Capitalism is just a system which turned out to be stable, one evolution of the various human societies which uniformly used to outright enslave, which has obfuscated the mechanisms of that servitude and in so doing, yes, I think improved upon feudalism and the old tribal blood law. As Gravy calls attention to, "pure" capitalism and "pure" libertarianism produce horrifying outcomes, so I don't think it's at all sane to describe capitalism as inherently "good". It is not intrinsically good, it is only "better" than the raw and arbitrary rule of the strong, at least to my mind, and it's also stable enough to maintain a somewhat peaceful social stasis.
We have modified the system of capitalism for the better in the past. We will hopefully repeat that feat in the future, further refining things, mainly by distributing some of the vast surplus we now generate to improve the baseline welfare of all people. Ideally speaking, perhaps one day we would do away with it entirely in the sci-fi future, when labor and industry efforts are entirely managed by machines and human life is merely to frolick and enjoy the freedoms and joys our metal empire can provide. Which is to say, I can imagine a scenario in the future where "capitalism" will have outlived any pretense of usefulness, and instead will mean that the vast powers of the networked robot world can be controlled by a very few people, with the power to torture and crush a great mass of humanity, because a small elite inherited the rights to the thing from an ancestor who worked ten generations back. The only function it will serve then is to continue humanity's suffering beyond when it ought to have stopped, having ascended to near Godhood by birthing robotic servants capable of pampering every single individual.
Anyway, you needn't take my future projections as evidence. Just look to the robber barons and railroad antitrust if you have any illusions about the "intrinsic goodness" of capitalism. Without a meta-structure to unkink the strange and bad situations that capitalism often drives, civilization suffers. The past already demonstrates that ideal human society is not some simplistic libertarian dream, but must be painstakingly carved out with careful measures against the law of the strong. Capitalism is, itself, the law of the strong with humane redoubts carved-in -- too few. Waving a big foam finger for Capitalism strikes me as counterproductive; what we need to focus on are the ways we can modify things for the better, not to cling to a miserable past.
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12-20-2020, 01:03 AM
Hybrid Mode
