Not immoral, amoral. Capitalism as a system doesn't make moral judgements. Guns, child sex-slaves and heroin follow the same principles as wheat and butter. We make moral judgements about them, but the market does not. It just weighs.
I understand the complexity issue fine. Complex markets are likely NP hard. As I said, capitalism (specifically free trade) is an okay heuristic for reaching a local optimum, but it is certainly possible that we could do greater good under a different system with a better heuristic that actually takes into account what good is.
Anyway, it doesn't deserve to be your primary compass for making the world better. Following the maxim of bettering capitalism at all costs can lead you down some decidedly twisted paths.
If anything, Adam Smith's most famous work on free trade was a critical moral point in ending English slavery, which dovetailed nicely in with reformed Christian beliefs against slavery.
And free trade capitalism is just a tool, but a tool so powerful it lifts billions out of poverty even when they're ruled by totalitarian governments. Or would you argue that the US's efforts to reform Chinese communism were more effective than it's efforts in engaging in free trade, in helping alleviate the suffering tens of millions? We should all support freedom and democracy, but lets not kid ourself about the power of free trade markets to improve people's lives faster than simply advocating for the vote and free speech.
> I'm enslaving you and stealing your capital in the name of a free market system which believes every person is the owner and price arbitrar of their own labor.
Capitalism is a practical theory, you can't create your own utopian free market system where people's 'rights' to property are magically enforced.
There's no rule or capitalist ethos saying that I can't simply take your stuff if I have the resources to do so. In fact, as far as I can tell, the objective is for me to take your stuff. If I can trade nothing of mine for everything of yours, I'm simply maximizing my profits. Pat on the head for me! You need an outside theory to understand property rights, courtesy of someone like John Locke.
But saying Indians or Chinese didn't have a system of property rights or government before the Europeans saved them with capitalism, is wrong and a bit racist. As if everything in the rest of the world was awful before the white-man came and created civilization to save the savages.
> And free trade capitalism is just a tool, but a tool so powerful it lifts billions out of poverty even when they're ruled by totalitarian governments.
This is a rhetorical platitude. I'm supposed to believe it because you believe it, and you keep repeating it, but you haven't provided evidence that it's actually true.
> Or would you argue that the US's efforts to reform Chinese communism were more effective than it's efforts in engaging in free trade, in helping alleviate the suffering tens of millions?
I think the US has had little to do with China solving it's internal problems. (Which arguably, it still hasn't entirely solved, my pessimistic view is that it has simply taken a break). Also, let's talk about those factories with subhuman working conditions in Shenzhen where people commit suicide and make iPhones. Free trade, yay.
> We should all support freedom and democracy, but lets not kid ourself about the power of free trade markets to improve people's lives faster than simply advocating for the vote and free speech.
I'm not saying free trade is bad, but what I am saying is that it is terrible as a #1 guiding principle. You need something more substantive than that.
GP said "amoral" not "immoral". Morality is only a factor in capitalism in so much as it informs the decisions of the actors involved. Both truly moral activities and truly immoral activities can coexist in a capitalist system.
And how is freely trading your labor and goods for other's labor and goods an immoral system? I would call capitalism the most moral system we've ever devised. I assume you would think some central authority should decide who gets and does what, in some system that graph theory quickly shows runs into O2 complexity with node to node interactions swamping any decision making authority. FYI, having an authority tell people what they can and can't do with their labor sounds suspiciously like slavery, or exactly how the majority of people in India and China lived most of their lives pre-contact - as serfs, just like the rest of the world.