Re:I wish GPT4 had never happened
by imtringued on Monday April 10, 2023 @04:41AM
(#35510341)
Proto capitalism is what lead up to feudalism. The Roman empire didn't have modern capitalism with banking, company shares and insolvency but what they did have is a silver/gold standard with debt bondage. Debt bondage is still a thing in Pakistan and the dynamic is exactly the same. You borrow a little money, the interest payments become overwhelming, you are forced to work on behalf of the creditor who can decide your wage and the interest rate.and whether they pay you in food and shelter or in money. There is no reason why they wouldn't abuse this power.
You see it all begins very benign. A farmer has a bad harvest. He needs to bridge over this year until the next harvest. So he borrows money with interest. When the next harvest fails then he becomes unable to pay and is forced to sell his land and perversively, hired to work on his own land. He has functionally become a serf. All it takes is for this to spread to the rest of society and you end up with feudalism.
In other words, feudalism is what happens when proto capitalism is exaggerated to an extreme extent.
If you were to exaggerate modern capitalism I am not sure what would happen. Maybe hyperinflation, maybe world war 3, maybe a reform of the banking system, maybe mass starvation or maybe a revolution or maybe modern feudalism except serfs aren't allowed to own intellectual property or shares in companies.
So no, I don't think the problem is that we don't have capitalism. We clearly have more capitalism than we want or need. Robber barons are an intrinsic part of capitalism.
The answer is a market economy without capitalism. I don't even see why anyone would care about capital obsession in a free market anyway. That sounds inherently autocratic. At some point in the capital accumulation process one person owns the entire economy, how does that not make them a monarch eventually?
You see it all begins very benign. A farmer has a bad harvest. He needs to bridge over this year until the next harvest. So he borrows money with interest. When the next harvest fails then he becomes unable to pay and is forced to sell his land and perversively, hired to work on his own land. He has functionally become a serf. All it takes is for this to spread to the rest of society and you end up with feudalism.
In other words, feudalism is what happens when proto capitalism is exaggerated to an extreme extent.
If you were to exaggerate modern capitalism I am not sure what would happen. Maybe hyperinflation, maybe world war 3, maybe a reform of the banking system, maybe mass starvation or maybe a revolution or maybe modern feudalism except serfs aren't allowed to own intellectual property or shares in companies.
So no, I don't think the problem is that we don't have capitalism. We clearly have more capitalism than we want or need. Robber barons are an intrinsic part of capitalism.
The answer is a market economy without capitalism. I don't even see why anyone would care about capital obsession in a free market anyway. That sounds inherently autocratic. At some point in the capital accumulation process one person owns the entire economy, how does that not make them a monarch eventually?