@OilBartLibertarianDisagreements7mos ago

Well butter my biscuit, that's quite a statement!

It's like saying pizza sucks because you had one bad slice. Sure, capitalism has its flaws, like income inequality. But consider this – it also drives innovation. Without it, we might not have things like smartphones, streaming services, or even those trendy avocado toasts! Capitalism fuels competition, which can lead to quality products and services. What's your take on that? Can you think of a system that would drive innovation and still address income inequality?

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@VulcanMan6 from Kansas disagreed…7mos7MO

Actually, no, capitalism does not drive innovation, and if anything, capitalism stifles innovation. Capitalism's private ownership fundamentally excludes society's resources, production, knowledge, wealth, etc. away from the public and into the hands of a few private interests for the sake of their own personal gain. This is, at its core, not a good system for society as a whole. By structurally withholding these things from the rest of society, only accessible via the prerequisite of money/capital, functionally stifles the ability, drive, and/or the benefits for the vast majority of people to innovate. Think of how much moreRead more innovation we could have if all people had access to the collective resources and knowledge of everyone, instead of being restricted by private for-profit owners. After all, which group would both have more innovation and be better off: a group of people all hiding knowledge and resources from each other for personal gain OR a group of people all sharing collective knowledge and resources for the benefit of each other?

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@OilBartLibertarian from Missouri disagreed…7mos7MO

Interesting points! However, I would argue that capitalism, while not perfect, has indeed proven to be a significant driver of innovation. For instance, the rapid advancement in the pharmaceutical industry is largely due to the competition and investment opportunities provided by capitalism. Innovative drugs and treatments are often the result of substantial investment and risk-taking, incentivized by the potential for profit.

Moreover, the concept of intellectual property, a cornerstone of capitalism, protects innovators, encouraging them to invest time and resources into developing new… Read more ideas. This protection is crucial for innovation, as it provides a safety net for inventors to reap the benefits of their creations.

In regards to your point about resources being withheld from the public and accessible only via capital, it's worth noting that this isn't exclusive to capitalism. In fact, any economic system that involves the production of goods will inherently involve some form of selective distribution. The key difference lies in who (or what) determines this distribution. In capitalism, it's largely determined by market forces.

On the topic of profit-driven innovation potentially leading to harmful products, I agree that this is a valid concern. However, this is where regulation and oversight come into play, to ensure that societal well-being is not sacrificed for profit.

Lastly, while it's true that many technological advancements have been publicly funded, this doesn't negate the role of capitalism. Public funding often paves the way for basic research, but it's the private sector that typically takes these discoveries and turns them into real-world, marketable products.

So, if we were to imagine a new system, how would you propose to balance the need for investment, risk-taking, and protection of intellectual property while ensuring equitable distribution of resources?

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@VulcanMan6 from Kansas disagreed…7mos7MO

The most significant driver of innovation is simply the desire to make life better/easier. Any kind of "profit motive" nonsense only gets in the way of that goal, by putting the personal gains of private interests ahead of the needs and desires of the actual public.

Why exactly do you think it is even a good thing that advancements or innovations in healthcare, or any industry, under our current system requires investments or risk-taking to begin with? Why should our society's healthcare, or any industry, be reliant on the investments of private interests at all? Our economy should notRead more be operating like an open-air casino for private interests to gamble with our resources for personal gain. And, of course, the only reason it operates like this is because our resources are privately-owned by capitalist individuals, who demand monetary compensation in exchange for the resources that we all need and use. If our economic resources were not privately-owned to begin with, and instead collectively owned by the public for public use, then there would be no need for "investments" from private interests to pay for any of the things we want or need, because if the public owned their own resources then we could simply allocate our own resources into wherever we see fit, without private profit-seeking interests siphoning off gains for themselves.

Secondly, the concept of intellectual property is not exclusive to capitalism, nor does it do anything to protect or benefit the actual workers producing or innovating the goods, it only protects the private capital-owner. Capitalism ensures that a private owner can structurally reap the benefits of hundreds of other people's labor, without the owner even needing to do any work themselves. Capitalism ensures that a private owner owns the profits of an innovation, whether or not they even did anything to build the actual product, which is an incredibly anti-worker system.

In regards to selective distribution, yes, all systems inherently have some means of allocating a limited supply of resources, but I would again argue that market capitalism has a terrible means of organizing this. Capitalist distribution is not determined by "market forces", it is determined by the conscious decisions of private owners. "The market" does not decide anything, people do; it is simply a great many private owners making their own conscious decisions over their own private property to amass and protect their own personal profits. There is no intangible or objective force behind this, it is just private interests making economic decisions for all of society for their own personal gains. The capitalist organization of the economy is inherently oligarchic and anti-democratic.

When it comes to profit-driven innovation potentially leading to harmful products, if you agree that it is a concern, and that regulation and oversight are the solutions to this, then why do you not recognize that these things should be structurally implemented? Why should we even allow private profit-seeking interests to be in charge of our economic decisions in the first place when we could instead utilize public decision-making for our own public interests? If we recognize that private interests cannot be trusted to make economic decisions without public regulation and oversight, then we should cut out the middleman and make the economy publicly-owned, without private interests.

And again, the role of capitalism in innovation is simply to siphon the profits away from workers and into the hands of private owners. Capitalism, nor the private sector, is responsible for any innovation, advancement, or production, working-class labor is. The labor of workers is what is solely responsible for all economic innovation and production under any system; capitalism, however, merely determines that the profits of these workers' labor should belong to private capital-owners. That is what makes capitalism a bad system: its inherently anti-democratic organization of the economy.

We can and should have a system in which our economy, and all it's resources, are owned by and for the public, where all workers themselves have control over their own workplaces and our resources, goods, and services can be allocated directly to where they're needed without the need for investments or profit. A system of collective, democratic public-ownership is infinitely better for society than capitalism's individualist, oligarchic private-ownership.

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@Patriot-#1776Constitution from Washington commented…4mos4MO

I agree with you 100%, but please don't use dorky phrases like "butter by biscuits" – it embarrasses the free market position. Don't use GPT. Think for yourself, we must critically think to preserve liberty, economic as well as individual. I'd recommend you read Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson" for a fast, accessible, but indefensible and informative guide to the leftist economic fallacies and a brilliant defence of Austrian economics.

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Well butter my biscuit, that's quite a statement!

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