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Now that is a complicated question. But usually the main way its accomplished with what we call antitrust laws. When enforced (and the usa has enforced thrm but not as strongly as it should) they effectively make monopolies illegal.
Of course the other key is keeping corruption in check and money out of politics, which isnlikewise a difficult task to do, but critical to a healthy capitalism
@freemo @avlcharlie @mapto @volkris very interesting discussion. Just thought I'd like to point out that comparisons between Communism and capitalism are tricky because while capitalism is viewed primarily as an economic system (and democracy as a political system that everyone assumes underpins it), Communism is a political, philosophical and economic system.
The problem is that there have been no real life examples of "pure" Communism ever existing, except perhaps
@freemo @avlcharlie @mapto @volkris very early social Russia under Lenin. All real life examples of Communism have had either authoritarian or totalitarian rule, often dictatorships.
The reason for this is that while Marx did define what Communism should have been, he (perhaps intentionally) never defined how it should have been run. With centralized and planned production, it should have been foreseen that a permanent centralized government should have been established to oversee
@dashrandom @avlcharlie @mapto @volkris
No marx was right, capitalism and communism arent systems of governments, they are properties of a government. He didnt address those things because he wasnt creating a government he was defining a principle he felt governments should have.
Not all communist coubtries were totalitarian or dictatorships. Its just the ones that were elected in place by the people were always dismantled by those same people years later when everyone started starving. See bulgaria as an example of that.
Ita a property of governments. The fact that it is also a property of other things doesnt change that fact.
@freemo I wouldn't say it's a property of governments any more than having secretaries operate Windows PCs is.
If that's really what you consider a property of governments, then I don't see what the value of emphasizing that property is.
@volkris
@avlcharlie @mapto it isn't. It's a property of the economy. I guess what @freemo may be alluding to is that government influences whether or not capitalism exists. It will definitely exist in a democratic system but may also exist in a totalitarian/authoritarian system (e.g. China).
@dashrandom @volkris @avlcharlie @mapto
Right. Simply put the laws either create a free market or prevents one.
@dashrandom but that's simply not true
Capitalism will exist regardless of government. Government has no say over whether capitalism exists.
Capitalism is such a natural human institution that it has the same status as, say, language.
People will talk to each other regardless of what government thinks about it. Capitalism is such a fundamental element of life that we neither need government permission nor care what government thinks about it.
Humans do capitalism because capitalism is in our incentives. We don't ask permission from government to do capitalism.
@volkris @dashrandom @avlcharlie @mapto Is is you who are saying things that are simply not true.
> Capitalism will exist regardless of government. Government has no say over whether capitalism exists.
Capitalism, being a free market, may not exist if governments pass laws which force the market to be non-free. For example price fixing of goods by definition makes for a non-free market. As long as that is actually enforced, even if enforced poorly, you no longer have a free market, at best you will have a black market, which again by definition is not a free market (free as in freedom).
> People will talk to each other regardless of what government thinks about it.
People talking to eachother isnt what makes a market free. Regardless, no, governments can and will stifle communication. Sure **some** will still happen but to say the government cant influence that is just plain wrong. Just look at North Korea the government very clearly has a large influence on what people say to eachother and how.
> Humans do capitalism because capitalism is in our incentives. We don’t ask permission from government to do capitalism.
I do of course agree, that capitalism is more or less the default. We will do it automatically. But only when we can, governments can and do prevent it all the time.
@freemo you talk about governments passing laws, and that's exactly it: governments are extremely limited in what they can do in reality. Yeah they can pass laws all day long, and they can devote more and more resources into trying to execute those laws, and yet governments cannot in reality perfectly implement law.
A government can outlaw anything, but that doesn't mean it's going to stop.
How's that war on drugs going?
And so capitalism will remain no matter what government thinks of it, just like drug use.
Government can try to suppress it if it wants, but capitalism is so natural, so tied into the human experience, it will exist regardless of what a government official signs into law.
And really that emphasizes my point. That a government might choose to oppose and crack down on capitalism just highlights that capitalism exists outside of government. For government to have to oppose it means that it must exist without government in the first place, separate from government.
Just like drug use 🙂
Yea governments can **perfectly** execute a law... so what? Their execution doesnt need to be perfect for the market to be nonfree. In fact any degree of influence woukd make a market that is to some extent nonfree.
@freemo but that there would indeed be a market proves my point.
You say the market may not exist if if governments pass laws, and yet, there it is.
The rest gets into rabbitholes of what constitutes market freedom. I'd say that markets always react to influences, and government influence is not particularly different from any other.
A market will react to the influences of weather or tech advancement or government dictat or a viral video. No market is free from influence; that's in fact the value of markets, the ability to respond to those influences.
I'd say the critical freedom is the ability of the participant to choose whether or not to accept a transaction, no matter the source of influences going into the transaction.
But at the end of the day, capitalism exists regardless of governments, requiring neither support nor sanction from government.
@volkris @freemo @avlcharlie @mapto That assumes that capitalism is default human behaviour. That simply isn't true. There is already sufficient evidence that this assumption isn't true. Even in times when capitalism can be chosen, sometimes altruism is chosen instead and things are given away for free.
Secondly, I dislike the capitalism vs communism framing when it comes to human economic decisions because that's a false dichotomy.
@volkris @freemo @avlcharlie @mapto furthermore, pointing to the drug market analogy as evidence of capitalism being default human behaviour is a terrible example because the drug market in that example exists within a context of a capitalist system. Maybe you should be asking "How do illicit drug markets look under communist economy? Do they exist at all and how are transactions conducted?"
I find the assumption/opinion that capitalism is default human behaviour flimsy at best.
The market for prescription medications (or anything healthcare) related is never a free market, and never can be. Not fully. It doesnt have a balanced supply-demand curve. Demand is infinite since people will always give everything they own to live even one more day suffer free. So I'd argue markets around healthcare products are one of few areas where we cant apply free market mentality.
@freemo it's not factually true that people will always give everything they own to live even one more day suffer free.
I know plenty of counter examples personally, and they show up everywhere from politicians engaging in rhetoric about people choosing to forego prescription refills through public policy complaints about folks taking risks with regard to mask mandates.
So no, in reality we see that people DO make exactly those choices in very capitalistic ways.
Not every single person follows that paradigm. But the overwhelming majority would.
As for taking risks about masks or drugs. that is still them paying to extend their lives, they just happen to be morons and are doing things they think will extend their life that wont.
@dashrandom assume? No. I'm emphatic about it!
Yes, capitalism is default human behavior, and we can see that evidenced around us every single day.
Heck, at the moment you're investing time typing your message. You're spending resources on that project in hopes of some return on your investment in time, typing into some device that you invested into in the past, all with trade involved, all looking for increased value to come out in the end.
You've invested your capital in hopes of future gain.
That's capitalism for you, the default human behavior.
Did you ask permission to write your comment? Were you forced to make it? Unlikely. And yet, even such force would be overriding the capitalistic default.
@volkris@qoto.org @dashrandom@kopiti.am @freemo@qoto.org @avlcharlie@mastodon.social @mapto@qoto.org
I think most people aren't thinking of getting a return on investment when they write social media posts.
@hyolo @freemo @volkris @avlcharlie @mapto speak for yourself, I make 500 John Mastodon tokens per post here
@hyolo right! Capitalism is so fundamental to the human condition that we engage in it even when we don't think, explicitly, that this is capitalism we're doing.
We naturally invest resources for later payoff and make trades based on our interests even when we're not laying out spreadsheets to calculate cost/benefit analyses.
The **free** market wont exist. The fact that some limited non-free market would exist is rather irrelevant, the point is still that governments determine whether free market exists or not and can trivially ensure that the market is not free and has pretty good control in preventing the **free** aspect of the market.
@freemo if you go with the definition that a free market must be devoid of influence then there cannot be any market, ever, regardless of government since all markets function in the context of influence.
If you go with your definition, then markets cannot ever exist regardless of government.
It's a useless definition.
> if you go with the definition that a free market must be devoid of influence
No, in fat i specifically made it clear this is NOT what a free-market is. A free market is a market in which healthy supply-demand pressures dominate. That is similar but not the same as saying devoid of influence. In order to have a free market you must
1) have laws that prevent monopolies from controlling the market and manipulating prices contrary to supply demand
2) Ensure all parties have equal access and representation on the market (aka no slavery)
3) Minimal regulations beyond ensuring the above from the government.
4) no price fixing
@freemo capitalism isn't a property of a government.
It's not only entirely possible for it to exist outside of any government context, but it's bound to exist there, given human nature and interests.
@dashrandom @avlcharlie @mapto