Capitalism is, at base, the concept that the owner of a material resource is entitled to a share of the profits of the use of said resource, regardless of whether he contributes any of the labor - i.e., if you hire a factory to produce your line of clothing, your money goes in part to paying the laborers who actually make the clothes, and in part towards the owner of the factory. In theory, this is a nigh-perfect system - the trade provides value for you (ideally you wanted a line of clothes produced for a value-producing reason), the laborers, and the factory owner, rewarding the effort and materials originally invested in obtaining or creating the factory.
Crowdsourcing in instances such as gofundme *can* be used in a similar fashion, but more often they're used in a collectivist fashion, in order to provide a conversion from social to concrete resources in order to pay off a debt owed in the capitalist economy.
I think the post is illustrating that crowdfunding draws on more socialist tendencies like it's poor/working/middle class people giving money directly to poor/working/middle class people instead of businesses/corporations.
Aren't the crowd also entitled to something when they give money? Usually a product or some freebies.
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· 7 years ago
this is capitalism in itself. it is people that have the means helping people who don't. capitalism gives us the money, when we have more we have the ability to share on our own terms. the company has the service available to us to help others due to capitalism. they make money for providing a service. they get their money from taking a little off the top and from ads. don't fool yourself, this is the same system that always was. just using the new tools in front of us.
I think it's more of the ideas behind crowdfunding and these collaborative sites like Wikipedia that are slowly shifting the way modern economies function. Nobody said capitalism is obsolete, but some experts are saying that we're moving into a "post-capitalism" era, or at least "post-industrial" capitalism.
Don't worry, we're not too far from capitalism as of yet so you can still use material possessions as a defense mechanism against the inevitability of your death ;). But it is interesting to think that the digital age may bring our society toward a point where we don't need capitalism or competitive economies.
"you can still use material possessions as a defense mechanism against the inevitability of your death"
That's not what I use them for.
"the digital age may bring our society toward a point where we don't need capitalism or competitive economies."
What point is that?
If you own clothes, a house, and food, then yes, you are using material possessions as a defense mechanism against the inevitability of your death. First-line defense, really.
Well, abandoning capitalism doesn't necessarily mean you abandon the concept of property - it's only if you go full swing into Communism or Socialism. Capitalism works best when alloyed with some of the principles of socialism - not far enough to remove incentive, but far enough to do things like, say, remove most of the negative effects of a parent's poverty from their child's education. In this way, the society as a whole does not lose the contributions of a person because of their parents' situation. The other problem with Capitalism is that most of the time it becomes so focused on the development of direct economic capital that it ignores and devalues less material resources that are still necessary for continued value improvement on a large scale - things like social capital and emotional labor. It also has a tendency to hyperspecialize labor beyond the point the human psyche will bear well.
The core of capitalism is basically just private ownership and the ability to do what you want with what you own (with an emphasis on private trade and industry, but still).
You can't really abandon capitalism without abandoning private property or at least heavily limiting what one can do with their property, which in a lot of ways is the same thing.
Merriam-Webster: Capitalism: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market
Capitalism is primarily about the concept and use of *capital* property (i.e., means of production), not necessarily the basic concept of property itself. A complete free market is an oxymoron, because a free market has no anti-monopoly regulations and thus quickly becomes unfree.
Yes, on the face of it abandoning capitalism only involves abandoning private ownership of capital property, but that includes land, and as soon as you lose your land ownership rights you lose a lot of your property rights as a whole, as the state can dictate what you can have where you live. It can severely limit your freedom.
Which is why, in a separate discussion, I suggested that using capitalism heavily alloyed with some of the principles of other basic economic theories is a better idea.
Capitalism is not a shitty concept. But it ALWAYS leads to fascism.
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· 7 years ago
this is just an offset of capitalism. i mean, they get money from you to use those services. this isn't the end, just another thing that grows from it. if you look in to it, all these are just enhancements to what we have been doing all along. growth due to a new medium. millennial, taking credit for the accomplishments of the prior generations when they work out in their favor and blaming the prior generation for their own ineptitude.
Eventually the robots are going to be doing much of, if not all the manual labor like sewage/electrical/infrastructure maintence and building, and until then, I will not support socialism or communism.
I've both talked and listened to a multitude of economists and economic professors in the last year and I can assure you that capitalism is not dying. In fact its actually evolving into a new type of capitalism which has been given many names. I like the term theoretical physicist Michio Kaku uses which is Perfect Capitalism. A world where everyone has information on every product.
I also dont understand how anyone can take the gaurdian seriously when half their claims or opinions have either no evidence or not enough substantial evidence.
Low IQ = Someone who believes that someones political stance can be related to a mental disease, also thinking that the mental disease makes someone automatically stupid. AKA lenny.
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· 7 years ago
Someone who doesn't understand that autism means so dense that they could crush the Earth by just attempting to think, as is the slang-esque definition on the internet = you.
I like capitalism.
Crowdsourcing in instances such as gofundme *can* be used in a similar fashion, but more often they're used in a collectivist fashion, in order to provide a conversion from social to concrete resources in order to pay off a debt owed in the capitalist economy.
And aside from that, fuck you, I like owning things.
That's not what I use them for.
"the digital age may bring our society toward a point where we don't need capitalism or competitive economies."
What point is that?
You can't really abandon capitalism without abandoning private property or at least heavily limiting what one can do with their property, which in a lot of ways is the same thing.
Capitalism is primarily about the concept and use of *capital* property (i.e., means of production), not necessarily the basic concept of property itself. A complete free market is an oxymoron, because a free market has no anti-monopoly regulations and thus quickly becomes unfree.
I also dont understand how anyone can take the gaurdian seriously when half their claims or opinions have either no evidence or not enough substantial evidence.