I am genuinely curious about how you could think that political and economic power aren’t necessarily intertwined in the USA. Our state apparatus was created, nurtured and expanded to it’s present manifestation by the wealthy landowners/slave owners and their counterparts throughout its history, with specific intent to entrench their position and power. The USA has been around for ~250 years, and the wealthy have always had the majority of political and economic power.
This is overly broad, overly simplistic, and completely useless as a meaningful definition. clovis didn’t have any capital, he was employed by capital. clovis the small business owner was not a capitalist, he was (and still is) petit bourgeois.
The actual capitalists in clovis’ life are the oil and gas extraction companies that he works for.
They are now, but we can reform that. At this point in history it’s largely due to an ability to make sure Congress is bought and paid for. There are a number of reforms we can make.
I assume there were start-up costs for his business, which provide a barrier to entry for the working class and lower-middle class.
You are using a very odd definition of those terms although I am glad you provided some clarity.
Typical the petite bourgeoisie refers to the lower middle class. Small shop owners etc.
Either way, at least we are getting somewhere and it comes back to the same thing I said earlier. It’s not buckets, it’s a scale.
A boundary problem.
Where do you draw the line between capitalists and whatever else you want to call them?
-
I wasn’t a capitalist when I had 50 employees, owned a million dollars in trucks and drilling equipment and was a top 4% income earner.
-
You say my “oil and gas clients” where the actual capitalists. Does this include the mom and pop ones with less than 10 employees who run one well?
-
is Google capitalist? They own no means of production in the Marxist sense. Just intellectual property.
I give up. All exchanges are capitalism. Putting $5 in the tank in return for a ride to work is capitalism. Barter is capitalism. Friendship is capitalism. Everything is capitalism. Always has been. Thank you for participating in this super enlightening discussion about applying the broadest possible definition to a word so that it encompasses all human activity.
I don’t know why I bother… oh wait, I do. There’s no sportsball on tv until MNF. So…
One thing that trips peeps up is when they start trying to define “who is a capitalist”. Which has a direct analog with the fools errand of trying to define “who is a racist”. That’s going at things in an ass-backwards garbage-in, garbage-out, manner.
Capitalism isn’t “a thing some peeps are”. It’s a relationship between people.
Modern capitalism is often said to have three main pillars… the wage system relationship, the landlord system relationship, the loans at interest relationship. Archaic capitalism had the slavery relationship, the sharecropping relationship, etc/etc. And this is all a gloss, because it leaves out the so-called “fourth pillar”… the intellectual property relationship, and etc/etc.
Cliffs: it’s the relationships, not “who is”.
I have no idea what your issue is with having a perfectly friendly discussion but ok let’s give up. Maybe when micro, Cuse and I don’t understand your definitions it’s not us. 🤷🏼
Your own articles you posted don’t support your narrow definition.
1 Like
As a point of reference, I have no idea what your definitions are either.
2 Likes
Thank you.
I find this a pretty interesting discussion and would love to hear other opinions because I am very torn between my belief capitalism (as I am defining it) is the only realistic economic system and the difficulty that system is having addressing the most existential crisis we face, namely climate change.
We need some way to square this circle and it’s just not going to be some ill-defined total reorganization of the global economic system.
Quoting because I think this is a good working definition.
I was also not quite connecting everything that ZZ was saying either. Maybe we can move forward with sabo’s answer.
1 Like
You made me unblock him again!
This seems like a good definition but it needs a fourth pillar. Capital and production are not centrally directed but instead controlled at the level of the firm.
If we add that pillar this seems like a good definition.
It’s pretty simple to me. Capitalism is good at allocating capital in an efficient way.
It’s not good at everything else.
We need different measurements to use for our societies well being instead of GDP and Stock prices.
Humans are incentive driven machines. We need to incentives our society for better outcomes as a whole.
I don’t care what we label it. Yang calls it human centered capitalism but it’s not really capitalism.
1 Like
Well I think it is still capitalism just a type further down the scale. You are describing triple bottom line capitalism: people, profit, planet.
I agree that it’s interesting. I will say that imo Sabo is bringing a good amount of insight and perspective to the topic(climate crisis and it’s intersection with our currently existing society). Although we’ve barely gotten off the ground as far as digging into the matter. That you alternatively choose to either ignore or troll him is solely your loss, imo.
3 Likes
I agree he makes good points some time and is clearly intelligent. Same, but less so with watevs. It’s just gets tiresome to have to wade through the 2000th diatribe about the LIBERALS to mine the nuggets. He thinks liberals are awful. We all know this. If he could just leave this out, his posts surely have value.
1 Like
The means of production are controlled by the capitalists, and operated for their, generally absentee, profit extraction.
I assumed everyone already knew this part.
Friendly reminder that “efficient” and “efficiency” are a prime example of the sophistry that’s necessary for capitalism apologists to justify it’s existence. The pro-capitalists tend to use the term to mean efficient at directing profit to the capitalists. Not efficient like how a scientist or engineer would use the term.
I’m just pointing that out, not picking on you. As you’ve identified the problem:
1 Like
The triple bottom line angle is an interesting starting off point.
Historically, capitalism has been focussed like 5:92:3 in terms of people, profit, planet.
What we need is something like 30:40:30.
That is an important distinction. Thank you for pointing that out.
1 Like
We are try to agree on a definition. We can’t assume parts of it are agreed upon and seen in this afternoons discussion.