Re: Capitalism 104 pluscachange: My take is: Capitalism as a concept is silly. It's a concept invented by Karl Marx (seriously, look it up, he was the first guy to coin the term capitalism) to demonize the free market by associating it with mercantilism. The trick is to cause people to confuse the two concepts intellectually, demonize the mercantilisit bad positions (and they are bad, no doubt), then claim that all of it is bad. Students of history and economics, however, are well aware that mercantilism and free markets are incompatible at the fundamental level. Even Adam Smith, the father of free market socio-economic theory, made a rather long and pointed essay detailing the differences between a free market and DENOUNCING mercantilism in all of its forms. Read that again. Adam Smith would make the same critiques of "capitalism" that moderns would, and he'd be 100% correct, and he'd still uphold his free market theories 100% without being contradictory whatsoever.
All of these debates then about "capitalism", in my honest view, are quite bogus (as concepts, the people who wish to debate are mostly honest if confused). You want to rip apart mercantilism, then by all means do so. But that has nothing to do with addressing free markets, which have nothing whatsoever to do with things like NAFTA, corporations, government favors/regulations favoring business nor anything else we associate as "evil biddness".
Re: Capitalism 104 pluscachange: [quote author=Zip link=topic=42033.msg476640#msg476640 date=1173194527">
Never used the black market... [/quote">
I'll bet you've used the grey market. Most people have and probably don't realize it. It's not a "place", it's a method. :)
[quote"> As for free market and your critique of Marx... I think he was pretty on target with the concepts of alienation and expliotation, [/quote">
Sure. My critique of him had nothing to do with his complaints about exploitation. It was rather noting that he invented a new package deal concept in order to bring down his real enemy by referencing an enemy others had. He had no love of liberty, that much is obvious. So he combined liberty with a nasty mercantilistism, declared the mercantilism as evil, then hoped people associated liberty and mercantilism to bring down concepts of free markets as well. Fact is, he succeeded in that. People rarely take the time to care to understand unfortunately.
[quote"> he did go a little far with a lot of other things (especially his ideas about materialism and surplus value). [/quote">
Not to mention that he had no concept of microeconomics whatsoever. An economist, he was not.
[quote"> I definitely agree that there is a healthy balance and that we have long passed it. The irrationality of rationality is an amazing concept.
[/quote">
When rationality becomes driven by emotion, it ceases being rational. That's the fault of humans more than the idea of rationality, in my opinion.
