Yes, and people wanting to get funky with all this should absolutely read some Marx and probably some Lenin and also some Kropotkin, Polonyi, and maybe some Gramsci, Lefebvre, and Harvey. But I get annoyed when theory gets trapped in the ML vortex.
STS and ANT are a great tonic for that, as is Gibson-Graham's Diverse Economies. It's all people who tried ML and found it wanting and tried to come up with something more grounded and workable.
@MichaelTBacon @mapachin @cykonot Capitalism won’t survive when most citizens don’t see or perceive benefit. The gluttony of billionaires, corporations eliminating workers via automation and AI, millions of jobs exported for $$$, Capitalism is the characteristic of human endeavor that easily slips into greed, where ME>WE, not WE>ME. We’d better start thinking in terms of us and the planet or it will be a nasty end for millions, maybe more.
@Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin what if capital reproduction is no longer significantly based on human input? When society can be fully ignored
@cykonot @MichaelTBacon @mapachin Then Capitalism as we know it can’t exist, can it?
@Huntn00 @cykonot @MichaelTBacon @mapachin Capitalism exists in the form that we agree on as a society. If enough of us decide that computers should be the sole arbiters of what is symbolic value (money), then that is the system that it is. If we agree that these machines should decide whether a corporation should or should not continue to exist, then that would be how the system works.
@yoused @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin I would say "decide on" (or have determined?) as a society, rather than agree. But I agree with the thrust of what you're saying.
I'm not sure that we have a shared sense of capitalism right now, at any rate.
@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin You are probably right. It is a complex subject that has a lot of vectors. One of the fundamentals is a mechanism for representing substantive and transient value symbolically (money in exchange for action or product). After that, it gets into what I think it means vs what you think it means and is highly influenced by cultural paradigms.
@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin We have immortal corporations in contemporary capitalism, but is that a defining quality or just what we call it right now? My mother was fond of saying that corporations were originally temporary collectives formed to accomplish a thing (e.g., build a dam) and then dissolved, which seems to sound preferable to what has been imposed on us.
@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin Then we have this whole raft of shit with the Stock Markets, where people make money on the change in perceived value of a business. Instrument trading and profiting on value shifts does not look to me like it contributes anything worthwhile to anyone other than the trader who profits. It is a big casino.
@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin The crucial aspect to any form of capitalism is support from the underlying system. The libertarians who advocate for minimal government obfuscate in the inextricable role the government plays in making the system work.
@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin There are really only two ways you can own something: by some sort of title document recognized by the government or by having the biggest and best guns to protect you from the people who want to take something away from you.
@yoused @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin (governments being organizations with the most biggest guns)