Hmm, as I said, it's really murky for me. "Capitalist" has evolved in the meaning to mean "American EEEEVIL", be it a greedy insurance provider or rich billionaires with big bellies

@Cerberus Yeah, also murky

@M.A.R. I would say capitalism is a system in which much power rests with or derives from capital.

I'm almost sure ours borrows a lot from capitalism, but when it comes to propaganda documentaries on EEEEVIL 'Murica, capitalism is evil because the US is evil because capitalism is evil

Capital is important, as opposed to labour or other factors of production, or even entirely different aspects of society.

@M.A.R. Yeah, but capitalism is as old as society.

Some degree of capitalism comes with the right to property.

Which is ancient.

hmm

The question is, how important do you let property of capital be in your society?

Iran and Holland have a certain degree of capitalism, like almost all large societies.

Some societies have a more extreme form of capitalism, like America.

Where even healthcare is or was mostly awarded to owners of capital.

But, even in America, various important aspects of society are not really based on capital.

Like protection from violence.

@Cerberus It's probably too late in the night for me to ask the right questions, but how does capital in the sense of the right to property becomes more or less important?

Isn't that like a pact everyone has to respect?

I mean, except maybe that pure form of communism

@M.A.R. If you, as a society, decide that those controlling a certain amount of property/capital/money receive healthcare, while those without do not, then you make capital more important than it is in other societies.

Say, are private hospitals an example of capitalism?

Yes.

The right to property often must cede to other rights or considerations, even in America.

@Cerberus Hmm, so technically "universal healthcare" would or should be possible for most countries except the likes of the US and a few other extremely capitalist nations, if there are any

Even those who are poor (do not control property) profit from protection from violence (by army and police); and this protection is provided by the state, using property disowned from citizens (taxation).

@Cerberus Hmm, starting to make sense for me

@M.A.R. Hmm I wouldn't say that. It depends on how you see it. In a very poor country, there just won't be enough proper healthcare for everyone. But, in a moderately rich country, yes, universal healthcare should be possible. And in rich countries it is almost universally available (with some caveats...).

Then it's a very abstract and fundamental concept? I thought it was supposed to be a full-fledged niche economical theory

You mean capitalism?

Yes

I would say it is a very general ideology and/or system.

So yes, abstract and fundamental.

It ties into Marxist theory.

Marx wanted to give more power and importance to labour, at the expensive of capital.

The, uh, 'precedence' of the capital/right to property in the, uh, list of basic rights?

You could call it that: the precedence (to some degree) of capital to various other factors, like labour or even human rights.

If you give it lots of precedence, you have a very capitalist society.

If you give capital no power at all, that means there exists no private property, so you have perfect communism.

Consider a factory in the 19th century.

Then criticizing a system for being capitalist wouldn't make sense, but for being too capitalist. Makes sense.

The owner of the factory has lots of capital: he owns the building, the machines. Those things are a form of capital, besides raw money. The workers have lots of labour: they are capable of work, and they do all the work. Now who should decide what happens in the factory, how the profits are distributed? If the owner decides, then capital has lots of power. If the workers have a say, then labour has some power. If there is no owner, and/or if the workers decide everything, then labour rules.

@M.A.R. Yes. Unless you advocate true communism.

However, capitalist can be used as short for typically/highly capitalist.

As with any adjective.

If you have a bunch of elephants, led by Mammutha, the largest of the pack, you could say it makes no sense to call her large, because all the elephants are large.

Or you could say, compared with other relevant entities, i.e. other elephants, she is the largest, so it makes sense to criticise her for being large.

Maybe that didn't make much sense...but I think you already understand what I was trying to say.

I did, but that would risk losing some nuance of the other elephants' largeness for people who can't see them

True.

If you classify societies as either capitalist or non-capitalist, you lose lots of nuance.

It's not black and white.

Even America has various non-capitalist features, perhaps now more than ever.

Even communist societies had some forms of private property.

In Socviet Russia, the state could and often did take away your farm and order you to work on it without having any say over it any more.

But you would usually still have e.g. clothes and furniture that nobody else could use. Those could be disowned, but usually wouldn't be.

And even the lowliest prisoners in communist concentration camps usually had some objects they treated as their own property.

Even if it was just their shoes, or an old postcard from a relative.

nod

So much agreement!

In economics, production factors are anything that can be used to create value.

Examples are capital and labour.

Creating value is any increase in economic value, i.e. producing food, providing entertainment, but (I think) also accruing interest.

I'm gonna Google a lot of this stuff later for some momentary insight before I read an economics 101 book

Fun.

It's 3. I should really sleep now

Goedenacht

Are you on a half time zone?

@Cerberus Yep, UTC + 3:30

OK.

شب بخیر

No idea what that is.

And it's so small!

Arial's fault

I see.

خیر = good (n.)

Night t'good?

@Cerberus Mhm

Noted.

Bonne nuit!

@Cerberus A good one. You might add that fascism is thought to arise from capitalism in crisis, wherein the middle class (or petite bourgeoisie or whatchamacallit) finds itself on a shaky economic ground and feels threatened by the encroachment of big business on the economy and on what they value as their national tradition, leading to a strong yearning to purge their society of the evils of untethered capitalism and liberalism and return to what they see as a glorious past.

So it's reasonable for a fascist state to strive for economic self-sufficiency (as opposed to capitalism, which advocates for free markets and free trade) and try to establish that with corporatism (a self-sufficient body of economic "organs").

And the fascist hatred towards minorities is due to the fact that they are deemed the ones to blame for the contamination of the pure nation that once was and should again be achieved. So conspiracy theories thrive in this kind of atmosphere.

And intolerance and violence is justified or even extolled.

An example of a situation where the middle class leans towards fascism and blaming minorities (immigrants, Jews, etc), I've heard, is a stagnant, deflationary economy, where your property starts to devalue against the value of the currency.