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Originally Posted by smooth
well, first of all, alansmith, don't start your replies to me with assertions that I don't understand what I'm talking about or I won't respond to you.
you claim I don't understand capitalism, but my post was about capitalists. To the extent I'm characterizing their argument, it would be their failure to understand what capitalism does or does not do--not mine.
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I'm would like a response, but when you make broad statements that I find to be incorrect smoo, I think it's best for me to state how I think they are incorrect. I think your general statements about capitalists to be false.
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then you launch into some kind of discussion that doesn't even significantly alter what I said. Regardless, the only defining characteristic of capitalism is the personal ownership of assets. Nothing in your post points to this, so at the very least you should temper the irony in your responses. Everything in your reply are assumptions you've loaded into the model as to what capitalism does or ought to do. Your comments aren't the defining characteristics of capitalism. At best, they characterize the US flavor of capitalism, but by no means does it have to be such and wasn't before and certainly won't always be.
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Why do I need to alter what you said? I largely agreed with some parts, but certain things I found faulty. And my assumptions are no more loaded than yours. And personally, what I have always been led to believe is that capitalism isn't just driven by personal ownership, but by market forces. That is the key component. And it's debatable as to whether or not capitalism has always been this way (I would think that most economists would point to capitalism being pretty much the same since it arose from the mercantile period), but I never said it won't always be. But you can't say it will definately be different with any more certainty.
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As to how one can wonder if something is nurture or not, your comments on greed are not even historically accurate in our american historical context. furthermore, if you were correct, and greed were innate, we wouldn't have lasted very long as a species since particular people would have been driven to conduct themselves in ways that didn't serve their best interests. greed is the desire to accumulate more than one needs. greed would compel people to accumulate beyond their means, not just maxamize their utility. Lots of people maximized ther utility long before capitalism was even a concept to be debated over. our nation's wealth was founded on the opposite of greed. Read the Protestant Ethic by Max Weber for more insight on that. You might really enjoy his work. He's not critical of capitalism except to argue it ought to be fair.
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I've read some of Weber's works before, and I found them interesting, but didn't agree with many of his conclustions. And I don't see how you can add fairness into capitalism, because many people have different ideas of what exactly fair is. My point was that now, because of increases in production, utility can be maximized in more exclusionary ways. And by definition, utility would be maximized if someone accumulated beyond their means-if it didn't maximize utility, they would stop accumulation earlier. Unless your claim is that people who are opperating in a greedy way are irrational, and lower personal utility by their overaccumulation. Which I personally find hard to believe, and can't think of anyone else making such a ridiculous claim. Again, being greedy isn't just about overaccumulation, it's impossible to "overoveraccumulate". Because if someone is accumulating more, it's obvious they desire it, it's within the bounds of what they feel they need. Now, it might be more than necessary for bare survival, but that's not an accurate definition of overconsumption (unless you claim that everyone is overconsuming, which then makes it a meaningless debate).
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regardless, no behaviorist would or could claim greed is innate. Perhaps some kind of behavior is advantageous to the continuation of our species, but it's merely an expression of a trait. You haven't explained the trait but instead latched onto an expression of it that our society has labeled as 'greed' and, for the most part, claims to discourage (despite what you thought, this makes no claims about capitalism as a system, but rather to state that capitalists simultaneously believe that greed is socially repugnant but somehow essential to our survival (as your post exemplifies).
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It seems you have misunderstood what I posted. I do think that greed is if not essential to survival, definately a driving factor in survival. And I don't find it necessarily socially repugnant. One of the points I was trying to make was that capitalism relies upon greed, and that many people who speak for capitalism would like to ignore that fact, because of the negative connotation associated with greed.