It's a strange word. Really I prefer "voluntary behaviorism".
"Capitalism" seems like it has to assume that the motivation is a pursuit of capital.
And while it probably usually is, motivations are muscular. (There's rarely 1 singular reason or goal behind why you do something.) And it's possible to build a restaurant on the beach just because you feel like it.
Maybe you think it's a way to have a lot of sex. Maybe it's fun, maybe you want to get better at cooking. Probably you don't even know exactly what's motivating you.
So calling it "capitalism" sounds like technically an assumption, that the point of everything is to get capital.
It's really more like "acting in a way that seems good for you" type of ism.
("Capital" is so impersonal. Your life's energy matters though, and it would probably be hard to get people to rally to violate it if we thought about it in those terms.)
Sometimes the confused, backwards minded children even talk about "imposing" capitalism.
But it's quite the reverse.
The mixed economy quasi capitalism with fruits of our labor taken from us and the various forms of interference and special privilege and barriers on who can do what -- those things are imposed.
But people organizing and cooperating and building and exchanging just happens. It could maybe be thought of as imposed by our nature or creator or something, but not by other people.
It's just natural to "hey you're an animal, this is Mother Earth" that we'll skedaddle around and try to do things and create things that make us better off.
The first time someone cut down a tree and made a little fort out of it, that was capitalism.
When he learned that he was pretty good at it and built one for his neighbor Timmy while Timmy caught fish, an economy was born. 😲🤗
Win win.
Or maybe we worry that Timmy will get taken for a ride and it would have been easier to just make the fort?
Usually that won't be the case if your reasons for making the trade were decent. (So it's theoretically win-win.)
And when it turns out bad, oh well. It just means you got better at fishing, there's a fort, you're both fed, and now you have a better sense of how the activities compare and what terms you can set in the future, and you're on to Cincinnati.
(Even fishing out of pure charity would strengthen the overall group and be appreciated and maybe come back to you somehow.)
There's just no real downside, whereas if you were tentative to coordinate with others because oh no and woe is you if you ever give more than you get, that'd be a big downside.
If you try too hard to avoid Ls, nothing happens.
Now, as economies grow and become more sophisticated, price starts to get automatic. When I buy Lay's potato chips, I might keep an eye out for when I can get them for $1.77 via the Mix&Max promotion, but it's not like I sit down with the manufacturer and discuss terms.
So there becomes less and less room to get gypped. Just, higher standards and communist propaganda and public school and they feel more victimized than ever before. But they're not.
Not by Fritos or Oreo cookies anyways.
But regardless..
"Capitalism" is what happens by default.
That's what people do. Spontaneously and in a decentralized way, we try to figure out what we want. And often it will involve cooperation with other people.
It isn't like the cis white Europeans or whatever villain you have in mind swooped down and were like "I now declare that there will be capitalism!!" and beep-boop-bop everything now morphs to fit this decree.
No. People engage in capitalism by default.
Things like "there should be trained professors using their life's will to teach me things regardless of whether I do anything in return for them", besides being weird and a form of believing you own other people, do not happen by default.
These are the things that need to be planned and implemented before it's how society works.
🤷🤷
Wise up, kiddos.
Your public schooling did you rotten but keep smiling, keep shining.
The United States in some ways is like a beautiful half-measure. An idea or a vision.
THE WHITE PEOPLE KILLED THE NATIVES THO COULDNT HAVE BEEN A GOOD VISION 😡😡
True, they did. 🥱🥱 (And vice versa!)
Perhaps people of 500 years ago could have been like "y'know... this looks promising but it's always possible that there could be like 50 people lurking who believe that the surrounding 100,000 acres all belong to them, so let's actually cancel this exploring thing and just kind of randomly turn around right now".
But they stayed, and the vision formed essentially to try to guarantee personal opportunity for whoever would show up.
SLAVES THO THEY HAD SLAVES NOPE DOESNT COUNT
Yes, they did. They like every country and culture and race that the world had ever known to that point, in step with African kings who would capture and sell their people, did indeed have slaves.
Ideas can still be great and perfect even if 5% of the people don't live up to them.
Google estimates there are currently some 40 million people in slavery.
Seems India is a big powerhouse, with an estimated 14 million slaves.
(TODAY.)
Inspired by beliefs that people should be free is likely what ended it for America and the West.
Compared to countries like India and China and Iran and Pakistan who have foggier relationships with freedom and human rights, who linger and continue to do slavery.
(And it's really cute that the SJW kids are worried about white people from hundreds of years ago who at least also fought and sacrificed to end it, rather than those who more commonly and still currently 😆 engage in it!)
😆😆
Beautiful vision. But a half-measure.
It's centrally decentralized, basically.
George Washington, Henry Knox, Nathan Hale.. I ride w/you any day. But you centralized it 🤷
A little bit. But a little bit is enough.
Freedom can't be beat. But when it's based on a centralized structure giving it to us, now it's only as good as centralization, and any jackal or opponent of free people or whatever can just try to get their hands on that lever.
In our true decentralized form we're impenetrable, and we will get there.