Embed Notice

@freeschool

> You mention the "me and you" example of doing a trade without rules and force- PERFECT- But the reality today is the opposite - there are rules and force beyond the 1 time deal and anything more regular between us is wanting to be regulated or punished (basically)... or within more people difficult.

This goes back to what i was saying about seeing it not as a government type or a pure all or nothing ideology but rather just one among many ideologies that should influence the way you structure a government, but not be seen as a hard rule.

More specifically, we dont live in a country that is a pure capitalism, or even much of a capitalism at all... You are right we **dont** have free markets, thats the point. Markets are highly regulated, and there are big players that control it (including the government). Not only is it not a free market, but it is quite far away from being one. That said we also shouldnt strive for one, while capitalism (free markets) should be the default for sure, its not a rule so much as an ideological guidline, and the reality should be a mix of many things, where capitalism is only an influence.

For example there is a strong argument that healthcare shouldnt exist in a free market system because the laws of supply and demand break down since a person would pay anything (usually) to live one more healthy day. So the supply is limited but demand is effectively infinite. So free market cant work in health care. That said the solution there isnt universal or single payer health care. The solution is to design a system that addresses this problem, and that solution would look like co-op based healthcare which would restore free market pressures since the patients are also the owners.

> So are we in Capitalism?

Again this goes back to what im saying, you arent in a capitalism or not. It isnt a binary thing that a government either is or isnt a capitalism, thats kindergarten way of thinking about it. There are many things we handle in mostly capitalist ways, like the buying and selling of gold, thats fairly capitalistic. But the buying and selling of cars is far from a free market, we fix the price of cars such that gasoline powered cars are artificially more expensive than electric ones (through taxes and other mechanisms), so the buying and selling of cars is far from capitalism in the USA in many ways. That said, like i said, it isnt a bad thing to not follow an ideology as a pure idea, in fact, its good we dont.