There is a whole raft of writers who made their bones writing about runaway capitalism in capitalist Britain. The most famous story by perhaps the English language's greatest writer, Charles Dickens, is a morality tale about a hardhearted and greedy boss whose underpaid staff is practically starving to death.

The French revolutionary thought that inspired our own government was energized by the plight of the French poor in 18th century laissez faire France.

And that's all if you stop at the 18th century. Dig on further back into antiquity and there's even more going on.

I am not surprised this argument merited the use of a throwaway account.

> "capitalists" think of "capitalism" as just a thing that happens when property is respected and contract law works

"Just a thing" is a conveniently abridged version considering capitalists can only own anything physical in the first place because their government took it from someone else under threat of (or actual) physical violence. The only way anyone can own anything they had no hand in creating is by planting a flag and saying "I'll shoot you if you step over here".

It's still (IMHO) the best system we have. Doesn't mean I have to be blind to its problems.

> "Just a thing" is a conveniently abridged version considering capitalists can only own anything physical in the first place because their government took it from someone else under threat of (or actual) physical violence

But it's not really wrong, it just ignores that the same is just as true of other economic systems, what differs is simply the model of property rights.

To address the (unfortunately dead, because while wrong it's a point of view which is common enough that its worth correcting, and not present in an inappropriate way) grandparent post:

> Given that "capitalism" is a word used by socialists to describe the absence of socialism

No, it's not. It's true that capitalism was coined and defined by socialist critics, but it doesn't refer to the mere absence of socialism. (Marx distinguished capitalism as much from the feudalism that preceded it as from the socialism he saw following it.)

> ("capitalists" think of "capitalism" as just a thing that happens when property is respected and contract law works),

The only difference between that and, say, the Marxist view is that Marx recognizes that the capitalist system of property rights is a specific view of property rights distinct from other historical and conceivable views of property, while capitalists are prone (as you just did) to confuse their model of property with the general concept of property. Feudalism (and for that matter socialism) is just as much a thing that happens when a particular system of property rights is established, enforced, and respected, and contracts consistent with that model of property are given weight.

That's an interesting point: if I had to guess at an explanation, I'd say that "runaway capitalism" makes people miserable and in well-franchised societies the people will always demand that the government step in (see: so much of US history, the fact that this article was written).

However, if the people of a country are asking that too much be "given" to them (I.E. more than the country actually has), who's going to stop that? It surely won't be the same people that supported the bad administrators to start with. The only people who resist this bad end are the fiscal conservatives that always keep an eye on the budget, and if they aren't there to start with (preventing the monetary crisis from starting in the first place) then, well, nobody's going to rally the "radical fiscal conservative revolutionary front."

> However, if the people of a country are asking that too much be "given" to them (I.E. more than the country actually has), who's going to stop that?

The external actors from whom such goods must come will, as historically they always eventually have.

Which leads to a destroyed economy, see Venezuela and Greece.

Sometimes, sometimes not; it's pretty much the story of every empire that falls, too, and some.of those are spectacularly disastrous for the metropole, some not.

Venezuela and Greece are cases not only of dependence on outside actors to meet internal demands but also of the state in question being weak in comparison to the individual outside actors involved (not just the aggregate of the outside actors involved.) That probably makes a good outcome harder to achieve.

Unethical crony capitalism can destroy capitalism through the accumulation of wealth and centralization of power. What's the difference between 5 robber barons running the show and 5 members of the party vanguard?

I'd suggest if you are a serious fan of capitalism, you take the arguments seriously.

Historically speaking, the US has survived robber barons, but Venezuela qua Venezuela has not survived its party vanguard.

Likewise, I have a hard time taking anyone seriously advocating for socialism who is unwilling to grapple with the fact that, yes, Venezuela is a valid data point, as are the hundreds millions of deaths socialism is directly responsible for, and spending at least a few moments contemplating whether or not they'd be one of them if they did manage to get socialism going in their local polity. If you care enough about people to want to gift them with socialism, you ought to care enough about people to spend some time considering the possible dangers it carries with it.

The party faithful do well in socialism. The almost-just-barely-not-quite-faithful, the ever-so-slightly-not-quite-in-step, the ones who agree with their leadership in principle but differ ever so slightly on matters of how to implement or who should implement... their death rate is pretty rough. Guaranteeing you're in the first group is harder than it may first appear.

Did robber barons have as much political power as corporations do today? This is an honest question. I'm not an expert, but my speculation is that the level of control that lobbying gives those "winning" capitalism today over the laws that are supposed to be keeping them in check is a new thing and will take us into uncharted territory.

>Historically speaking, the US has survived robber barons

Because of socialist policies.

Every war in the middle east was caused by run away capitalism. Strong evidence that Venezuela was caused by interference from a runaway capitalist state (USA). The establishment media is an example of runaway capitalism, reporting the propaganda necessary to perpetuate the story.

However I think the true problem is runaway sociopathy. For sociopaths and psychopaths, the promises of socialism and capitalism are just a nice story to get what they want. You can't look at Venezuela, Soviet Russia, Modern Russia, and the Military Industrial complex in the USA without seeing sociopaths. There's millions dead in the middle east and you're pointing at socialism in Venezuela.

I've seen several TV crime shows on psychopaths and sociopaths where they'll remark, in passing, that sociopaths are often CEOs or surgeons, not just murderers. I offer this, not as evidence that its true, but as evidence that we've just absorbed that information as "just how it is". The #MeToo movement is taking a stand against such sociopaths and I hope it succeeds. I'd like to see what society could look like if we didn't tolerate sociopaths. If we simply managed to educate people that sociopaths exist, and that if someone can smile at you, and tell you everything you want to hear, then they might be a nice person, but they might also be a sociopath. And if 4% of the population are sociopaths and psychopaths, is that 4% spread evenly? Or would it congregate in places of power?

and why do you think people keep turning to socialism? could it be because capitalism has a tendency to run amok?