🎓 Dr. Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@social.cleverlibre.org

@zleap

"its not about"... lets be careful here. There is what capitalism is about, and ther eis what the ideal form of government is about.

In a true capitalism you wouldnt have progressive taxes. A market isnt free if your penalized for using it successfully. So yes wealth tax is anti-capitalism.

That said a government should not be an ideologically pure capitalism either. While I do beleive capitalism should be a central tenant and most things operate with the intention of creating free markets, there are exceptions to this. A good government in my mind should be mostly capitalistic with a few exceptions.

For me I am a large promoter of a flat income tax (that means no wealth tax) and to shift most of our taxes to sales tax, particularly where luxury items have higher taxes than necessities. The sales tax therefore is still sort of a flat tax in that it isnt effected by your income, but it does mean that people who waste more money on luxuries rather than investments will pay more. Its not exactly capitalism since it discourages luxury purchases and thus not entierly free market. But does lean towards capitalism strongly and I think finds the proper balance.

@mathlover @iankenway

@mathlover

I would argue a wealth tax is directly contrary to healthy capitalism or capitalism at all. It penalizes anyone who makes money, thats the opposite of a free market where making or loosing money is considered natural and desirable for the population.

@iankenway

@raucao I wouldnt use that wording.. A pure form of capitalism has never been tried. just as a pure form of communism has never been tried. Pure forms of anything tend to not exist, nor would we want them to, ideological purity without situational awareness would be devastating.

That said communism as a central tenant of governments has been quite common just as capitalism as a central tenant has been common. If we want to pick apart why governments fail or succeed we would have to look far beyond simplifications of a single attribute like capitalism or communism.

@Pat depends. If it is enforced by a government then it clearly is an anti-capitalist property. If however it is more like a commune where private owners voluntarily pool their resources then that is perfectly within capitalism.

By the way, while I feel capitalism as a property serves the vast majority of use cases I do not feel a pure and absolute capitalism in every regard is necceseraly the ideal.

Capitalism is the existence of free markets. Free markets work great if and only if there is an inherent and reasonable equilibrium point which can be reached by supply and demand. While this works great for most things there are cases where supply-demand breaks down and capitalism doesnt work well. Healthcare I think is a good example of that. A person will pay every penny they have to live just one day longer in most cases. The demand is infinite and the supply finite. Capitalism fails under such a market.

@raucao No thats not correct. Capitalism is not simply private property. Capitalism is where **trade**, industry **and** property are controlled by private ownership. The trade part is essential here and ultimately is why free market is baked into the definition of capitalism.

@Pat yes those sound like valid additions to me.

@Palanix Without further detail all I can say is that if after robots it remains a capitalism then the above properties of capitalism must remain true. If they are not true then that simply means the introduction of robots, and how the governement responded to it, caused the society to cease being a capitalism.

@Palanix That would depend on countless circumstances. What government is controlling this scenario? What laws does it have in place? How easy is it to make a robot? Do the robots think? etc. There is a lot of detail I'd need to know about this scenario to speculate on how it might play out.

@Palanix what about it?

@raucao free markets (that is markets defined by private trade without price fixing) is effectively the definition of capitalism.

State capitalism does not lead to greed or any of the other negative effects... The **state** leads to that. generally because the state suggests centralized control and power and that is contrary to free markets which is where the state has little or no control, which states dont want. So when capitalism exists it is often erroded by the state. So state anything often leads to a lack of free market and thus a lack of capitalism.

@ScumbagDog Your dad sounds like a wise and brilliant man. Not to mention devilishly handsome.

@mathlover

I strongly disagree on wealth tax, that is not healthy for a society and people having wealth, even a lot of it, is not an indication of an unfair society.

I do agree with the fact that there is a problem where the poor dont get as fair a chance to rise up out of poverty as they should. I also agree markets arent as free as they should be both in terms of corruption as well as excessive regulation. But wealth tax implies that excessive wealth is the problem, it is not. At worst it may be a symptom of other inherent problems.

@iankenway

@zleap Well I'm not sure I like that wording, but I agree in principle that the goal should not be to eliminate free markets/capitalism, the goal should be looking at the ways we dont make markets free and where that is a problem.

@selea This pretty much sums up my entire reason of being :)

#capitalism is not...

* ... large corporations
* ... greed
* ... the rich taking advantage of the poor
* ...unfair labor wages

capitalism is...

*... fair market prices determined by value
*... markets that are not and can not be manipulated
*... fair wages for fair work based on the value contributed
*... poor people having equal chance as rich to market their skills
*.... a free market, a fair market.

@icedquinn FYI it's actually "et al." not "et all". It comes from the latin phrase "et aliī" which means "and others"