For me, the word means that I can trade what I own to other people who want it and are offering me something I want in return. It means that, if I scrape and save, I'm allowed to turn around and invest those savings in another endeavor of my own and that whatever profits I make from it are mine to keep.
I know it's not a very eloquent definition, but I think it's rather objective, and I think it describes the western world today, more or less. Is this what you mean by it? Do you mean something else?
I don't see how it concentrates power. There are people who do capitalism poorly, and then they whine about how it was unfair to them.
Most generally: "A socio-economic system based on private ownership of resources or capital."
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/capitalism#English
As for the unfairness:
Capital accumulates capital, debt accumulates debt. When you accumulate capital, you can own resources (land). This means those with capital will accumulate power.
You can talk about being "bad at capitalism" but the implies you assume everyone starts with equal opportunity (capital, land, power).
That's circular and moronic.
Even the big about "private ownership of resources" is couched in terms that make it sound as if the person saying it is being excluded and treated unfairly. Do you know which resources capitalism lets a person own, or which person might own it?
Your money in your savings account, and you.
> You can talk about being "bad at capitalism" but the implies you assume everyone starts with equal opportunity (
It doesn't. It does assume they're adults that don't whhine about not everyone ending with inequal outcomes.
"Private" in this case distinguishes the system from other where, say, only the state can own capital.
And the fact that you (and others) can't see how it inherently concentrates power is exactly what's wrong with the current views of pure free-market proponents.
Free markets are bad. Market competition is good. It's that simple and people still don't seem to be able to distinguish them.
The only way to have market competition is to soundly enforce it. Any free market left alone eliminates market competition and consolidates power - that consolidated power then eliminates any efficiency gained from capitalism.
One of the single most important roles of government is to eliminate heavily unbalanced concentrations of power un order to maintain competition.
In the marketplace that means swift eliminating monopolies, in individuals it means maintaining some tempers inequality, and in democracy it means ensuring any concentrated power cannot perform regulatory capture. But you cannot do the latter without ensuring the former two. Everyone seems to recognize regulatory capture and the imbalance of power it involves in democracy, but some how cannot see the exact same issues in the individual or the marketplace. All three require market competition to be healthy and thrive - and aid concentration of power.
Which is why NYC taxis are so cheap. All the market competition cultivated by their sale of taxi medallions for $1mil+.
> One of the single most important roles of government is to eliminate heavily unbalanced concentrations of power
I've seen no historical evidence that any government, ever, has even attempted this "role". It would be a little weird if they could manage to do it considering that they are heavily unbalanced concentrations of power themselves.
It is normal where I am from. We have an entity that govern the competition and its role is to enforce competition whenever a company gains to much market share. That way us, the consumers can avoid monopolies where we would otherwise not have the voting-power within our wallets.
> I've seen no historical evidence that any government, ever, has even attempted this "role".
With all due respect, you may not be very familiar with the topic being discussed at all.
No offense, but your definition (as distinguishing capitalism from socialism) isn't very good either. Your first sentence is merely the definition of a market, which can still exist just fine under socialism (even the authoritarian varieties extant today feature markets).
As for the second part, that's the exact thing that proponents of socialism assert you are not free to do under capitalism. Your average worker has no hope of saving up to be able to "start an endeavor", and even well-off ones often are beholden to investors, which forces you to part with a substantial part of your profits you made to people who contributed no work to your endeavor. Likewise, if your business does become profitable, it is usually going to be as a result of work others did, not profits "you" made.
The key part of capitalism is that any profits in excess of the bare minimum go to the owners of capital, not the workers. Unless you have capital yourself, you either have no access to the means of production, or are forced to give up a substantial part of the value you produce.
Theoretically, it's claimed.
Where are the markets in Venezuela? Which bakery could you go to in the Soviet Union when the bread line was long and the shelves empty at the state store?
Why is it that such places always end up using some sort of ration ticket instead of real currency?
> As for the second part, that's the exact thing that proponents of socialism assert you are not free to do under capitalism. Your average worker has no hope of saving up to be able to "start an endeavor",
No, they're just lazy losers. I read somewhere once that you can buy the hotdog cart at Costco for $400 or $450 like that.
But I suppose the ones that whine that they can't start an endeavor want to skip to the end of the game, where they own $500 million in McDonald's stock and a few dozen franchise stores... so my example doesn't count.
There exist opportunities for people at all levels of capital.
I'm not an entrepreneur myself, don't have any knack for it. But it's nice to know that the commies are always there, hiding in the shadows ready to swoop in and confiscate, if say, I did buy a food truck and put my brother-in-law to work running it.
> The key part of capitalism is that any profits in excess of the bare minimum go to the owners of capital,
You mean, the owners of the business. Sure. Why should it be otherwise.
No one with capital would trust the sorts of people who do minimum wage scutwork to be the sorts of partners who should be cut in on the profit. Go read r/antiwork and tell me those are the people who you'd trust with your life-savings. All they bring to the table is talentless meniality and a bad attitude.
> you either have no access to the means of production, o
What is a "means of production"? Are you lusting after some billionaire's water-powered Jacquard loom?
We're on Hacker News, if I'm not mistaken. The means of production for most of us is a laptop, and internet connection, and our brains. But maybe you're right, most people don't have access to that last one.
Same faulty logic affected the communists too.
People trade things at scale all the time. Some trades are apparently valued in the millions and billions of dollars. Some people have savings that are large fortunes, and they often invest them.
You must be talking about something I am not, but it's difficult to figure out what the words even mean to you.
You’ve made a no true scotsman argument because all these other capitalist systems with their wage labour grievances and their accelerating inequalities tearing at the coherence of societies’ fabric are not _really_ what’s at the core of capitalism and if they just did it better then it’d be awesome.
The scale part comes in because what you describe - capitalism without wage labour - exists all over the world today, but only in the small. You cannot grow it to a country sized system.
Capitalism is independent of the operation of markets. Its definining characteristic is that the investment of capital in a human venture is treated preferentially to the investment of labor. Specifically, claims on the profit made by the venture first and foremost reside in invested capital, not invested labor.
It's pretty trivial to imagine how capitalism could retain this characteristic even in the presence of planned economies and/or highly regulated markets.
