|
Top-level
 @finner No. That is not what a capitalist is. And if it were it wouldn't me limited to a capitalist economic model. You can have capital in any economic model. But a capitalist is a supporter of the capitalist economic model. A poor person can be a capitalist, and a CEO of a Fortune 500 company can be a communist just fine. Also only the first part of your definition of capitalism is correct. 'Extracting value from the labour of others', is not accurate. 4 comments
@Schouten_B I'm not sure we're going to get much further in this discussion. We seem to have some differing interpretations and definitions we're going by. I'm not an economist and probably not incredibly well read I suppose, but as far as the things I have read and the way my understanding of the definitions of these things, they don't seem to be jiving with yours. @finner Yeah. You're probably right. I'd personally go with the definitions of the proponents of different systems. I.e. when I think if socialism I think of the kind of idealistic utopian system Marx envisioned. Not the nightmares than Lenin, Mao and Castro created. Similarly when I think of capitalism, I think of the idealized versions envisioned by Adam Smith or Acemoglu and Robinson. It helps understand why some people believe in one specific system above others. @finner I myself am more of a pragmatist. Whatever, experiment with stuff from different systems and come up with a Frankenstein-system that actually works. The idealized systems aren't resilient in terms of game theory (as the US, China, Russia, Cuba, etc. have shown) anyway. Europe is a lot better at that than North America generally. Probably because far fewer of us identify strongly with a specific economic system. (Maybe because of the strif around them leading up to WWII) |
Gregory's Server
@finner Just as to amass wealth in a Leninist society you don't need to be a Lenenist. You don't need to be a capitalist in a capitalist society to amass wealth. You can work to be 'successful' (or at least wealthy) within a system without actually caring much for that system.
Often the best way to get wealthy is actually to subvert the system, use game theory to exploit the weaknesses of the system. Both in capitalist, socialist and communist societies do people do this.