• intensely_human@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    If we’re using a factory and sausages as the analogy,

    • Capitalism is a factory that makes sausages
    • It eventually degrades into an abandoned building that produces wildlife

    So yes capitalism is a process. I mean, it’s a situation where a process can take place. A free market is a situation in which free trade can take place.

    Capitalism is also an outcome, of an upstream process which is establishing the free market.

    Markets are naturally free when there isn’t much power differential between people, ie when coercion is difficult, expensive, and dangerous.

    As civilization gets more and more advanced, the amount of power an individual or group can have over others grows, and more government input is necessary to maintain the free market.

    This government activity to maintain the free market (ie prevent market domination) includes:

    • trust busting
    • truth in advertising laws
    • preventing individuals from coercing other individuals
    • punishing theft

    So yes. Capitalism takes energy to maintain — again, like all things — and is a process more than an outcome. But it’s also the outcome of other processes.