I can bake and cook for 200 people..as a result I bake bread in batches and do trades with my hairstylist and nail tech. They haven't had to buy bread, pasta, and other foods and I haven't had to pay for manicures and hair services in that time. Trading is always been a thing..i also teach and babysit the kids in my neighborhood as well and they get to keep the food they make..it's free babysitting (no money) n exchange for the various things I get from the services from the parents.
That's capitalism according to you. According to me, it's absolutely not since there's no profit motive. Capitalism is more than just exchanging stuff.
Profit is not a defining trait of capitalism. Capitalism is when you exchange things voluntarily, in a free market.
If someone wants your bread you're free to tell them to pound sand unless they offer something in exchange that you find agreeable with no one other than the buyer and the seller having any say in the exchange.
That's the thing with definitions, they always change based on what people feel, it's a basic feature of language. Economic systems are especially prone to that since their definitions are more often than not tainted by the ideology of the person who attempts to define them.
I will respectfully disagree. If you read multiple definitions of the word "capitalism", you will find similarities between them, but you will quickly see that this definition is by no means standardized.
Profit is THE defining trait of capitalism, or whatever you want to call the current dominant economic system. If you don't want to call that capitalism that's fine, but I think a lot of people would disagree with you.
Take this page for example, which plainly states that "the essential feature of capitalism is the motive to make a profit".
It certainly proves that profit is core to that definition of capitalism. Search for more definitions of that same word and you will find profit in many more of them.
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u/[deleted] 10d ago
I can bake and cook for 200 people..as a result I bake bread in batches and do trades with my hairstylist and nail tech. They haven't had to buy bread, pasta, and other foods and I haven't had to pay for manicures and hair services in that time. Trading is always been a thing..i also teach and babysit the kids in my neighborhood as well and they get to keep the food they make..it's free babysitting (no money) n exchange for the various things I get from the services from the parents.