feotakahari: (Default)
feotakahari ([personal profile] feotakahari) wrote2019-02-23 01:10 pm

Inspired by a post by Morecolorfulmetaphors

I don’t get anticapitalism, if only because of comparative advantage. I don’t want to live in a world where everyone grows their own food, because every plant I grow dies. Rather, I want to live in a world where someone specializes in growing food, and I specialize in what I’m good at, and I perform services that the food-growing person values.

And when people trade goods and services for other goods and services of equal value, what do you call that?

I want to end slavery, and apparently that’s something anticapitalists want as well. But they also seem to want a society where people do not trade, and aside from the implausibility of how you stop people from doing so, trade is something that makes my life better in a thousand different ways.
entanglingbriars: (Default)

[personal profile] entanglingbriars 2019-02-23 09:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Trade existed prior to capitalism and isn't dependent on it. It also existed within communist/socialist countries (although not always very effectively). Capitalism refers to the means of production being owned by someone who does not personally use them but employs others to do so with the primary goal of producing profit for the owner. When the means of production are owned by the people employing them, or the primary goal of controlling the means of production is not profit, you don't have capitalism.

e.g. feudalism wasn't capitalism because although the means of production were not owned by those who worked them, the primary goal was the consolidation of political power within the government, not profit.