Comment on Return to monkey then?
SailorMoss@sh.itjust.works 8 months agoAdam Smith was much more critical of capitalism than he is given credit for. For example, Adam Smith was critical of rent seeking and landlords. It would be somewhat accurate to replace Orangutan with Adam Smith in this meme.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Yes Capitalism is supposed to be pro-worker/anti-rich
Hence my comment about people still paying to live before adoption of capitalism
SailorMoss@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Supposed by whom? The rent-seeking behavior that Smith criticized was largely brought about by enclosure; the process of enclosure was foundational to capitalism.
This is ahistorical, before enclosure the peasantry had substantial rights to live freely on the common land.
I suppose it does depend on what is meant by ‘pay to live on this earth’. If you just mean that people have to work to take care of themselves then, sure. But that’s not really what this meme is referring to. If it was then the orangutan would be ‘paying to live on this earth’ as well.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Adam Smith is the inventor of capitalism specifically his criticisms that you cite are about the systems we had prior
Are you just wrong for the sake of it?
He wasn’t criticizing a system that was built based on his writings
SailorMoss@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Adam Smith did not ‘invent’ capitalism. No single person can invent an economic system. He made some early observations and normative assertions about a set of economic relations that were forming independent of him.
So the economic system we had prior to capitalism was feudalism. The common lands that I mentioned were apart of the feudal system. The system of landlords and rent-seeking were and are apart of capitalism. You can just look around… we still have these things. You do understand that right? Unless you’re saying our current system isn’t capitalist.
intensely_human@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Capitalism is pro-worker.
Capitalism is based on voluntary exchange. It is defined by the so-called “free market”, which is word for “a situation in which nobody cooperates economically without their own consent”.
Zacryon@feddit.de 8 months ago
And that’s the problem, because everyone is coerced to do that if they want to survive. And those, who own the means of production, the capital, the companies, are those who have the power to exploit those who don’t. And they do.