Barbara Lamar asks
> What meaning do people on this list give to the term "capitalism"?
Lee replies with the dictionary definition:
"an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of
capital
goods, by investments that are determined by private decision rather than by
state control, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that
are determined mainly by competition in a free market."
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I think that I would replace the word "system" with "state of being". The
word system does fit if one looks at its definition, but it also seems to
connotate that the "system" Capitalism and the "system" Communism or the
"system" Fascism are somehow the same. I cant bring myself to look at it
like this though. System seems to connotate some type of structure imposed.
Nature may be imposing this form of interaction, but man isn't imposing it.
I agree with Lee when he says that it is the system that naturally arises
from free markets (which in an of themselves are a naturally developing
thing). Nature imposes Capitalism, man imposes all other forms. Isn't this
difference big enough to demand a subdivion of concepts much like rain,
snow, hail are all precipitation? Capitalism is after all is what happens
when one quits trying to impose systems on man.
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