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this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2024
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Modern "capitalism" (not really what Smith would recognize, if we're being honest) has found plenty of ways to manufacture scarcity. In fact, artificial scarcity and pipeline inefficiency is now the heart or where "wealth" is produced.
The agricultural industry is the perfect example of bullet point 3 gone so wildly out of control it'd make you scream. We produce so much food that the government subsidizes farms backing off on food production for valid conservation reasons. And yet 12.8% of Americans still fall under a category called "food insecurity", where they can not consistently afford/access a healthy diet.
Right, don't take my conjecture as a broad defense of the modern status quo. My point is that the forces which create capitalism, and then the injustice which arises from it are not as simple as many people on the internet seem to believe, nor are these things one in the same. Indeed, previous revolutionary attempts at "tearing down capitalism" all at once have done little to resolve the underlying injustices, and in many cases have simply created entirely new forms of injustice without actually improving, eg food scarcity, or improving egalitarian outcomes.
Capitalism itself is better viewed as one tool for mediating scarcity. It isn't the only tool available, nor does it guarantee an optimal solution, and I would definitely argue that the contemporary dogma surrounding it is quite harmful I'm many ways. But so is anti-capitalist dogma. The former dogma holds that hammers are the only tools in the world, while the latter seeks to ban hammers entirely because they may be misused. Both are very clearly wrong. The correct middle ground is understating the inevitability of hammers will persist until the last nail has been driven, but that you should not use hammers to drive screws.
I personally think this is self evident and that most reasonable people will understand this. However the extremists in both camps are unfortunately quite vocal.
I think I agree with in many cases, except that I think some anti-capitalism dogma is helpful.
Why? Because while I don't think the answer is simple, I think many of the pillars and assumptions of capitalism make it the worst way to distribute resources and solve resource issues. Capitalism presumes everyone is going to be selfish but that they will somehow be selfless or stupid enough not to game the system enough to break it. Smith believed in the importance of regulation, but seemed as blind as the rest on how a system that presumes everyone will focus on themselves first can maintain reasonable regulations in the first place. In that sense, it has failed fairly consistently for centuries, where other systems (even some that appear capitalist to the naked eye) have done better.
Ironically, capitalism worked better when there were nobles who were half-beholden to it and some were half-beholden to other more blurry requirements, like a sense of duty to their people. I think a system that demands a little selflessness, however, has just shown to work better. Nobody's saying we go full socialist, but putting supply and demand on top of a foundation of social programs seems more effective than putting a few social programs on top of an anarcho-capitalist wetdream.
And the answer, I think, is that we need to be somewhere a bit more distant from the middle-ground, allowing free trade only after life and health are covered. Of course, like everyone else, I don't know everything and not everyone would agree with me.