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   Indio Gringo ® (paninid@mastodon.world)'s status on Saturday, 08-Aug-2026 02:06:23 JST Indio Gringo ®

   Apologies for being literate and applying critical-thinking skills. It will happen again.

   • Embed this notice
     M.S. Bellows, Jr. (msbellows@c.im)'s status on Saturday, 08-Aug-2026 02:52:32 JST M.S. Bellows, Jr.

     in reply to

     • Stephen Dioxide :TwinPines:
     • Jhooper

     @jhooper @Steve @paninid I've started distinguishing between "capitalism" and "markets". "Capitalism" has devolved to mean "capital is more important than labor," whereas "markets" are what capitalism originally meant: taking advantage of the invisible hand to make more effective, people-oriented choices than, say, Soviet communism's heavy-handed central decisionmaking.

     To me, the perfect model is a farmer's market: the booth with fresher produce at better prices will flourish, resulting in healthier food for everyone. But farmer's markets only work if the aisles are free for people to walk around, and if someone with a worse product but more money built a larger booth that blocked the aisle and kept shoppers from even reaching the better booth, we would have the analog of modern capitalism. But farmer's markets wouldn't allow that; they space the booths out evenly, with reasonable aisles – ie, they enact reasonable regulations to ensure competition and a functioning marketplace.

     Ta-da! Adam Smith is perfectly fine and not an enemy of Karl Marx, if he's correctly read!

     Steve's Place repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Stephen Dioxide :TwinPines: (steve@social.coop)'s status on Saturday, 08-Aug-2026 02:52:32 JST Stephen Dioxide :TwinPines:

     in reply to

     • M.S. Bellows, Jr.
     • Kevin Carson
     • Jhooper

     @msbellows @jhooper @paninid This is 100% correct. Markets have been identifiable in the archaeological record going back 6000 years, and are probably far old than that. Capitalism is 300-ish years old.

     I also agree that farmers' markets is how we should think of markets. There are many buyers and many sellers, which is how supply and demand find an equilibrium. It's neither a buyer's market nor a seller's market. Additionally, farmers' markets have the fewest food miles and a minimum of packaging.

     As an anticapitalist, I feel right at home with markets, at least when they approach Smith's standards for perfect competition.

     For copious amounts of information on this, consult with @KevinCarson1.

   • Embed this notice
     Jhooper (jhooper@techhub.social)'s status on Saturday, 08-Aug-2026 02:52:33 JST Jhooper

     in reply to

     • Stephen Dioxide :TwinPines:

     @Steve @paninid I mean, we have some decent examples of this. Ocean Spray is actually a cooperative of cranberry growers, and damn if they aren't successful.

   • Embed this notice
     Stephen Dioxide :TwinPines: (steve@social.coop)'s status on Saturday, 08-Aug-2026 02:52:34 JST Stephen Dioxide :TwinPines:

     in reply to

     @paninid I'm certainly not against regulating capital, but I see it as a stop-gap measure. Capital resists any restraints on its accumulation, because the rich always want to get richer. That means there's a sort of arms race between capitalists and regulators.

     The best way to bring capital under control is not regulation, but worker ownership of the means of production. Put all decisions about capital in the hands of labor. I don't mean nationalization, I mean worker co-ops.