Replying to Avatar El Guiri

It’s really boring hearing people complain about the evils of capitalism when it’s not possible without a free market. Really demonstrates the degradation of education
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micahcmiracle 10mo ago

Capitalism doesn't require a free market (though capitalist economies would no doubt do better with a free market).

One does not require the other.

From AI:

"capitalism and the free market are closely intertwined, with the free market often serving as the primary mechanism for organizing economic activity in a capitalist system. However, the relationship is not one of perfect overlap, as capitalist economies can and do include various forms of government intervention to address social and economic challenges"

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Phil 10mo ago

Yes, this is exactly the point I was making. Free markets are capitalistic but capitalistic economies (especially our society) is not a free market economy. There’s nuance.

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micahcmiracle 10mo ago

I see that point in your OP. It gets really wierd when you consider voluntary socialism organized around a free market... though not my cup of tea, it's possible to have a socialist society with a market more free than what the US had today.

Note: IMHO. a capitalist society with a truly free market is the standard by which individual freedom should be measured.

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Phil 10mo ago

Agreed. I’d love to live in a free market but the reality is we don’t.

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El Guiri 10mo ago

Government intervention? Capitalism? I think AI coming out with this answer means I am too dogmatic in my simplistic belief that capitalism comprises investment of earned capital in a free market system to drive growth, innovation and efficiency according to market signalled desires of a human population.

Either that, or AI has the unfortunate problem of being trained on ideas corrupted within information sources by decades and decades of centralised authority meddling in human interactions.

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Phil 10mo ago

What would you call the economic system of the US?

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El Guiri 10mo ago

Creditism

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Phil 10mo ago

How is that not capitalism mixed with government interference?

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El Guiri 10mo ago

Because theoretical value is created through a fake money system that causes malinvestment due to perverse incentives. The idea of capitalism and free markets is market driven capital investments. It’s as antithetical to true capitalism as centralised capital allocation in communist systems

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Phil 10mo ago

This is the literal definition of creditism: A socio-economic system associated with capitalism but distinguished from it due to wealth being loaned out rather than being invested.

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El Guiri 10mo ago

Maybe wrong def then if it’s just fabricated out of thin air to be loaned out

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Phil 10mo ago

My point was free markets are capitalism but capitalism doesn’t have to be free market. Government intervention can exist in a capitalist society but does not exist in a truly free market.

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El Guiri 10mo ago

But doesn’t government intervention potentially skew market signals and therefore create the potential for malinvestment of capital? If a capitalist system is defined by capital investment in an efficient manner, that skew, by definition, creates a barrier to efficiency discovery (not sure if that’s the correct way to term that)

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Phil 10mo ago

Yes. Government’s intervention leads to a less efficient result. It’s not something I prefer. But it’s different than a free market system which has no government interference. I don’t think a free market economy exists in the world today. Every economy has some form of government meddling (that I’m aware of).

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El Guiri 10mo ago

136% 🙄 it’s why as a non economist trying to figure this shit out, I get confused. We effectively have zero true capitalism by my understanding. Free markets possibly haven’t truly existed in centuries and now that we’ve had full global fiat for over 50 years, there’s a loss of transparency of true relative value. Then the whole lot of this is tumbled through a washing machine of rehypothecation and derivative alchemy. How on earth are we supposed to be able to question relative values of different systems or question things like the concepts of capitalism and free markets?

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Phil 10mo ago

There are people out there who are trying to experiment with different systems. Here are a couple of examples:

Free Cities - https://free-cities.org/free-private-cities/

The Network State - https://thenetworkstate.com/

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El Guiri 10mo ago

Second link requires a little time. Read the first one and interestingly, the first thing that came to mind was Gibraltar! In a time of societal flux and end of debt era, we must simply experiment and find better systems but reading that does also make me think of Sovereign Individual. Have been discussing future of potential sovereign city states with a friend past few years. Thanks for the links, good reading for tomorrow!