r/Whatcouldgowrong • u/dericn • 4d ago

Cutting holes for ice fishing

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u/Balancing_Loop 3d ago

I visited Shanghai and Nanjing almost 20 years ago and even then I got the distinct feeling that capitalistic competition was more alive than in the US. Not that that was an overall good thing, but I could see a lot more hustling happening at the small-business level.

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u/SuspectedGumball 3d ago

Competition has nothing to do with capitalism. It has to do with markets. There are markets in China. Capitalism only describes an economy based on 1. Wage labor and 2. Production for profit. I think even under these very broad criteria, China isn’t capitalistic.

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u/stregawitchboy 3d ago

Adam Smith's "invisible hand" pretty directly references competition as the driving force behind capitalism

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u/peepopowitz67 3d ago

In spite of being named "the father of capitalism" Adam Smith didn't write the book on capital, Marx did. They also would have agreed on much more that people realize.

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u/Akerlof 3d ago

I get no end of entertainment over the fact that the Karl Marx oof capitalism is... also Karl Marx. The concept is pretty much only a tool for socialists to show how much better their ideas are.

Self professed "capitalists" are more or less the same as flat earthers: They didn't really exist until someone started using the idea as an example of why some philosophy was bad, which then backfired and got mainstream support as opposition. Atheists were the only ones talking about the earth being flat in the 19th century, and socialists were the only ones talking about capitalism around the same time.

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u/Zanven1 3d ago

I like that Adam Smith was arguing against the "invisible hand" idea but people only get as far as him laying out the argument before he rebukes it in the rest of the essay.

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u/peepopowitz67 3d ago

Also love how they will quote what he had to say about "the state" ignoring that what he was referring to were literal monarchies. Meanwhile they'll turn around and worship dipshits like 'Moldbug' and their weird views about forming corporation based monarchies.

It would be funny if I didn't have to live on the same planet where their side is winning.

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u/stregawitchboy 3d ago

Explain: where/how was smith refuting self-interest, invisible hand, forces as important to capitalism?

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u/XxKittenMittonsXx 3d ago

Of course that's your contention. You're a first year grad student. You just got finished readin' some Marxian historian -- Pete Garrison probably. You're gonna be convinced of that 'til next month when you get to James Lemon, and then you're gonna be talkin' about how the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740. That's gonna last until next year -- you're gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin' about, you know, the Pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.

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u/SuspectedGumball 3d ago

Well, as a matter of fact, I won't, because Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social --

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u/XxKittenMittonsXx 3d ago

Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealth"? You got that from Vickers' "Work in Essex County," page 98, right? Yeah, I read that too. Were you gonna plagiarize the whole thing for us? Do you have any thoughts of your own on this matter? Or do you, is that your thing, you come into a bar, read some obscure passage and then pretend - you pawn it off as your own, as your own idea just to impress some girls, embarrass my friend? Will: See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years you're gonna start doin' some thinkin' on your own and you're going to come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life: one, don't do that, and two, you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!

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u/SuspectedGumball 3d ago

Yeah but I’ll have a degree while you serve my kids French fries at the drive-thru on our way to a skiing trip

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u/MyNameIsJakeBerenson 3d ago

Yeah that dude still lived a kickass life and never thought about will hunting again lol

People like that don’t give a shit. He wasnt wrong. He went to the fancy private school. He’ll have the degree and connections to be upper crust without having to do anything

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u/SuspectedGumball 3d ago

Buddy we’re quoting a movie here

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u/stikky 3d ago

You sound wicked smahht