10 thoughts on “Two Stories Of Capitalism”

  1. Shorter:
    Call “capitalism” the free competitive market and it’s good
    Call “capitalism” big and monopolistic business conglomerates and it’s bad.

      1. I think if you look closely, those incentives are sometimes just cutting through red tape delays. SpaceX did pretty good with speedy environmental reviews for their new site in Texas.

  2. Capitalism is invented by socialist to explain what socialism is
    not.

    It’s really all about free speech, how to maintain it, and means of improving
    free speech.

    One could say that socialism could work if you had enough or better
    free speech, but of course first thing socialist always do is seize mass
    media and try to control the message- so it’s not free speech.
    Or socialism doesn’t go toward more free speech, but rather one gets
    a government which has the power to control speech.

    The thing about shareholder value being most important aspect is
    still spot on.
    But if company does something immoral- to “maintain
    shareholder value”, it must also do things to stop that immoral thing from
    being known- must be able to “control the message”.
    Or you must commit fraud against the shareholder- it’s dependent being less transparent
    to the shareholders. Which quite opposite maintaining shareholder value.
    Not much different then lying about how profitable the company is.

    Anyhow internet is another improvement for free speech, just as invention
    of press was improvement to free speech.

  3. Capitalism uses real data in a sort of net – uncontrolled by humans – to optimize the situation.

    Socialism, Progressivism, and Liberalism, today, use “feelings”:

    Obama Weekly Address: “Our Job Is To Let Every American Feel They’re Part Of Country’s Comeback”

    No, moron. Not feel…EXPERIENCE. BE a part of.
    That’s idiocy #1.

    Idiocy #2 is that there is no economic “comeback”. So Obama wants Americans to feel that which doesn’t exist.

  4. Where interests go, morality follows. It’s very easy to rationalize moral justification for something you want to do. The problem here isn’t that we have “wicked” problems with divergent moral interpretations, but rather that we have divergent interests and conflicting goals.

  5. An alternate viewpoint could depict capitalism as an economic system concerned with the creation of wealth, and socialism as a system of government concerned with the distribution of wealth.

    1. Desouza’s film made an interesting point that, up until the western industrial revolution and capitalism, the primary means of acquiring wealth was by conquest and pillage.

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