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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.
@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.
@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 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.
@volkris
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 @avlcharlie @mapto