We are being taught a corrupt neoMarxist view of capitalism. It is omnipresent. It is pervasive.
In truth, capitalism is an economic system arranged around arbitrage within a market structure.
In order for successful arbitrage to take place there must be strict accountability for assets and processes, what we have come to call private property, better put - legal stewardship, and contract law.
In order for markets to successfully trade, there must be a medium of trade, a value calculus, and transfer of title, of stewardship along with the apparatus of law to assure compliance. Once markets come into operational, buy and sell, existence, arbitrage and capitalism become possible.
Arbitrage, the “moving” of goods and services from plenty to scarcity on the basis of price differentials stated in a common medium of exchange, a value calculus, is the essence of capitalism. A medieval merchant moving grain from a good harvest to a poor one is a capitalist. It requires capital incidentally but it's arbitrage.
The market allows price comparisons of disparate products and services in order to know where plenty and scarcity exist, price roughly being equal to utility times scarcity.
Capitalism has nothing to do with the means of production except incidental to arbitrage as generating plenty to move to scarcity at a profit.
It is simple. It is, as most human institutions are, capable of corruption especially when deliberately misunderstood. We must stop allowing ourselves to be straitjacketed by hostile terminology and assert the humane values of capitalism and give them room to flourish as Aristotle said.
We must not continue to mistake the excesses of scale, basically a feature of accounting systems, for the nature of capitalism.
Do Well and Be Well.
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