If a restaurant owner is not a capitalist I think you need to define what you are talking about because every normal definition of the word would include a restaurant owner.
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This is just flat out wrong and is the root cause of this dumb argument that’s been going on for days. The people criticizing capitalism are generally using the term very specifically, while the apologists and enablers like you are the ones muddying it up with basic markets and trade and commerce. You’re doing it because that’s the stupid propaganda we’ve all been fed in the western world as part of the increasingly archaic Cold War.
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If a business owner is not a capitalist I honestly have no idea who you are talking about?
Point me to a definition so I can understand what you mean.
That is a definition of capitalism as a system.
Mystery specifically asked Cuse if he “owned the means of production” and therefore didn’t “work for a living”.
I am not suppose to interpret that as a business owner? What did he mean in the context of your definition?
I’m not being obtuse. I genuinely don’t understand.
You are missing what is being said.
This isn’t a strat-chat. Nobody is handicapping “best shots”. There’s nothing to vehemently agree or disagree with. Not yet.
M.King isn’t saying: “The best shot of getting rid of racism, capitalism, and war is simultaneously”. E.Yeampierre: isn’t saying: “The best shot of getting rid of racism and environmental destruction is simultaneously”. None of the non-liberals are carrying on about best shots. The only one who is trying to interject handicapping and best shots into the Q is you.
This ties back into how an awful lot of the liberals wanna “both sides” every damn thing. Without even understanding what is being said, you jumped first sentence into vehemently disagreeing… implying E.Yeampierre’s “side” -vs- your “side”. There’s even name for this shit: Manichean Thinking. I’ll ask again… is there any string of unicode I can push at you that will get you off of this tangent?
You’re trying to put the cart before the horse anyways, with all this talk about handicapping and best shots. SMH. Here is a more coherent framework for decision making that us manufacturing engineers sometimes use…
- Make a list of all imaginable options.
- Add the “null” option. Note: this ensures 3+ options.
- Eliminate those that just won’t work.
- Handicap which of the remaining is the best shot.
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They impact economic sustainability in a vacuum, I specified that I was setting climate aside for a second.
From their political power. Reverse Citizens United. End the consideration of corporations as people.
I’m a professional poker player. My income is based on my bankroll, my skills, my access to good games, and my hours worked in those games.
This doesn’t currently exist. Capitalism is a system, regulated vs unregulated are versions of it. We can hit the milestones under regulated capitalism imo. Also under socialism. Also under communism.
We can also miss them under all three. The most likely outcome is missing them imo. I also don’t think that’s likely to end humanity. It’ll likely usher in decades of suffering and sacrifice until things are back under control.
Realistically in the USA we have:
- Fighting to regulate capitalism well
- Status quo
- Violent revolution
I’m not for #3, nor am I for #2.
Why would you think being a business owner makes somebody a capitalist? What means of production did you own when you were one? The desks? You weren’t a capitalist. You probably don’t work for one now, either.
The bold is the jump to conclusion that you made. In capitalism people can:
- own the means(that allows profit extraction from others) and simultaneously also do work for a living.
- They can not own the means and exclusively work for a living.
- They can own the means and do no work for a living.
I was asking cuse if he part of #3 or part of either 1 or 2.
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That is a bizarrely narrow definition of a capitalist.
I owned a business the explicitly extracted profit from labour, more directly than a factory, as I just charged my clients 3x what I paid my employee. That doesn’t make it capitalist?
Capitalists are limited to what, just factories and farmers?
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Can we clarify this a bit?
We currently live under a form a regulated capitalism, right? I thought we’d both say yes, but it seems like you are saying that real existing regulated capitalism does not exist?
So you were literally asking him if he was a trust fund kid?
I would argue that this regulation is mostly smoke and mirrors. If you had to categorize this as regulated or not, it’s closer to not. This is why I use the term well-regulated, which this absolutely is not.
Did you bother reading either of the Wikipedia articles I just linked? Did you bother reading any of the 3 articles I linked yesterday? Have you taken any time at all to actually read and understand any of the information people keep presenting to you?
I already know the answers to those questions, so you don’t need to confirm.
Like so much in the world it’s a scale not buckets. If you ranked all capitalist systems operating today they would fall along a scale from least to most regulated.
The question is where in that scale is a “sustainable” system.
I read all three. All three would include a business owner as a capitalist. As would Marx btw.
I honestly have zero idea what you are referring to if no business owners are capitalist.
It’s like you are calling a car a ham sandwich and then accusing me of not following along when you keep telling me to get the oil changed in my ham sandwich.
I agree with you that regulation can be smoke an mirrors.
I feel I’m understanding you better when you share that you believe that we are closer to “not regulated” than “regulated” capitalism.
In the search for common ground and understanding, would you agree that a type of capitalism that in your opinion is well regulated enough to be environmentally sustainable has never existed in the USA?
To answer the last question you have to split out climate change from other environmental regulation. The USA has terrible climate change regulation but pretty good environmental regulation overall (or it did until Trump started gutting it).
The US pioneered much of what we call environmental regulation today.
If you were trying to do planning process as I mentioned above, I think you might want to give it another swing. Constructive criticism…
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Since the null option (aka the status-quo) is already “try to regulate the capitalists”, adding “try to regulate the capitalists” isn’t adding an additional option. Perhaps you meant to say “Trying harder to regulate the capitalists”.
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You’re jumping ahead to step #4 when you proclaim “realistically”.
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Surely you can imagine more than just these two options (besides null)…
- Trying harder to regulate the capitalists.
- Violent revolt against the capitalists.
ETA: Planning process is collaborative. In that spirit, and with your indulgence, I’ll add two more options to our step #1 list. Options that which were particularly favored by M.King…
- Vote out the capitalists.
- Use NVDA to bankrupt the capitalists.