I grew up in a family of people who throught it was my duty to take care of everyone else because I was the most sensitive and that made me the sucker. The one who needed the others.
Eventually this sucker made their own life and said c ya. Because every narcissistic group needs their scape goat. But no one needs a narcissistic group.
We live in a narsisstic culture. I have no ideals about people. I have seen their best. But I have seen even more of their worst.
What I offer is unique. If you can see value in it. If you can even understand it, then you can are like me enough that we can live peacefully together surviving whatever befalls us
I can't save anyone. But we can save each other. If we see that possibility in each of us.
Those who love will love. Those who can't should not get to take advantage of those who do.
Perhaps the beauty in humans caring for one another is because we are aware that it is a choice that many do not make. Yet we could choose to set up our governance to primarily protect and uplift all its members as sort of a starting point, not to displace the need for human beings stepping in to offer care and consideration. For so long it has been clear that we have plenty for all but it is just not divided up properly to meet the basic needs of all; before meeting the need for super yachts and personal jets and space flight for some.
I have been thinking a lot recently about the rights of the individual being balanced by what is for the good of the whole. This is right in alignment with my thinking. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for your thoughtful response to my comments. I really appreciate when individuals take the time to share their ideas, especially philosophical ideas.
If I am understanding you correctly, the essence of your position is that individuals have a “collective responsibility as fellow members of the human family.”
I disagree, but I would first like to offer you some common ground that we both might share.
First, I view all human beings as potential values to my life. So I’m a big fan of the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
I don’t love my neighbors unless they earn my love, and thus my expectations are reciprocal.
This nicely leads to my other favorite biblical verse: “you reap what you sow.”
Second, I love Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments. However, Smith only shows us empirically and psychologically why individuals act morally. I have not found that Smith offers us a practical philosophy for our use. Instead, Smith’s meditations on morality essentially demonstrates that individual moral behavior is influenced by our desire to conform to societal norms.
Adam Smith’s most practical and moral philosophy is Capitalism, derived from his best known work: the Wealth of Nations. Perhaps the most quoted sentence by Smith and its core takeaway: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest”.
Finally, I will address your essential assumptions. You “believe that some problems are not (or not just) the result of individual failings, but (also) of inequalities inherent in structures and systems (and even states and hierarchy itself).”
You gave an example of an immoral president who acts to benefit himself and some immoral businessmen and to harm the poor and homeless.
I agree that government intervention is always evil and immoral because it is founded on coercion. Your example includes raising taxes, laws against individual liberty (stopping the collection of rain water, homelessness, and panhandling). This is not a “capitalist state.”
When you say the “failure of a system to address issues like hunger and homelessness,” what you’re not saying, but it’s implied, is that the state should take other people’s money (by taxing) to “address” these issues.
You “believe that there is such a thing as collective responsibility and collective progress through combining our efforts.”
Individuals are no longer members of tribes. This is a great development, if for no other reason than to avoid genocide and rape. Of course I am not saying that civilization and its institutions brought about individual rights (the history of civilizations is littered with genocides and inhuman treatment of women). Not even the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution brought liberty and freedom for everyone, but it got the ball rolling.
Individuals have no collective duty of responsibility in any domain. However, individuals should be responsible for their families, but not because of collective responsibility, but because individuals choose to make families and thus should value each family member accordingly. At some point children take responsibility for their own lives and thus the cycle of rational individualism proliferates.
When individuals join a group outside of their families, it should be a voluntary association: friends, schools, sports, jobs, benevolent organizations, etc. These groups become individual values, but only because individuals choose to associate and value common objectives.
Worldwide progress has not come from collective action (and there is no such thing as collective progress) but from the voluntary trades made between millions and millions of individual traders (see the Wealth of Nations). The inequalities you referred to in structures and systems have lifted and continue to lift individuals out of abject poverty. If you truly believe in kindness and compassion, you should consider writing more about the immoral state acts against individual rights and coercion against real capitalism.
We always need more bakers, brewers and butchers to feed human beings, but it’s the Sam Waltons (and Walmarts) of the world that make our lives better.
When you say, ‘Individuals have no collective duty of responsibility’ I can see that we have a fundamentally different philosophical view on what moral responsibility individuals have, and fundamentally different moral framework.
I think you may be misunderstanding my position on governments. You see that I am against government intervention, but then say I am implying that we should take other peoples money by government taxation. I am against any government doing either, because I am against government existing at all. I believe all associations with others should be voluntary, without coercion or exploitation. That is why I am against Capitalism.
Confusingly to me, you seem to accept the idea of common objectives but not common action or common progress. You speak of ‘structures and systems’ lifting ‘people out of poverty’, but then say that everything is done by individuals and that we have progressed beyond tribes.
I’m not convinced that all of these people have been lifted out of poverty just because more people are now earning two dollars a day (which is the world bank metric and applies mostly to China, however if we used the UN metric of seven dollars then poverty hasn’t gotten better). In many cases Capitalism has increased peoples access to money, and at the same time decreased their security and access to housing, food, and community support.
If we judge poverty solely by income then a person who lives in a village in which food is farmed and shared freely, whose neighbours help build their home and sees that no-one is homeless, who look after their infirm and elderly is considered to be greatly impoverished. However, they are considered by Capitalism to be more successful when they are thrown off that land (or taxed off of it), so that they have to work long hours in a factory, and when they can barely afford shelter and food, but now earn two dollars a day. So I find the way Capitalism measures such progress as highly dubious.
You stated that ‘Individuals are no longer members of tribes. This is a great development, if for no other reason than to avoid genocide and rape.’ But I think that you are imagining an old view of pre-history being savage and brutal which more evidence has dispelled the myth of. Many anthropologists now see that period as a largely co-operative and communal one, not without the difficulties of more rudimentary living, but with good varied diets, shared rewards, relatively long lives (into the 70s once you take out higher infant mortality), and community care for the disabled and elderly. I would encourage you to read, The Dawn Of Everything, which gives a very different perspective on this period.
As you admire Adam Smith I wonder if you also accept his belief in different economic classes, about the coercive and exploitative nature of the worker owner relationship, his views against the hoarding of wealth, and his pro-regulation (including banking), pro-union and anti-landlord views. We know what he would have thoughts of Sam Walton, to him such people were ‘an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.’
The one thing Smith felt was morally reprehensible was the adoration of the rich - ‘This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.’
I have tried to address your essential points as they appeared in your reply. I’m sure that I missed some nuances for which I apologize.
Government is bad—More common ground:
I’m so glad to hear that you’re against “government existing at all.”
Less common ground: You are against Capitalism because you view it as exploitation. This is a non sequitur. Capitalism is voluntary trade. A worker trades his time and work for money. There is no force involved. Any business enterprise that uses coercion or exploitation is not a capitalist enterprise.
Common objectives: “Common objectives” are individual objectives that two or more individuals share in common. There can be cooperation among the individual members.
Poverty: Sadly poorer people do have more children than first world people, but you are ignoring the fact that poverty is moving in the right direction: less than 10 percent of the global population lives in extreme poverty per the World Bank—read Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now.
Capitalism and money: Capitalism isn’t about money, it’s about producing and trading goods and services that improve human lives. Money is only a medium of exchange. Access to more affordable goods and services is a problem. However, this problem is the direct result of government intervention—read Bryan Caplan’s Build Baby Build and Open Borders.
Your utopian village: Your utopian village where food is grown and shared and neighbors help each other is a beautiful dream. If you find it, I would be happy for you. But if you do find it existing somewhere you need to look closer—there are no free lunches and thus someone is paying for this actual dystopia.
Your view of Capitalism: Even though unfettered Capitalism doesn’t exist—it never has—no human beings living in first world countries are earning $2/day. Anyone who is poor in a first world country has given up on their life—not my problem.
Your view of tribal life: This revisionist view is objectively false. Anthropologists have been studying tribes like the Yanomami for hundreds of years, and I would dare say that no one would want to exchange places with them. Having said this, there are plenty of historical examples of peaceful natives. The point is not that tribes are bad or good; the point is that such a social system inevitably leads to violence because it is a zero-sum game. As for the quality of their lives, good science and even good social science never ignores the facts of reality or offers counter factual conclusions about what “would’ve happened” had better medicines or medical treatments developed earlier than they did. Capitalism is the only social and economic system that produces such wonders on a scale that transforms the world by increasing the lifespan of humans and decreasing the mortality rate. But before you object and point to places where people are living and dying earning $2/day, those places don’t protect individual rights and have corrupt governments. Take a look at Africa in general.
Adam Smith: Adam Smith is a hero, but he didn’t get everything right. No, I don’t view the world or any country in particular as being made up of different economic classes or that workers in general are exploited by capitalists. Most importantly Smith pointed economics in the right direction: the division of labor and specialization has achieved more in 200 years than humans achieved since they began walking upright. Frederick Bastiat and Ludwig Von Mises are two of the best minds in economics who bridged the way from Smith’s achievement to present day. Today Thomas Sowell at the age of 94 is a must read for any one who desires to understand economics and larger social and cultural issues.
The despicable rich: Alas Adam Smith was a college professor and an intellectual so he quite naturally despised the rich. But, to be fair, in his day many businessmen were corrupt because the existing economic system was flawed. However, most capitalists are not rich, if you mean multimillionaires and billionaires, they are skilled workers and professionals who voluntarily trade their services for fees or wages.
Sam Walton and Walmart: Unskilled workers who live in first world countries should thank men like Sam Walton everyday. They can voluntarily trade their work for a paycheck and then get more for less in stores like Walmart. That my friend is a moral system. That is what Capitalism has achieved.
Daniel, Thanks for taking the time to reply. I’m glad we agree on governments, although how we come to that conclusion may be different. I am working on a longer article addressing some of your points in more detail, but here is a brief response to them:
Exploitation - I don’t believe in any trade which involves someone owning resources another needs is voluntary, or that necessitates them having to work for someone with such resources in order not to starve or be homeless isn’t coercive.
Poverty - I addressed this briefly, it is only by using very narrow metrics which were changed to come up with this positive result that such a conclusion is possible. (I read a different Pinker book which touches on this and found it unconvincing. Please see - https://jacobin.com/2020/07/international-poverty-line-ipl-world-bank-philip-alston
Money - I agree, technically, that Capitalism isn’t necessarily about money, although during its relatively short history it has been inextricably intertwined with money, either in capital investment, capital exchange or capital profits, so it seems to be a technical distinction without a practical difference.
Can you give me some examples of exchange since the advent of capitalism which does not involve the state guaranteeing the value of currency or protecting the capitalists property? (Does Caplan give evidence of this?)
Utopian Villages - there are hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of communes and cooperatives currently. However, when they get bigger, such as starting to make an economic difference in larger regions they have usually been persecuted, scattered or killed off (although there are larger successful examples with hundreds of thousands or millions or people too, when they have avoided such fates for a while).
Tribal Life - You prefer the Huxleyan Social Darwinist view of ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ / ‘nasty, short and brutish’ I guess (makes good poetry, not good history). I don’t think that it is supported in biology or anthropology today (can you giver me references?), at least by those scientists and scholars who I find compelling, but undoubtedly you’d find support for your view too. Maybe it comes from a difference in life experience (I grew up near a 500 year old communal group and was later part of a different commune myself).
Capitalist Progress - I believe that most of what Capitalism takes credit for can be attributed to the Enlightenment and Scientific progress, which began before Capitalism, and many of its greatest breakthrough were made by Socialists (Einstein for instance).
Villagers - I’m not sure you really addressed my argument that many people are worse off working under capitalism than they were living in tribal (or even feudal) villages where there needs were guaranteed. This goes back to the Enclosure Acts (and similar changes in other countries) in which people lost common resources, were made homeless, and then had to enter workhouses (now sweatshops) to survive. It is what made Capitalism possible. (& Walmart has failed in some Western European countries precisely because workers there have come to expect something more than it can offer its workers)
Finally, I take great exception at your remark, ‘Anyone who is poor in a first world country has given up on their life—not my problem’. I’m sorry and deeply sad that your experienced something that left your proverbial heart so unwilling to open up and be sympathetic to such people. Maybe you have luckily never needed help from anybody, never benefitted from any help from family or friends, never relied on any government benefits, have had the money for insurance to cover any ill health or accident, or just never had one. Yet if this your choice to feel this way about others then I am even more horrified, as it is a very sheltered, condescending, callous and uncompassionate view. I hope I have somehow misunderstood your views on this.
Just one point to the above - unemployment and minimum wage levels that are below what people need to live are a feature of the system. There simply aren't - by design - enough jobs for everyone. Someone who has to work two or three jobs to feed their kids and pay for childcare faces an immense, immense struggle to gain any qualifications that may lead to better work. Meanwhile people born rich not only have more money than they could ever need from the beginning, they close access to many of the best jobs via closed networks that are partly based on schooling and education but mostly based on social networks.
There is no amount of hard work that a poor kid from Appalachia can do that is going to compensate for having an uncle who can get them an internship at the NY Times and parents who can pay their rent while they work unpaid to gain that foot on the ladder. Meanwhile that Appalachian kid has to work to survive - they are coerced into working by threat of homelessness and lack of food, which feeds right back into the first point. Coercion is built into the system, as is the illusion of scarcity - and the fear which that coercion produces not only keeps people working in what are often awful jobs but it also stops them organising against the systems which exploit them.
Capitalism did not exist in Adam Smith's time and that kind of pre-capitalism he did criticize, saying that the division of labour is very productive, but tends to make workers stupid because the tasks are exceedingly simple.
Marx basically based his entire theory on that observation: if the tendency of capitalism is to dumb down formerly artisanal work to a very simple assembly line, then it treats every worker as an unskilled worker and thus can exploit them.
Smith did not see this far, he was merely worried that the dumbing down of tasks will make workers stupid and thus not good at e.g. being workers.
Smith could not criticize capitalism because it did not exist yet, but did see the core problem in that pre-capitalism already: the dumbing down of tasks.
That's an interesting take I haven't considered much, but you (and Marx) are right that compartmentalisation of tasks certainly does devalue a workers contribution and their ability to have power in the workplace or to make demands there, because it makes them more easily replaceable and of lower profit value individually.
(& I agree that capitalism is a relatively recent invention. I'd put it's start around 1850-70 myself.)
Capitalism or free trade has always been part of human existence. It’s like gravity or other Universal Laws: they are there whether or not you know it. But you are correct that Capitalism as a known economics system was not well understood in Smith’s day but it was known as trade. And as such it was poorly understood until Adam Smith. And yes like most college professors today Smith was wary of businessmen in general. As for Marx, no man has done more evil in the world than he from his bad ideas. The idea that workers are alienated from the finished products of their labor has been misused and continues to be misused to justify terrible actions by men and governments. “No one knows how to make a pencil”, but the artist and engineer and scientist have never hesitated to use one and share great ideas and discoveries with the world.
Daniel, You seem to be using a very broad definition of the word capitalism. Tomorrow I’m posting the first article in a series of the history of the word, and begin by giving a short history of it’s existence, which leads me to a question -
(1) Do you have any evidence that the private ownership of profit producing capital existed more than four hundred years ago? (2) What do you think Capital is? What do you think Capitalism is?
Most economic historians I've read say that for most of human history there wasn’t private ownership of major capital, that there wasn’t even money to make revenue or interest from capital, and prior to money and states there wasn’t much trade between individuals (it was primarily between tribes). (3) Do you dispute this?
Although I’m not a Marxist and have some fundamental disagreements with Marx, I see him as primarily an observer and commentator, with some interesting insights. However, he didn’t lead any revolutions and didn’t overthrow any governments himself, so I'm surprised at your anger toward him. (4) But you think he is more evil than Hitler?
I also don’t understand your particular objections to his idea of alienation. (5) Are you saying that you believe that most workers are engaged in their work, feel fulfilled, and believe they are well supported, and well remunerated? (6) Do you think that Socialist artists & engineers didn’t share their work and discoveries with the world? What about Einstein who was a Socialist?
Of course there is evidence of private property 400 years ago and way further back. The ships that Columbus sailed were “owned” as private property. When a man goes into the forest and fashioned a tool it became his private property. The native Americans used various mediums of exchange such as wampum (c. 1510) for trade. Below is non-exhaustive list of mediums of exchange.
9000 - 6000 B.C.: Cattle. ...
1200 B.C.: Cowrie Shells. ...
1000 B.C.: First Metal Money and Coins. ...
500 B.C.: Modern Coinage. ...
118 B.C.: Leather Money. ...
A.D. 800 - 900: The Nose. ...
806: Paper Currency.
Private property’s existence should not be in question. Rather, when did civilizations start to respect the ownership of private property is the better question.
Daniel, I wasn't talking about private property itself, but 'capital' in the economic sense, which is something someone owns that makes an income from its existence.
You are right that 'when did civilisations start to respect the ownership of private property is the better question' and that is the question I start with in the article I'm posting today. Capitalism requires private ownership of capital and that is a very recent change (1850s-70s in the UK).
You are again proving my point for me with the Columbus example: Columbus' ships were owned by the Spanish monarchy, specifically Queen Isabella. Likewise, before the 1800s in almost every nation state everything ultimately belonged to the king / emperor (and to lords / chiefs on a smaller level).
Neither is money capitalism, money can exist without it, although capitalism historically has relied upon it to exist. When it comes to the (ceremonial) trading of shells or of tribes trading cattle this was not capital and not capitalism. I'd encourage you to read 'David Graeber's 5000 Years Of Debt' to learn more about the history of money. But there was 195,000 years of human history without money (I'd argue the Sumerians invented it around 3000 BC).
My simple suggestion is that you read Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell or for a fuller understanding of economics: Human Action by Ludwig von Mises. Every worker is a capitalist—skilled or unskilled. According to Mises, “capitalism is an economic system defined by a particular set of institutions, which include private property in the means of production (i.e. land, labor, and capital) and freedom of contract under the rule of law.”
Capitalism is not free trade. It’s about capital, not trade. Please do read Marx. Capitalism is 1) the dumbing down of artisanal labour by division of labour 2) the automation of the most dumbed down parts of labour by large scale capital investment. This is extremely productive, but puts the worker into a worse negotiating position than artisanal labour.
Oh by the way, you don’t win arguments by denigrating people or their work. If you’ve read Sowell and Mises and disagree or can invalidate their work so be it, but it’s a sign of weakness to say they are “not serious economists.”
Yet you didn't have any problem whatsoever with dismissing Marx as an ‘evil’ man with ‘bad’ ideas. Ideas that you at least partially agree with, as based on your definition with the means of production above, a phrase Marx certainly popularised if not coined.
I grew up in a family of people who throught it was my duty to take care of everyone else because I was the most sensitive and that made me the sucker. The one who needed the others.
Eventually this sucker made their own life and said c ya. Because every narcissistic group needs their scape goat. But no one needs a narcissistic group.
We live in a narsisstic culture. I have no ideals about people. I have seen their best. But I have seen even more of their worst.
What I offer is unique. If you can see value in it. If you can even understand it, then you can are like me enough that we can live peacefully together surviving whatever befalls us
I can't save anyone. But we can save each other. If we see that possibility in each of us.
Those who love will love. Those who can't should not get to take advantage of those who do.
Perhaps the beauty in humans caring for one another is because we are aware that it is a choice that many do not make. Yet we could choose to set up our governance to primarily protect and uplift all its members as sort of a starting point, not to displace the need for human beings stepping in to offer care and consideration. For so long it has been clear that we have plenty for all but it is just not divided up properly to meet the basic needs of all; before meeting the need for super yachts and personal jets and space flight for some.
I have been thinking a lot recently about the rights of the individual being balanced by what is for the good of the whole. This is right in alignment with my thinking. Thanks for sharing.
Nate,
Thank you for your thoughtful response to my comments. I really appreciate when individuals take the time to share their ideas, especially philosophical ideas.
If I am understanding you correctly, the essence of your position is that individuals have a “collective responsibility as fellow members of the human family.”
I disagree, but I would first like to offer you some common ground that we both might share.
First, I view all human beings as potential values to my life. So I’m a big fan of the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
I don’t love my neighbors unless they earn my love, and thus my expectations are reciprocal.
This nicely leads to my other favorite biblical verse: “you reap what you sow.”
Second, I love Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments. However, Smith only shows us empirically and psychologically why individuals act morally. I have not found that Smith offers us a practical philosophy for our use. Instead, Smith’s meditations on morality essentially demonstrates that individual moral behavior is influenced by our desire to conform to societal norms.
Adam Smith’s most practical and moral philosophy is Capitalism, derived from his best known work: the Wealth of Nations. Perhaps the most quoted sentence by Smith and its core takeaway: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest”.
Finally, I will address your essential assumptions. You “believe that some problems are not (or not just) the result of individual failings, but (also) of inequalities inherent in structures and systems (and even states and hierarchy itself).”
You gave an example of an immoral president who acts to benefit himself and some immoral businessmen and to harm the poor and homeless.
I agree that government intervention is always evil and immoral because it is founded on coercion. Your example includes raising taxes, laws against individual liberty (stopping the collection of rain water, homelessness, and panhandling). This is not a “capitalist state.”
When you say the “failure of a system to address issues like hunger and homelessness,” what you’re not saying, but it’s implied, is that the state should take other people’s money (by taxing) to “address” these issues.
You “believe that there is such a thing as collective responsibility and collective progress through combining our efforts.”
Individuals are no longer members of tribes. This is a great development, if for no other reason than to avoid genocide and rape. Of course I am not saying that civilization and its institutions brought about individual rights (the history of civilizations is littered with genocides and inhuman treatment of women). Not even the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution brought liberty and freedom for everyone, but it got the ball rolling.
Individuals have no collective duty of responsibility in any domain. However, individuals should be responsible for their families, but not because of collective responsibility, but because individuals choose to make families and thus should value each family member accordingly. At some point children take responsibility for their own lives and thus the cycle of rational individualism proliferates.
When individuals join a group outside of their families, it should be a voluntary association: friends, schools, sports, jobs, benevolent organizations, etc. These groups become individual values, but only because individuals choose to associate and value common objectives.
Worldwide progress has not come from collective action (and there is no such thing as collective progress) but from the voluntary trades made between millions and millions of individual traders (see the Wealth of Nations). The inequalities you referred to in structures and systems have lifted and continue to lift individuals out of abject poverty. If you truly believe in kindness and compassion, you should consider writing more about the immoral state acts against individual rights and coercion against real capitalism.
We always need more bakers, brewers and butchers to feed human beings, but it’s the Sam Waltons (and Walmarts) of the world that make our lives better.
Daniel,
When you say, ‘Individuals have no collective duty of responsibility’ I can see that we have a fundamentally different philosophical view on what moral responsibility individuals have, and fundamentally different moral framework.
I think you may be misunderstanding my position on governments. You see that I am against government intervention, but then say I am implying that we should take other peoples money by government taxation. I am against any government doing either, because I am against government existing at all. I believe all associations with others should be voluntary, without coercion or exploitation. That is why I am against Capitalism.
Confusingly to me, you seem to accept the idea of common objectives but not common action or common progress. You speak of ‘structures and systems’ lifting ‘people out of poverty’, but then say that everything is done by individuals and that we have progressed beyond tribes.
I’m not convinced that all of these people have been lifted out of poverty just because more people are now earning two dollars a day (which is the world bank metric and applies mostly to China, however if we used the UN metric of seven dollars then poverty hasn’t gotten better). In many cases Capitalism has increased peoples access to money, and at the same time decreased their security and access to housing, food, and community support.
If we judge poverty solely by income then a person who lives in a village in which food is farmed and shared freely, whose neighbours help build their home and sees that no-one is homeless, who look after their infirm and elderly is considered to be greatly impoverished. However, they are considered by Capitalism to be more successful when they are thrown off that land (or taxed off of it), so that they have to work long hours in a factory, and when they can barely afford shelter and food, but now earn two dollars a day. So I find the way Capitalism measures such progress as highly dubious.
You stated that ‘Individuals are no longer members of tribes. This is a great development, if for no other reason than to avoid genocide and rape.’ But I think that you are imagining an old view of pre-history being savage and brutal which more evidence has dispelled the myth of. Many anthropologists now see that period as a largely co-operative and communal one, not without the difficulties of more rudimentary living, but with good varied diets, shared rewards, relatively long lives (into the 70s once you take out higher infant mortality), and community care for the disabled and elderly. I would encourage you to read, The Dawn Of Everything, which gives a very different perspective on this period.
As you admire Adam Smith I wonder if you also accept his belief in different economic classes, about the coercive and exploitative nature of the worker owner relationship, his views against the hoarding of wealth, and his pro-regulation (including banking), pro-union and anti-landlord views. We know what he would have thoughts of Sam Walton, to him such people were ‘an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.’
The one thing Smith felt was morally reprehensible was the adoration of the rich - ‘This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.’
Wise words!
Nate,
I have tried to address your essential points as they appeared in your reply. I’m sure that I missed some nuances for which I apologize.
Government is bad—More common ground:
I’m so glad to hear that you’re against “government existing at all.”
Less common ground: You are against Capitalism because you view it as exploitation. This is a non sequitur. Capitalism is voluntary trade. A worker trades his time and work for money. There is no force involved. Any business enterprise that uses coercion or exploitation is not a capitalist enterprise.
Common objectives: “Common objectives” are individual objectives that two or more individuals share in common. There can be cooperation among the individual members.
Poverty: Sadly poorer people do have more children than first world people, but you are ignoring the fact that poverty is moving in the right direction: less than 10 percent of the global population lives in extreme poverty per the World Bank—read Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now.
Capitalism and money: Capitalism isn’t about money, it’s about producing and trading goods and services that improve human lives. Money is only a medium of exchange. Access to more affordable goods and services is a problem. However, this problem is the direct result of government intervention—read Bryan Caplan’s Build Baby Build and Open Borders.
Your utopian village: Your utopian village where food is grown and shared and neighbors help each other is a beautiful dream. If you find it, I would be happy for you. But if you do find it existing somewhere you need to look closer—there are no free lunches and thus someone is paying for this actual dystopia.
Your view of Capitalism: Even though unfettered Capitalism doesn’t exist—it never has—no human beings living in first world countries are earning $2/day. Anyone who is poor in a first world country has given up on their life—not my problem.
Your view of tribal life: This revisionist view is objectively false. Anthropologists have been studying tribes like the Yanomami for hundreds of years, and I would dare say that no one would want to exchange places with them. Having said this, there are plenty of historical examples of peaceful natives. The point is not that tribes are bad or good; the point is that such a social system inevitably leads to violence because it is a zero-sum game. As for the quality of their lives, good science and even good social science never ignores the facts of reality or offers counter factual conclusions about what “would’ve happened” had better medicines or medical treatments developed earlier than they did. Capitalism is the only social and economic system that produces such wonders on a scale that transforms the world by increasing the lifespan of humans and decreasing the mortality rate. But before you object and point to places where people are living and dying earning $2/day, those places don’t protect individual rights and have corrupt governments. Take a look at Africa in general.
Adam Smith: Adam Smith is a hero, but he didn’t get everything right. No, I don’t view the world or any country in particular as being made up of different economic classes or that workers in general are exploited by capitalists. Most importantly Smith pointed economics in the right direction: the division of labor and specialization has achieved more in 200 years than humans achieved since they began walking upright. Frederick Bastiat and Ludwig Von Mises are two of the best minds in economics who bridged the way from Smith’s achievement to present day. Today Thomas Sowell at the age of 94 is a must read for any one who desires to understand economics and larger social and cultural issues.
The despicable rich: Alas Adam Smith was a college professor and an intellectual so he quite naturally despised the rich. But, to be fair, in his day many businessmen were corrupt because the existing economic system was flawed. However, most capitalists are not rich, if you mean multimillionaires and billionaires, they are skilled workers and professionals who voluntarily trade their services for fees or wages.
Sam Walton and Walmart: Unskilled workers who live in first world countries should thank men like Sam Walton everyday. They can voluntarily trade their work for a paycheck and then get more for less in stores like Walmart. That my friend is a moral system. That is what Capitalism has achieved.
Daniel, Thanks for taking the time to reply. I’m glad we agree on governments, although how we come to that conclusion may be different. I am working on a longer article addressing some of your points in more detail, but here is a brief response to them:
Exploitation - I don’t believe in any trade which involves someone owning resources another needs is voluntary, or that necessitates them having to work for someone with such resources in order not to starve or be homeless isn’t coercive.
Poverty - I addressed this briefly, it is only by using very narrow metrics which were changed to come up with this positive result that such a conclusion is possible. (I read a different Pinker book which touches on this and found it unconvincing. Please see - https://jacobin.com/2020/07/international-poverty-line-ipl-world-bank-philip-alston
Money - I agree, technically, that Capitalism isn’t necessarily about money, although during its relatively short history it has been inextricably intertwined with money, either in capital investment, capital exchange or capital profits, so it seems to be a technical distinction without a practical difference.
Can you give me some examples of exchange since the advent of capitalism which does not involve the state guaranteeing the value of currency or protecting the capitalists property? (Does Caplan give evidence of this?)
Utopian Villages - there are hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of communes and cooperatives currently. However, when they get bigger, such as starting to make an economic difference in larger regions they have usually been persecuted, scattered or killed off (although there are larger successful examples with hundreds of thousands or millions or people too, when they have avoided such fates for a while).
Tribal Life - You prefer the Huxleyan Social Darwinist view of ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ / ‘nasty, short and brutish’ I guess (makes good poetry, not good history). I don’t think that it is supported in biology or anthropology today (can you giver me references?), at least by those scientists and scholars who I find compelling, but undoubtedly you’d find support for your view too. Maybe it comes from a difference in life experience (I grew up near a 500 year old communal group and was later part of a different commune myself).
Capitalist Progress - I believe that most of what Capitalism takes credit for can be attributed to the Enlightenment and Scientific progress, which began before Capitalism, and many of its greatest breakthrough were made by Socialists (Einstein for instance).
Villagers - I’m not sure you really addressed my argument that many people are worse off working under capitalism than they were living in tribal (or even feudal) villages where there needs were guaranteed. This goes back to the Enclosure Acts (and similar changes in other countries) in which people lost common resources, were made homeless, and then had to enter workhouses (now sweatshops) to survive. It is what made Capitalism possible. (& Walmart has failed in some Western European countries precisely because workers there have come to expect something more than it can offer its workers)
Finally, I take great exception at your remark, ‘Anyone who is poor in a first world country has given up on their life—not my problem’. I’m sorry and deeply sad that your experienced something that left your proverbial heart so unwilling to open up and be sympathetic to such people. Maybe you have luckily never needed help from anybody, never benefitted from any help from family or friends, never relied on any government benefits, have had the money for insurance to cover any ill health or accident, or just never had one. Yet if this your choice to feel this way about others then I am even more horrified, as it is a very sheltered, condescending, callous and uncompassionate view. I hope I have somehow misunderstood your views on this.
Sincerely, Nate
Nate,
I will wait for your article (and I look forward to it) before I respond.
Until then all my best,
Daniel
Just one point to the above - unemployment and minimum wage levels that are below what people need to live are a feature of the system. There simply aren't - by design - enough jobs for everyone. Someone who has to work two or three jobs to feed their kids and pay for childcare faces an immense, immense struggle to gain any qualifications that may lead to better work. Meanwhile people born rich not only have more money than they could ever need from the beginning, they close access to many of the best jobs via closed networks that are partly based on schooling and education but mostly based on social networks.
There is no amount of hard work that a poor kid from Appalachia can do that is going to compensate for having an uncle who can get them an internship at the NY Times and parents who can pay their rent while they work unpaid to gain that foot on the ladder. Meanwhile that Appalachian kid has to work to survive - they are coerced into working by threat of homelessness and lack of food, which feeds right back into the first point. Coercion is built into the system, as is the illusion of scarcity - and the fear which that coercion produces not only keeps people working in what are often awful jobs but it also stops them organising against the systems which exploit them.
I would trade places with them. They are living in a much more harmonious state. You have no idea. Because if you did you would too
Capitalism did not exist in Adam Smith's time and that kind of pre-capitalism he did criticize, saying that the division of labour is very productive, but tends to make workers stupid because the tasks are exceedingly simple.
Marx basically based his entire theory on that observation: if the tendency of capitalism is to dumb down formerly artisanal work to a very simple assembly line, then it treats every worker as an unskilled worker and thus can exploit them.
Smith did not see this far, he was merely worried that the dumbing down of tasks will make workers stupid and thus not good at e.g. being workers.
Smith could not criticize capitalism because it did not exist yet, but did see the core problem in that pre-capitalism already: the dumbing down of tasks.
That's an interesting take I haven't considered much, but you (and Marx) are right that compartmentalisation of tasks certainly does devalue a workers contribution and their ability to have power in the workplace or to make demands there, because it makes them more easily replaceable and of lower profit value individually.
(& I agree that capitalism is a relatively recent invention. I'd put it's start around 1850-70 myself.)
Capitalism or free trade has always been part of human existence. It’s like gravity or other Universal Laws: they are there whether or not you know it. But you are correct that Capitalism as a known economics system was not well understood in Smith’s day but it was known as trade. And as such it was poorly understood until Adam Smith. And yes like most college professors today Smith was wary of businessmen in general. As for Marx, no man has done more evil in the world than he from his bad ideas. The idea that workers are alienated from the finished products of their labor has been misused and continues to be misused to justify terrible actions by men and governments. “No one knows how to make a pencil”, but the artist and engineer and scientist have never hesitated to use one and share great ideas and discoveries with the world.
Daniel, You seem to be using a very broad definition of the word capitalism. Tomorrow I’m posting the first article in a series of the history of the word, and begin by giving a short history of it’s existence, which leads me to a question -
(1) Do you have any evidence that the private ownership of profit producing capital existed more than four hundred years ago? (2) What do you think Capital is? What do you think Capitalism is?
Most economic historians I've read say that for most of human history there wasn’t private ownership of major capital, that there wasn’t even money to make revenue or interest from capital, and prior to money and states there wasn’t much trade between individuals (it was primarily between tribes). (3) Do you dispute this?
Although I’m not a Marxist and have some fundamental disagreements with Marx, I see him as primarily an observer and commentator, with some interesting insights. However, he didn’t lead any revolutions and didn’t overthrow any governments himself, so I'm surprised at your anger toward him. (4) But you think he is more evil than Hitler?
I also don’t understand your particular objections to his idea of alienation. (5) Are you saying that you believe that most workers are engaged in their work, feel fulfilled, and believe they are well supported, and well remunerated? (6) Do you think that Socialist artists & engineers didn’t share their work and discoveries with the world? What about Einstein who was a Socialist?
Nate,
Of course there is evidence of private property 400 years ago and way further back. The ships that Columbus sailed were “owned” as private property. When a man goes into the forest and fashioned a tool it became his private property. The native Americans used various mediums of exchange such as wampum (c. 1510) for trade. Below is non-exhaustive list of mediums of exchange.
9000 - 6000 B.C.: Cattle. ...
1200 B.C.: Cowrie Shells. ...
1000 B.C.: First Metal Money and Coins. ...
500 B.C.: Modern Coinage. ...
118 B.C.: Leather Money. ...
A.D. 800 - 900: The Nose. ...
806: Paper Currency.
Private property’s existence should not be in question. Rather, when did civilizations start to respect the ownership of private property is the better question.
Daniel, I wasn't talking about private property itself, but 'capital' in the economic sense, which is something someone owns that makes an income from its existence.
You are right that 'when did civilisations start to respect the ownership of private property is the better question' and that is the question I start with in the article I'm posting today. Capitalism requires private ownership of capital and that is a very recent change (1850s-70s in the UK).
You are again proving my point for me with the Columbus example: Columbus' ships were owned by the Spanish monarchy, specifically Queen Isabella. Likewise, before the 1800s in almost every nation state everything ultimately belonged to the king / emperor (and to lords / chiefs on a smaller level).
Neither is money capitalism, money can exist without it, although capitalism historically has relied upon it to exist. When it comes to the (ceremonial) trading of shells or of tribes trading cattle this was not capital and not capitalism. I'd encourage you to read 'David Graeber's 5000 Years Of Debt' to learn more about the history of money. But there was 195,000 years of human history without money (I'd argue the Sumerians invented it around 3000 BC).
Nate,
My simple suggestion is that you read Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell or for a fuller understanding of economics: Human Action by Ludwig von Mises. Every worker is a capitalist—skilled or unskilled. According to Mises, “capitalism is an economic system defined by a particular set of institutions, which include private property in the means of production (i.e. land, labor, and capital) and freedom of contract under the rule of law.”
Capitalism is not free trade. It’s about capital, not trade. Please do read Marx. Capitalism is 1) the dumbing down of artisanal labour by division of labour 2) the automation of the most dumbed down parts of labour by large scale capital investment. This is extremely productive, but puts the worker into a worse negotiating position than artisanal labour.
Oh by the way, you don’t win arguments by denigrating people or their work. If you’ve read Sowell and Mises and disagree or can invalidate their work so be it, but it’s a sign of weakness to say they are “not serious economists.”
Yet you didn't have any problem whatsoever with dismissing Marx as an ‘evil’ man with ‘bad’ ideas. Ideas that you at least partially agree with, as based on your definition with the means of production above, a phrase Marx certainly popularised if not coined.