Comment by 🚀 ingrix
Re: "Question and Answer Thread Use this thread as a place to…"
@stack could you elaborate on the difference between the two? What is the distinction between what you consider Free Market economics and Capitalism?
2025-10-08 · 7 months ago
16 Later Comments ↓
🚀 stack · 2025-10-08 at 15:58:
Simple: Like otherr -isms, Capitalism is a political system in which the government gives preference to capital and those that control it.
Free market on the other hand is a system that tries to avoid any government or interference which invariably breaks things.
Typical features of capitalism are: central banks, issuance of fake money, corporations, intellectual property, heavy regulation, corruption and frequent bubbles and crashes.
🚀 stack · 2025-10-08 at 16:01:
An advanced form of Capitalism is Fascism, where a corrupt government picks a number of large corporations to work with and bail out, at which point they cannot fail.
🚀 stack · 2025-10-08 at 16:06:
A free market does not tolerate such inefficiency that creates billionaires -- anything profitable invites competition keeping full employment and minimizing prices for consumers.
Capitalism is full of regulation and obstacles to existing businesses, making sure corporations profit at the expense of everyone
Monopolies, set interest rates, territories and unions are capitalist tools.
🚀 lucas · 2025-10-09 at 07:38:
Didn't we already have a term for this: "crony capitalism"? Capitalism, at its core, has nothing to do with politics, nor is it a political "scheme".
🚀 stack · 2025-10-09 at 13:52:
No, _Free Market_ has nothing to do with politics. Capitalism most certainly does.
All -isms are political.
Socialism - political movement preferring wasteful social programs for the unproductive funded by robbing the productive
Communism - a political movement to restructure the society into a giant commune, after draining the wealth into a few pockets
Feminism - political movement giving preference to women
Fascism - a weird political movement symbolised by a bunch of sticks, known as fagots. But really about 'the chosen people' killing everyone else around them, because they are in the way
You can fool yourself into thinking that capitalism is the same as free market, but that is propaganda, a lie. Capitalism is the opposite of free market -- a highly regulated authoritarian political regime, with a tight State control of the money supply and iterest rates, regulation of individual transactions, and artificial barriers to conducting trade. And of course, bail-outs of important players via government contracts or even buckets of freshly-printed money.
The only people who talk of anarcho-capitalism are misguided souls who buy into the propaganda, and a-hole billionaires who want only the benefits of capitalism but no regulation for _them_, just for their competition.
📻 Christopher · 2025-10-09 at 16:31:
All -isms are political.
Realism, skepticism, autism, schwendenerism, and mechanism take offence to that statement.
No, _Free Market_ has nothing to do with politics. Capitalism most certainly does.
Capitalism is an economic system where the means of production and distribution are predominantly privately held—nothing to do with politics. (The parts that are not privately held can be held by some form of government, which may be authoritarian or non-authoritarian.)
A free market is an economic system in which supply and demand are unregulated or regulated with minor restrictions (such regulation also requires some form of government).
A capitalist economy with minor restrictions is a free market economy.
🚀 stack · 2025-10-09 at 19:53:
There is no free market with money controlled by the State. That one item alone makes your statement meaningless.
📻 Christopher · 2025-10-09 at 20:12:
A capitalist economy doesn't require money controlled by the State. All that a capitalist economy requires is that private entities (individuals and businesses), not a government, control the means of production and distribution.
Most capitalist economies _do_ use fiat currency because it's something that everyone can trust to have value, and so it's an effective and efficient way to store and transfer value. Other effective ways to store and transfer value that everyone can trust but don't depend on a government, such as maybe cryptocurrencies, might largely displace fiat currencies in the future. We'll just have to see.
Edit to add: Also, a free market economy _is_ a capitalist economy (but not all capitalist economies are free market economies). How could it be otherwise? An economy where the means of production and distribution are not controlled by private entities is a regulated economy (so is neither a free market nor a capitalist economy), so a free market economy must have its means of production and distribution in the hands of private entities.
🚀 stack · 2025-10-09 at 20:24:
There is no free market with money controlled by the State. That one item alone makes your statement meaningless.
🚀 stack · 2025-10-09 at 20:25:
Whatever makes you happy
If this is about word definitions, we can end it here
📻 Christopher · 2025-10-09 at 20:46:
I think this is about using a word as it actually means and not what you think it means. Otherwise we'll find ourselves in the same situation as Alice:
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’
—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
Words/phrases like "capitalism" and "capitalist economy" have actual definitions. We can't just make up our own definitions to suit our own personal agendas.
🚀 stack · 2025-10-09 at 20:54:
Except that "capitalism" no longer means what it did when it was placed into the dictionary.
🦆 galup [OP/mod] · 2025-10-31 at 01:38:
@stack There's no misunderstanding. Anarchism in anarcho-capitalism is against having a leader in the area of politics. The term capitalism is used as it is strongly tied to private ownership as it's essential. Having this understanding of private ownership as the essential creates no contradiction in the terms being used together.
You may use free market if you prefer, but the case for capitalisms essential being private ownership is strong.
Without going into specific theorists that contribute to the knowledge of anarcho-capitalism such as Rothbard or Mises we can turn to popular dictionaries, etymology sites or wikipedia to gain an idea of it's essentials in popular conception:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capitalism
"an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods"
https://www.etymonline.com/word/capitalism
""condition of having capital;""
https://www.etymonline.com/word/capital#etymonline_v_53180
""a person's wealth," from Medieval Latin capitale "stock, property,""
https://etymologyworld.com/item/capitalism
"Capitalism is an economic system characterized by: Private ownership of capital"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_capitalism
"Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production."
As demonstrated. It's not hard to see that Capitalisms essential and core tenet is about ownership and property rights.
The idea that it's at odds with the "free market" and that Capitalism is essentially "a corrupt political scheme designed to suppress free market and reward cronies, enforced by men with guns." is quite unfounded even with your appeal that "Except that "capitalism" no longer means what it did when it was placed into the dictionary.". The dictionaries very much point to an essential other than the one characterised by you.
🚀 stack · 2025-11-01 at 18:00:
An appeal to authority wil not change my mind about what is around me.
I suppose it may be more accurate to say that capitalism is no more and we are trapped in an absurd corporate Marxism with fascist flourishes.
I don't particularly care what the propaganda machine calls it, but they use the word capitalism for this authoritarian system that is decoupled from supply or demand, uses fake money, employs asses to set prices and dictate social/economic policies and protects the rich at any cost.
🦆 galup [OP/mod] · 2025-11-01 at 18:27:
@stack apologies, I misunderstood what you meant when you said:
"Except that "capitalism" no longer means what it did when it was placed into the dictionary.".
Also it was not an appeal to authority. It was to show that you're the one that arbitrarily asserts a definition and insists upon it. The word has a particular established usage and meaning that has been identified consistently by those that have employed reason to come to their conclusion.
You decided to use the word capitalism to describe something other than what it's roots and essentials are.
🚀 stack · 2025-11-01 at 19:01:
@galup, you are right about the misuse of the term 'capitalism' as defined in dictionaries. However I insist that the original meaning is lost -- there is no free market anywhere in the world, all money is pure fiat, and artificial barriers to running a business form large, state-subsidised corporate walled gardens that function outside real economy and need no 'customers' except for show. Private ownership is severely restricted, regulated, and used as a tax money pump. It is not I who insists on calling this 'capitalism'.
Original Post
Question and Answer Thread Use this thread as a place to post some intial questions and answers.