this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
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I'd say it's more like disguised feudalism. We're all peasants for the few kings and queens that have all the money at the top.
I don't think people actually agree on the definition of capitalism itself, I just looked it up and was a little surprised how definitive it is:
If you asked whether capitalism is a political system, at least in my random polling, 2 out of 9 respondents said No.
Doesn't the bolded part make it a political system then?
I'd say no. It doesn't really describe how a political system works other than commenting on the regulation part.
Same as any other economic political system.
You're just describing a political system.
It is one policy of a larger system.
What do you mean by one policy?
Capitalism influences many areas of government directly.
It's not just economics. It's foreign policy, company regulations, individual protections, land ownership rights, etc. It's an ongoing list. Even cultural rights are directly impacted by Capitalism.
Right, it's an economic system that directly influences many parts of government.
Lobbiest that work for companies do that constantly because of Capitalism. It's an entire field of work.
Pedantic man to the rescue! Fascism was a "third way" from "capitalism" and "communism". Fascism means state control (if not ownership) of "the means of production".
most socialist systems participated in the capitalist economic system. The USSR, for example, attempted to create the capitalist mode of production that was almost entirely lacking when the revolution overthrew the czarist regime. They had to, according to their marxist theories, in order to develop a proletariat with a revolutionary consciousness. Similarly China was faced with an economic system that was the shambles left over from the long degeneration and colonial exploitation of the ancient regime, and proceeded to attempt to build a modern capitalist economy under the control of the party, as the USSR was doing. In both the USSR (except for the brief period of the NEP) and the initial attempt during Mao's lifetime, the market exchange was not used to set prices or drive production and planning, but instead top down '5 year plans' were used. They didn't work well, why is a complicated discussion, they actually might work a lot better now using the vast compute, information and communication tech available. The USSR under Gorbachev attempted to reform both their political and economic systems and collapsed. China looked at that and reformed their economic system, allowing much of the economy to be market based rather than planned, while keeping political control under the party. Their reform has been spectacularly successful in modernizing their economy, so successful that the USA at this point is determined to sabotage their system and, if necessary, destroy them militarily rather than allow them to dominate the global system.
Information about economic activity and external events are routinely input into sophisticated economic modeling systems and analyzed accurately for their effects within seconds. To a certain extent, more and more so as this monopolistic era unfolds, we have top down central planning, just the kind neoliberals like.
None of that changes that the capitalist system and capitalism have a direct impact on other areas of government.
But there are.
That's what I listed in my comment above. That was the point I was trying to make.
But it does describe the control of resources and to an extent force, which is "political" in addition to economic.
that is the ideology of classic liberal and neoliberal governments in the history of capitalism, capitalism itself is simply investing 'money' (aka capital) to produce commodities that are then exchanged for more money that is then fed right back into the loop to produce even more commodities to make even more money. The term commodity can refer to things that are intangible, like financial instruments - stocks, bonds, derivatives of stocks and bonds, derivatives of derivatives of stocks and bonds etc. Capitalism is the core of the global economic system. It is not an ideology. There are many countries (but fewer than there used to be) that are either socialist or social democracies where capitalism is highly regulated.
Government intervention goes the other way: capitalists like intervening into government.