

What is the alternative to capitalism you propose? Every alternative has resulted in many more "bodies on the ocean floor".

[pdonis]

Capitalism is not the same thing as a free market. A free market means all transactions are voluntary. That's how wealth gets built--by voluntary cooperation among productive people through specialization and trade.

Capitalism is just the view that one should try to accumulate more capital, by hook or by crook. And there are lots of ways to do that that don't involve any kind of productive work, much less building wealth through cooperation, specialization, and trade. Buying government favors, for example, which is how most big-time "capitalists" in US history did it (for example, the railroad barons who got the government to give them exclusive access to key routes). Today they do it by buying regulations that favor them.