Thanks for such a breakdown at that scale. I appreciate it. (sorry for my slow reply).
I think my view of Capitalism is over-indexed to the human to human level. Although as I zoom up to ownership and 1 to many relationships, it gets more complicated but still fits in my consent view.
Regarding your beef machine example. What you present as the owner having control over the others still seems like consent to me, in that for them consent is something they has to opt into. What I see is the leverage has changed. Ie the machine owner can chose to fire a worker. But that is them no longer consenting to work with that person. I guess we could say, 'but the worker consented to work in an environment where they thought they had some protections' for instance. Is that how you see it as being non-consensual, or am I misunderstanding?
The point on keeping the profits also makes sense to me still. If I want to take risk, I can start a business, where I reap the rewards and bear the losses. If I don't want to take risk, I can agree to work for a fixed rate, but miss out on the rewards.
For sure I can imagine to some people, they want to make a collective and share all (rewards/losses), but that still seems like either require opt in (capitalism / collective structure).
So it's no longer peer to peer, but still seems consensual at a 1 to many scale to me.
I think there is a natural valuation drop off at scale.
For instance if only one person sells coffee, I really want to trade with them. If 100 people have coffee, I'm not that fussed about an individual vendor anymore. Then they loose leverage and I gain it. Haha, sounds crass to write it in those terms, but sure you know what I mean.
Regarding this part:
> It is hard to imagine the end of capitalism, because people believe capitalism is a natural facet of human nature. It is not; it is a big beef machine.
Does my analogy of buying coffee from one person or picking from 100, fit in with the big beef machine dynamic you point out here? Or how come not? I don't think the analogies line up perfectly, but can't put my finger on where they don't align.
Separate line of thought (but to the same end), curious what you think: If humans are nature, and humans have capitalism, is capitalism not natural?
Haha, easier to talk about these things in real life, appreciate your time/efforts here anyway.
I am going to try to respond to the middle chunk later, because I don't really understand the lines you are drawing and how they map to my argument. In some sense, you are describing "The Market", which is another thing that exists outside of the means of organizing the resources. There are collective systems of governance that answer a lot of these questions, too!
To this, however:
> Separate line of thought (but to the same end), curious what you think: If humans are nature, and humans have capitalism, is capitalism not natural?
I don't care? Cancer is natural, Bifocals aren't. I don't think it's a useful framing on the question. My opinions would be the same on capitalism if it were a plot from the moon-beings of Andromeda IX vs. it being written explicitly written into our DNA. In the context of the quote, it is meant as in "It is not an objective facet of our existence, or something we must endure."
"“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
The framing of it as natural was to point out that you can't get rid of it. It would be like getting rid of people having favourite colours. We just act like that.
>"“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
This was nice to read, although following on from my first point (this comment), I don't think this analogy fits. Kings to capitalism I mean. Kings are one central top down authority, whereas capitalism has many spheres of power which pop up wherever there are humans clustered. It's nature.
I disagree. Capitalism is a very specific, recent invention. You are living out the actual quote. I don't care if its nature - in my estimation, it fucking sucks!
Your argument works just as easily for Kings, Slavery, and every other horrible thing humans have done to one another. Capitalism is not in any way, shape, or form necessary to human existence. It would be like saying that Prime Time TV is "Nature" and worthy of almighty consideration. I pray I get to live to see the end of all of the above in my life time.
I've said my argument about as cleanly as I can! It's a complicated topic, and I encourage you to continue reading about it.
I'd guess it's more recent, since it's more recently we scaled.
With slavery, there wasn't consent. So I'm not sure that's comparable.
> I pray I get to live to see the end of all of the above in my life time.
That's kind of my point though, you can do that right? There are lots of collectives and alternative communities where you interact with people how you all agree. Or if you have a different structure, you can start it. Or do you feel differently?
I think my view of Capitalism is over-indexed to the human to human level. Although as I zoom up to ownership and 1 to many relationships, it gets more complicated but still fits in my consent view.
Regarding your beef machine example. What you present as the owner having control over the others still seems like consent to me, in that for them consent is something they has to opt into. What I see is the leverage has changed. Ie the machine owner can chose to fire a worker. But that is them no longer consenting to work with that person. I guess we could say, 'but the worker consented to work in an environment where they thought they had some protections' for instance. Is that how you see it as being non-consensual, or am I misunderstanding?
The point on keeping the profits also makes sense to me still. If I want to take risk, I can start a business, where I reap the rewards and bear the losses. If I don't want to take risk, I can agree to work for a fixed rate, but miss out on the rewards. For sure I can imagine to some people, they want to make a collective and share all (rewards/losses), but that still seems like either require opt in (capitalism / collective structure). So it's no longer peer to peer, but still seems consensual at a 1 to many scale to me.
I think there is a natural valuation drop off at scale. For instance if only one person sells coffee, I really want to trade with them. If 100 people have coffee, I'm not that fussed about an individual vendor anymore. Then they loose leverage and I gain it. Haha, sounds crass to write it in those terms, but sure you know what I mean.
Regarding this part: > It is hard to imagine the end of capitalism, because people believe capitalism is a natural facet of human nature. It is not; it is a big beef machine.
Does my analogy of buying coffee from one person or picking from 100, fit in with the big beef machine dynamic you point out here? Or how come not? I don't think the analogies line up perfectly, but can't put my finger on where they don't align.
Separate line of thought (but to the same end), curious what you think: If humans are nature, and humans have capitalism, is capitalism not natural?
Haha, easier to talk about these things in real life, appreciate your time/efforts here anyway.