RE: It was never about capitalism vs communism - it was always about centralized vs decentralized
Hi, Rick, and welcome to Steem! Quick question for you. You first acknowledge "Capitalism" to be "the voluntary decentralized free market," but later you say
In capitalism, [...] the supposedly regulated parties quickly become the ones setting the rules for use of force for its own benefit and to suppress competition, destroying any idea of a future free market.
This seems to me inconsistent. On the one hand, capitalism is the free market. On the other hand, capitalism destroys the free market. Are you arguing that capitalism is an impossible scenario which cannot exist for extended periods of time?
To me, pure capitalism (anarcho-capitalism) precludes the use of any force, including regulations backed by violence, but your analysis that capitalism yields regulatory capture which destroys the free market assumes the existence of forceful regulation, which in turn is not capitalism. It appears that your argument is really that capitalism-with-force (which is not actually capitalism) yields regulatory capture, but does not address pure capitalism.
It could be argued that pure capitalism cannot exist since there will always be bad actors, and while that is true, the issue of regulatory capture is not the use of force (for which there are defenses) but the perception of force as legitimate and moral. Without the institutionalization of forceful regulation, any attempts at regulatory monopoly would be rapidly quelled in the course of self-defense.
I think your observation of capitalism-with-force vs. capitalism-without-force is spot on. Depending on the issue (and the phase of the moon), I self-identify as somewhere between a libertarian and an ancap, and so run into these practical issues from time to time. They were particularly apparent (and depressing) from the inside of the European Parliament.
I think one of the key problems is that we've never had a society where decentralized power was greater than centralized power, and so, we've always had an X-with-force, where people have been varying the X to optimum output. And of all the X:es tried, capitalism has had the best success. But a capitalism-with-force is still a centralized use of lethal force, and as such, is subject to hijacking by those who find it more profitable to hijack the system as such than to provide a better offering.
So if you will, I was speaking in both terms of "capitalism as we've seen it" and "capitalism in terms of its ideal endgame", and you're right to point that out.
This is why I'm so stoked about the decentralization technologies: they hold the ability to negate the centralized power of regulatory capture, as they defy regulation to begin with.
Will they not try and tax crypto? The banks are now in. Are the laws stong enough for a government not to deem it currency? This happened in the wiermar republic. Historically ? https://steemit.com/steemit/@marco555/steemit-is-a-facebook-killer-a-brief-tallk-on-the-start-of-something-new
I think there is a very import distinction to be made between 'capitalism' secured by the free market and 'crony-capitalism' that is secured by regulatory purse strings.
The more money a centralized power is spending, the more certain you can be that corruption will be present at the core.
This is the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Capitalism can't exist without state backing. It never has and it never will. What you call "pure capitalism" is pure fantasy.
Hello again, bacchist. :) Once again, you've missed my point in your eagerness to accuse me of a logical fallacy. And once again, you've labeled me with a fallacy which does not apply to my argument.
No True Scotsman, by definition, applies only when there is no objective rule of difference between the two claims. I was careful to delineate a difference between "pure capitalism" and "capitalism-with-force." I had assumed readers would be able to tell the difference, but to spell it out, one of them has force and the other does not.
But all capitalism that has ever actually existed has required and implemented force in order to function. Capitalism can not exist without systematic violence.
This is from the Wikipedia you just cited...
Compare that to the following:
A: Capitalism doesn't require violence in order to function.
B: But literally every capitalist economy is underwritten by violence.
A: Yes, but pure capitalism doesn't require violence.
See?
And here's where that 4-tier reply limit really shows...
No, Ozer. The issue is the conflation of the notion of corporatism (capitalism + force) with the free market/capitalism (capitalism... as in the free market).
Communism always has force behind it. There is no form of communism that doesn't. Hence, it doesn't equate to parallel the two terms.
It is because of this tendency to conflate that "capitalism" has been such an insidious term:
Free market capitalism, do not require violence to work, or centralized power. Open source software, Internet, bitcoins, streem, other blockchain based technologies, are all great examples of violence-free, decentralized free markets.
I could say the same with communism. Communism requires centralized violence of state. No application of communism has ever been totally voluntary.
"Compare that to the following:
A: Capitalism doesn't require violence in order to function.
B: But literally every capitalist economy is underwritten by violence.
A: Yes, but pure capitalism doesn't require violence.
See?"
Which capitalist economy was "underwritten" with violence? You realize "underwrite" means "accept liability for", right? Where does violence come into consensual exchanges of capital among private property owners? If I rake someone's lawn for a glass of lemonade, who was the victim of violence?
Why are commies so intellectually dishonest?
I would say that a technologically decentralized financial system that prohibits the use of force will be pure capitalism without force meaning no monopolies only individuals exercising their rights to freely exchange. For example a smart contract using cryptocurrencies that allows a p2p exchange to exist and is encrypted and can not be hacked by any group. It runs itself endlessly with no arbitrary use of force and it runs honestly with open source software and never cheats you or tries to create a monopoly. SO we are now indeed coming into an age where pure capitalism ie a truly free unhindered market can exist where absolutely no force is used at all.