Post by @jklem@lemmy.zip

2026-10-14 02:04 UTC

Hi, I am probably one of the few right-libertarian capitalists on Lemmy (I love FOSS!). I’m also a former employee of the Foundation for Economic Education, one of the oldest libertarian institutions dedicated to explaining capitalism. I will do my best to give a big picture answer to your question, but it’s such a huge topic so feel encouraged to ask follow ups (in good faith please). First of all, different people define capitalism different ways. When it’s proponents defend it, what we mean is a system of free markets and free enterprise based on a system of property rights. An essential part of this is the allocation of capital through investment, with profit and loss signals directing this capital. We don’t mean rich people trampling on the property rights of poor people; we would call this “corporatism” or “crony capitalist.” The current United States economy has capitalism in some areas, but corporatism in many others. We believe that capitalism leads to the best possible outcomes for the most people. This doesn’t mean that its outcomes are perfect, or that there are zero people who get left behind (there certainly are), but that compared to all other existing possible systems, it is the best on a relative basis. Yes the rich get richer, but the poor also get richer relative to where they were in generations past (and, on average, over the course of their own individual lifespan). We also believe that capitalism is the most moral system in that it respects individual rights, or which a core part of this are their property rights. Systems that initiate force against peaceful people to take from some and redistribute to others violate people’s individual rights. This doesn’t mean that we oppose charity or don’t want to help people, we very much do, but that we see the initiation of force as a moral wrong in that pursuit. We believe that capitalism is the only system that can lead to a consistent and rising quality of life for the masses for many reasons, but perhaps the biggest is the free price system. Prices being allowed to move through supply and demand, rather than being set by central planners, are necessary for the efficient allocation of scarce resources to their most needed ends. Without this, economic dysfunction is inevitable. (This is known as the Economic Calculation Problem or the Knowledge Problem, and the landmark essays in the history of economics that discuss it are Ludwig Von Mises’s “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” and F.A. Hayek’s “The Use of Knowledge in Society.”) We know this to be true on a theoretical basis, but empirically looking historically and cross-culturally, we see that societies with more capitalism consistently outperform those with less capitalism. We see China’s economy dramatically advance by switching to an overwhelmingly capitalist mode of production, and economies that switch to socialist/communist mode of production stagnate and induce starvation and suffering. We don’t see the authoritarianism of communist nations as merely an accident of history, but as the necessary result of trying to force an impossible economic system to continue through its failure. Capitalism, as we see it, requires a legal order that protects property rights (whether this legal order must come from government or not distinguishes “anarcho-capitalists” from “minarchists” who believe a small limited government is necessary). We do not believe that companies should be allowed to pollute other people’s property or cause damages to them, yet in a proper legal order we do not believe regulation is necessary to achieve this either. Instead, a system of common law and torts require damages to be paid to those whose rights are violated, with these damages to outweigh the benfits to corporations from taking such actions, thus incentivizing them not to engage in the rights violations to begin with. In our current system, corporations work with governments to regulate themselves out of such liability (this is called “regulatory capture”), which we oppose. I’ve written a lot but only just touched the surface. With more narrow questions, I can provide more specific answers.

Replies (3)

@Allero@lemmy.today 2026-10-14 07:54

I have to admit, Lemmy is so politically uniform that I kinda welcome something else. Question: how do libertarian capitalists expect to combat corporatism? If anything, capital has a tendency to grow or die, and economies of scale along with vertical integration dictate higher survivability and profits of larger businesses vs smaller. And so, corporate structures appear again. What can be used to prevent it? The rich get richer, but the poor also get richer One of the most common criticisms of late-stage capitalism is exactly that poor do not get richer anymore. For example, here are nominal and inflation-adjusted median household incomes in the US: Considering that inflation metrics count the whole economy, and not particularly basics like housing (which went through the roof and yet accounts for a huge share of expenses in a median and especially poor household, it’s not unreasonable to assume poor people are worse off than they were 20 years before. Prices being allowed to move through supply and demand, rather than being set by central planners, are necessary for the efficient allocation of scarce resources to their most needed ends. The socialist criticism is that “most profitable” and “most needed” are two different thing. Suppose you made a meal, and offer it to a millionaire and a broke homeless individual. Most likely, the latter will need it more, but won’t be able to pay for it as much as the former. We see China’s economy dramatically advance by switching to an overwhelmingly capitalist mode of production And we see USSR economy skyrocketing after socialists came to power. And yes, extreme growth went way beyond New Economic Policy. What we need to look for here, if we must be honest, is externalities. China switching to a more capitalist mode was net benefit because it enabled global trade as opposed to relative economic isolation. One of the main issues dragging socialist economies behind was that, being formed mostly of a few countries tilted into extreme poverty by previous regimes, they never got to access the same volume of trade and capital investment as their capitalist counterparts. When even these markets started to crumble through the Cold War, China had little other options.

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@avice@lemmy.ml 2026-10-14 08:34

Well, the wealth gap between rich and poor people nowadays is higher than it was a the time of the French Revolution (we still refer to Marie Antoinette’s “why don’t they eat cake” as a despicable blindness of an ultra-wealthy person to the condition of the world she inhabits, but the rich today are far, far more removed from those who try to survive without having their basic needs met and that removal its just accepted by most or even idolized by some). How, if this is the state of the world today and as you said, the protection of property is the de facto leading legal principle of a society under capitalism, can the immense wealth that has been accumulated by all of us working (seen or unseen) in this system but is manifesting itself as the property of a select few be considered a consistent rise in the quality of life of the masses? Isn’t it true that the planet is dying because capitalism can only work in a world with unlimited resources, which is not ours? That the number of armed conflict is the highest since WW2, because this is capitalism’s answer to realizing this planet’s resources are not unlimited? That fascism is on the rise again because a society without discrimination would not work for a capitalist economy that needs people who have to do underpaid, life-threatening work or right out forced labor so that companies can join the free market with a competitive price (the holocaust btw happened under capitalism and many companies e.g. VW got big because they relied on detainees from the labor camps to give their lives working for them)? That the low birth rate in many countries puts women’s bodily autonomy in danger, because capitalism needs a stable influx of new people to join the workforce (and the military, see above) and if this is not a given, because nobody who isn’t rich can afford children and keep their current living standard anymore, measures will be put in place to enforce a stable birthrate in the future? A rising living standard for the masses is an outdated, ideological assumption about capitalism.

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@Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2026-10-14 14:27

There’s a lot that’s fundamentally wrong with this comment, but I think I can hit the core pretty narrowly. You cannot disentangle capitalism from the state, the capitalist state is not outside of capitalism but is instead a core function of it. Corporatism and cronyism are not in opposition to capitalism, they are a later stage in capitalist development, as compared to earlier capitalism when markets are highly underdeveloped and instead very decentralized and anarchic. You also have a deeply moralist analysis, not a materialist, logical analysis. There is nothing inherently good about private property rights, and justifying the theft of surplus value on the basis that it is already common practice and would require violence in the form of revolution to change it is a moralist argument. It is just as easy to say that the everyday violence of theft of surplus value is a violent attack on working people, who create all new value. We must make scientific, materialist arguments, not simply rely on emotional soundbites. You also ignore imperialism as a function of capitalism as it develops. The expansionist nature of capitalism causes it to dominate developing countries, where a share of the spoils are used to uplift the imperial working class. This is why the poor often get richer in developed capitalist economies, not because capitalism lifts all, but because developed capitalist economies shift their greatest contradictions to the international scale. When you move on to socialism, you are entirely wrong. For example, the marketization in China is found in their developing industries, where markets do play a progressive role. However, in their developed and critical industries, China uses central planning. This is because planned economies overtake marketization when production advances to the national and international scale. It isn’t a binary planned/market distinction that socialists advocate for, it’s instead looking at the level of development of the productive forces and using the correct method accordingly. Monopolies are an inevitable result of capitalism, because as technology improves, it requires more input to maintain. We cannot simply break up monopoly without inefficiently destroying productive forces in the process. This is where cronyism and corporatism, as you describe it, come in. Socialism and planned economy solves these problems by using the developed productive forces according to scientific planning, which is far more efficient at this scale (and is why China is doing so much better than capitalist economies). Even more totally planned economies like the USSR saw some of the most rapid economic growth on the planet. They did not introduce starvation, they took overwhelmingly backward societies and brought them at and beyond their peers in rapid time. Life expectancy doubled between Tsarism and socialism in a matter of decades. Famine, while common in Tsarist Russia, was eliminated by 1935 outside of wartime. GDP growth was extremely rapid, all without running into crisis of overproduction or falling profitability: You write a lot about what you “oppose” about capitalism, but without a coherent understanding of the totality of the system, you are reduced to unactionable moral platitudes, rather than concrete actions that can be taken. You remove the state from the economy and pretend it can be made to work both in the interests of the people as a whole while also shrinking, despite the fact that capitalists prop up and dominate the state as a co-evolutionary process. The solution is socialism. Planned economy for developed industry, marketization limited to developing industry, and as all industry develops, transition to full planning to a collective and scientific aim.

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