I’ve heard a lot of anti-capitalists talk about capitalism and I’ve come to one conclusion on why they don’t like this theory of economics -they don’t really understand it.
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most people seem to think that economics can’t be separated from politics or ethics -but introspection shows that you can separate these ideas without incoherence. So one reason people don’t like capitalism is because they don’t think that separating the normative from the positive is possible here.
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people seem to be uncomfortable with the idea that you can help someone by helping someone else (trickle-down economics). I suspect this is due to the lack of visual comfirmation that people have of this happening in everyday life and plus this interferes with their moral compass since it suggests that all morality is attainable by not acting morally (you can feed the beggar by not feeding the beggar and becoming rich instead).
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some don’t even know why money exists or why profits exist and so they are suspicious of these institutions they reason “why do I have to go to work in the morning? Why is it that I can’t just self-employ?” It is because people don’t know why they do things in the economy which is why they are apprehensive towards it (whereas in politics, people are obsessed with knowing things how the gov. works, the functions of the state, the reasons for certain laws, etc. and this is what makes people favor politics over the market). Ultimately the greatest question mark for this idea is “why doesn’t central planning work?”. This is reflected in the oft said “communism is great on paper but bad in practice”.
To combat these tendencies I think we should combat the specific propositions that these attitudes take. Once these basic attitudes are destroyed then the intellectual tables will be turned.
“Capitalism is based on avarice” our response, “if it were then wouldn’t capitalism tend to lower the value of money -why is there buying in capitalism? and if so, then how can there be consumerism?”
“Increased profits don’t increase wages” our response, “if that were true then immigration restriction would be unnecessary since no one would cross the border to get higher wages”.
When these two propositions are defeated I really don’t think 9/10ths of marxism or socialism or regulationism would be not be thinkable in the mind of most men since these two propositions are the underpinning for all the above anti-capitalist attitudes.