The free market assumes abundant choice and perfect information. And that's why we have monopolies and massive marketing to counter that.

There shouldn't be a minimum wage! The free market should decide!

If everyone had a baseline standard of living, capitalists could pay whatever they wanted. And if their proposed wage wasn't worth doing, then no one would do it.

There shouldn’t even be a minimum wage, let the free market decide!

And it did, sadly. 2/3 of the US states still use the federal minimum wage as a guide, even though it doesn't even purchase a cup of coffee these days.

Just say the billionaires are communists

"You know what the difference is between a million dollars and a billion dollars? About a billion dollars."

Serfs were tied to the land, and produced what they actually, directly used, as well as traded their surplus for goods. The rise of capitalism came alongside expelling the serfs from the land, turning them into wage laborers.

That's a very narrow view.

Many or most small companies have many customers - they're not subcontracting to a single upstream provider.

In the case of small subcontractors, what you're talking about is a necessary risk management strategy. It's not a sneaky underhanded contrivance on the part of large companies. Its how "limited liability" is intended to work.

Of course governments protect this because it's essential to a functional economy. You may as well complain about insurance or something.

The petite bourgeoisie exist as laboring capitalists, they aren't really working class but they aren't haut bourgeois either.

Lukacs actually has a term for that - false consciousness and it is a massive problem

Many GenZ-ers can’t even read at a basic level expected from an adult. It’s by design.

Lots of people back then worked in a version of gift economy. Trade was with outsiders and was more like a mob meeting with backup standing behind the ones doing the bartering. There was no central authority to make trade clean and board toom style.

What makes you say that?

Why not?

Unless you're a boomer, as they own most of the economy through their different investments and other holdings. That's who capitalism is working for. Average American owns jack shit, billionaires all together own abour 10 trillion, baby boomers all together own over 80 trillion. That's why they're not just part of the problem, they're the main course.

That's the exact mindset OP is trying to expose. You are a participant in capitalism, but you are most likely not a capitalist. And that is true for 99.9% of people probably

And, even if I'm not an owner of capital, I think it's a better system than most of the systems that have come before it.

Capitalism is the result of well-intentioned people looking at feudalism / manorialism and saying "that system is really fucked, let's see if we can improve it". And, they did. All out capitalism is horrible, but mix in some socialism and it seems to work fairly well. All out socialism has been tried and inevitably fails.

But, if we're going to do capitalism, we should really do it the way that the people who originally proposed it intended. They knew that the main benefit of capitalism was that there was competition. Without competition, it inevitably becomes winner-take-all, which just basically reverts to feudalism. For competition to work the government has to actively break up big, powerful companies, and the government has to be significantly more influential / powerful than all the businesses or people that it regulates (otherwise they'll just corrupt or ignore the regulations).

A proper capitalist system wouldn't have billionaires, because billionaires are evidence that competition has failed.

Commerce is not capitalism

I agree. I get the point she's making but I think she's wrong about the details. Your skills and experience are your capital, and you sell the products of them to employers. Everybody who has a job is also running a business. I don't think most people give themselves credit for that.

Capitalist means "owner of capital." Supporters of capitalism are generally known as liberals.

"Capitalist" redirects here. For other uses, see Capitalist (disambiguation).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_(disambiguation)

A capitalist can refer to the owner and manager of economic capital, or a supporter of the economic system of capitalism.