There needs to be a capitalism appreciation course. Like art appreciation, but for the social system that delivered our modern standard of living
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@dacattac and I just decided this over dinner and he gets credit for these tweets)Show this thread -
Seriously we are planning a Capitalism Appreciation Society right now. Who's in?
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Really, this is a big part of why I started
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Replies on this thread have been interesting. Many people say that economics is all you need to appreciate capitalism. Not true! You also need history and morality.
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Many people think that because capitalism is already dominant/successful, it doesn't need more appreciation than that. I disagree: it is exactly when things work that we need to make sure we appreciate them. Otherwise we risk biting the hand—or the social system—that feeds us.
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Many say that a lot of the good things I might credit to “capitalism” should actually be credited to government—from power plants (which are now public utilities) to the Internet (invented by a DARPA program) …
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… It's true that government has been involved in many innovations of recent decades and many benefits we enjoy today. But that doesn't mean government could have done these things without capitalism! And so it doesn't refute my original point that capitalism is underrated.
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Some people seemed to think capitalism has only benefitted the few. This makes me sad. The vast majority of the world has benefitted from capitalism, including billions of Indians and Chinese who have lifted themselves out of poverty in the last ~40 years.
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Of course, many blamed capitalism for any or all of the ills of the world, from pollution to slavery. No time to refute all these one by one; I'll just note that most of these things long predate capitalism, and that the fights against them are powered by the wealth it created.
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I'm particularly confused by people who cited the Flint water crisis as a counterargument, since water in the US is a public utility. That one seems pretty squarely to blame on government officials… ?
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(I'm similarly amused at the people who in any other context would oppose military spending, but suddenly become DARPA fans when arguing about private vs. public spending.)
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But a lot of the confusion is probably around what no one addressed: what is “capitalism”? What does that term even refer to?
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“Capitalism” is a funny term. It was coined by 19th-century socialists to name what they *opposed*, then adopted by its 20th-century defenders in place of “free markets” and “liberalism” (and a “liberal”, in the US today, is closer to a socialist than to a classical liberal).
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“Capitalism” names the essence of what socialists opposed (or claimed to oppose): the accumulation of capital and the control of that capital by a minority who profit from it. But this is *not* the essence of free markets or classical liberalism.
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This thread got broken somehow, it continues here:https://twitter.com/jasoncrawford/status/1104539315382546434 …
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End of conversation
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