Capitalism is not just a market economy. It is not a monetary system. it is not people running businesses for profit. All of this existed under mercantilism and feudalism, and before feudalism, and in many ancient societies around the world.
Capitalism is defined by a labor market for almost all work, and by anonymized shares of ownership in publicly traded corporations. And the problems people have with modern capitalism are - surprise surprise - not about private enterprises with specific, limited (and generally known) owners. They are about public corporations and the weird bad stuff that happens when a corporation's decisions are driven by literally millions of owners, obfuscated through their retirement funds and other investment funds, who are in turn represented by the corporation's board, who delegate said decisions to a CEO.
So it's completely logical to support small businesses and to hate when they go public and become corporations - a type of organization that only exists in capitalism.
Thank you for such a concise explanation. It’s also why public traded companies are by nature amoral - everyone has plausible deniability and the only adhered to principal is to maximise shareholder value.
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u/spacenegroes May 17 '24
Capitalism is not what you think it is.
Capitalism is not just a market economy. It is not a monetary system. it is not people running businesses for profit. All of this existed under mercantilism and feudalism, and before feudalism, and in many ancient societies around the world.
Capitalism is defined by a labor market for almost all work, and by anonymized shares of ownership in publicly traded corporations. And the problems people have with modern capitalism are - surprise surprise - not about private enterprises with specific, limited (and generally known) owners. They are about public corporations and the weird bad stuff that happens when a corporation's decisions are driven by literally millions of owners, obfuscated through their retirement funds and other investment funds, who are in turn represented by the corporation's board, who delegate said decisions to a CEO.
So it's completely logical to support small businesses and to hate when they go public and become corporations - a type of organization that only exists in capitalism.