I think there’s a distinction to be made between free market economies and capitalism. Capitalism, with limited-liability shareholder corporations and such, allows businesses to scale and concentrate wealth in a way that markets by themselves do not, and that’s where the problem lies.
Capitalism is more broad than that. The Soviet Union was state capitalism. Basically a capitalist economy with only one company, the government, and thus no free market (monopoly on everything).
At any rate, to someone who likes competition and the free market but dislikes getting screwed and exploited by megacorps, it seems like state capitalism would be the worst of both worlds.
Assuming that attitude describes a lot of people in a country like the US (excepting the psychopaths in the owner class), and I think it does, it goes a long way towards explaining why “communism” (read: state capitalism) is wildly unpopular compared to “capitalism” (read: the opposite, in the minds of black-and-white thinkers). It seems to me that driving a wedge to separate the ideas of “free market” from “capitalism” in people’s minds would be the necessary first step to effect change.
Somehow the term free market became a bad word for many people. People think that a free market leads to a monopoly as one company eventually buys out its competitors. But if you look closely enough, nearly all monopolies are possible only with government interference in the market, either through tariffs, intellectual property laws (trademarks, patents, copyrights), or even direct monopolies over radio frequencies in the spectrum auctions.
I think there’s a distinction to be made between free market economies and capitalism. Capitalism, with limited-liability shareholder corporations and such, allows businesses to scale and concentrate wealth in a way that markets by themselves do not, and that’s where the problem lies.
Capitalism is more broad than that. The Soviet Union was state capitalism. Basically a capitalist economy with only one company, the government, and thus no free market (monopoly on everything).
At any rate, to someone who likes competition and the free market but dislikes getting screwed and exploited by megacorps, it seems like state capitalism would be the worst of both worlds.
Assuming that attitude describes a lot of people in a country like the US (excepting the psychopaths in the owner class), and I think it does, it goes a long way towards explaining why “communism” (read: state capitalism) is wildly unpopular compared to “capitalism” (read: the opposite, in the minds of black-and-white thinkers). It seems to me that driving a wedge to separate the ideas of “free market” from “capitalism” in people’s minds would be the necessary first step to effect change.
Somehow the term free market became a bad word for many people. People think that a free market leads to a monopoly as one company eventually buys out its competitors. But if you look closely enough, nearly all monopolies are possible only with government interference in the market, either through tariffs, intellectual property laws (trademarks, patents, copyrights), or even direct monopolies over radio frequencies in the spectrum auctions.