We're entering a stage of the Great Awakening where it might behoove you to know how to pitch Capitalism to the disillusioned masses who have no idea why their Communistic worldview appears to be bringing the ruin of civilization.
We gotta pick the pieces up somewhere, right?
Well, I got you covered. I'm gonna explain Capitalism in such a way that you might be able to form rational arguments to "ship" it to all those who are soon gonna be freaking the fuck out as we approach this upcoming Great[er] Depression. They might do something rash, like Burn, Loot, and Murder as the system collapses from centuries of debt all being called in at once.
We don't want them turning cannibal, even if we're the ones with the guns...
So, here it goes.
Capital, what is it?
Capital, in [Webster's 1828 dictionary] (https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/capital) is defined as:
CAPITAL stock, is the sum of money or stock which a merchant, banker or manufacturer employs in his business; either the original stock, or that stock augmented.
Okay, that's fine and dandy and the standard definition, but it means fuck-all to the brainwashed normies of today.
Let me put it clearly, with an more illustrated description.
You have a paper clip. Your neighbor has a pen. You want the pen. Your neighbor wants the paper clip. You value the pen more than the paper clip. Your neighbor values the paper clip more than their pen. You trade the paperclip for the pen.
Both parties have less of what they don't value and more of what they do value.
That's the Deal™
If you were to measure how much your neighbor values the paper clip over the pen, you have established the measure of your Capital, in the form of the paper clip. You see, Capital is relative to the Deal, not the other way around. That's important, but we'll get to it another time perhaps.
Another way to put it is this; Capital is a measure of what you want versus what you're willing to trade to get it. The more you have that you're willing to part with, the more Capital you potentially hold. That's the simple of it, anyway.
The Role of a Captialist -- To Profit
You have Capital when you have things other people want more than you. Say you own a lumber mill. You have 200 logs and a forest. Any point in the day you can go out and get another log. Because of this, one log is worth less to you than to anyone else. You still need to eat, so you must trade logs for a day's worth of supplies to sustain the business.
Now we get into measuring Capital objectively, rather than subjectively based on personal worth. We can put a number to the worth based on your turn-over. If you can process two logs a day, then you'd need to trade a at least two logs for supplies to break even. If it takes you 3 logs to trade for supplies, it's unsustainable. You, therefore, value supplies at a maximum of one-day's labor (two logs).
Your goal is to ultimately have more at the end of a day than when you began. That's Profit. To do this, you must either a) increase the number of logs you can process in a day, b) reduce the usage of supplies (cost), or c) trade the logs for more than their worth to you.
So long as you can process more logs than it costs you in supplies, you are turning a Profit, and are successfully increasing your Capital. The goal in sustaining life is to have more at the end of the day than when you started. Be it knowledge, physical assets, or opportunities; so long as you have more of them set aside for tomorrow than you did yesterday, the day has not gone to waste and neither have you.
Virtues and Vices of Capitalism
Here, I'm gonna go over the naughty bits of Capitalism. The habits they form, and why some habits are beneficial to society and others are detrimental. No system but God's is perfect, so we just have to deal with the shortcomings of the systems of Man in the mean time.
The greater virtue of Capitalism is that there is a clear goal. You want something, so you do something to get what you want. So long as you have wants, you will do. You have freedom to choose what something you will do to get those wants. If everyone does something, then no one need be a parasite which wants much but does nothing.
The key habit formed by a Capitalistic system is the Hoard. The more you have, the more Capital you acquire, and the less you have to do tomorrow. This is a virtue, and is essential to retirement prospects. However, should you hoard all of a particular resource in a system, you can artificially increase it's relative worth to others, and your Capital gains value due to the scarcity you impose on others. We call that a Monopoly, and it is parasitic by means of inflating value of a resource beyond your own needs and wants at the detriment of others.
Therefore, the Virtue of Capitalism is the ability to Retire. The Vice of Capitalism is the presence of Monopolies. You can't have one without the other eventually rearing its head, though we do our best to shun and spurn the Monopolies that try to take hold.
The Art of the Deal
There is, however, a stop-gap in that equation. The game Guild Wars 2 has an interesting quest in the game which has you trade runic stones (a form of currency) between four Jotun for their possessions such as garden tools, scraps of metal, caged bunnies, barrels of mead, etc.
The quest starts by you entering into the system with catching a rabbit nearby. You find a Jotun who wants to trade your rabbit for runic stones. He gives you the stones and you may now take those stones and buy something off him. Let's say you get a shovel. You move over to one of the other three Jotun and find one who wants a shovel. Two may want the shovel, but one offers you less runic stones than you traded the rabbit for while the other offers you more. You trade for more, and as you continue this process eventually you end up with an increasing number of runic stones.
This is the Art of the Deal, a la Trump. You act as a middle-man between these Jotun who want what one another have, but because of a combination of their stubbornness and poor marketing abilities (and the fact they are literal NPCs) they fail to trade amongst themselves. By trading their assets between them, acting as the mover of goods, you end up with more runic stones while they end up with more of the items they value and less of the items they don't.
Notice that last part. Their Capital is exhausted in this process. They theoretically have less of what they are willing to part with, which means less Capital.
Do you see the real-world mechanics now? The Art of the Deal is the solution to Hoarders turning into Monopolies.
If you didn't value Trump's purpose in the economy beforehand, now I think you do... The objective of a person like Trump is to make his own Capital in the form of a currency (which he then invests into real estate) by closing deals for others.
The good he's effectively selling is the footwork required to move the hoarded Capital of others. Particularly, his job is to convince them they should trade their hoarded goods in the first place.
Doing this offers a much-needed role in dissolving the hoard of goods which accumulates and lends itself to Monopolistic and, even worse, Corporatist tendencies. When someone sits on their wealth too long, they begin to crave power, which inevitably leads to corruption. So long as goods are moving, and there is someone savvy at moving them, a Capitalist society doesn't fall into the trap of Monopolies which allows for the seduction of a failing Socialist or Communistic system as the "solution" to the wealth disparity.
Anyways, I hope this helps you understand Capitalism in a way you might not now before. We often get caught up in the traditionalisms of a Capitalistic system that we forget just why it's good AND why it sometimes has failings that need to be addressed.
These are the ideal constraints of the system, mind you. I left out how the Banking system applies simply because I wished to impart on you just how Capitalism is meant to function without the parasite that is usury and interest debt hanging artificially upon it.
If you've read this far, I hope you got some value out of this pseudo-rant/economic lesson. The more we continue to think about such things, the better we might be able to form arguments that shake the normies out of their deep-state sleep.
Capitalism is a very bad name in my view.
America shouldn't be called "Capitalism".
America should be called "Entrepreneurialism". The America Dream isn't about money or acquiring capital resources.
It's about taking your ideas to launch a company.
https://ezinearticles.com/?cat=Business:Entrepreneurialism
While I agree with the sentiment, the problem with Entrepreneurism versus Capitalism is that you have to retire at some point.
You can't maintain a perpetual state of Entrepreneurialism for each individual. At some point you have to hang up your hat and rest on the Capital you've acquired. For this reason, among others, Entrepreneurialism has been a hard sell to people who pine for the day they can sit on their ass and watch the clouds roll by.
I'd love a healthy mix of the two, personally, but until we solve the whole mortality thing, Entrepreneurialism has the shortcoming of benefitting the youth over the elder. As such, every Entrepreneur ages into a Capitalist as they see their returns dwindle with the passage of time and the wrinkling of their skin.
True.. but the capital requirement is very subjective.
This is why it's easy for our opponents to mark people who want to acquire more and more capital resources as "greedy".
This is also why the average person ignores small businesses and thinks that capitalism is a big corporation trying to acquire everything.
That's a false way to look at things.
If we want the truth. We must paint the picture that our country is about the idea that anyone can follow their dreams and win.
You cannot sell world capitalism to normies. Socialists can easily point to the Amazon of the world.
When you say Entrepreneurialism. That's very hard to rebrand as some greedy corporate entity.
It may be a good rebrand, but it is inauthentic. Entrepreneurialism is it's own thing, and much harder to write from a marketing standpoint.
It'd be nice if there was a system that took the best of both and combined them and had a snazy name that rolled off the tongue well.
It's gonna be hard to refurbish Capitalism's namesake, I'll grant you that, but we are in the season for people to look at things in a new light, so I'm optimistic that we can separate the greedy stigma of Capitalism away from it so long as we never dismiss the potential for Monopolies and Corporatism to form under its hood.
More to the point, I think the greater strategy is to make more well known that Capitalism and Corporatism are not the same thing, though one permits the other. Capitalism without Corporatism is almost identical to Entrepreneurialism in practice aside from a discrepancy in motive of the business owner, which is beyond policy control anyways.
The key is to point out Corporatism where it exists (our present day economy) and harp on the fact that Capitalism is simply as system to maximize a societies efficiency, by allowing every individual to focus on what they are good at (entrepreneurialism?) and then allowing said individuals to swap what they are good at creating for what they require to feed their families. Capitalism is why everyone does not own milk cows and a hen house. Capitalism is not inherently evil or selfish. We are all in agreement on concepts it seems, but for me, it would be simpler to salvage "capitalism" while clearly marking where capitalism stops and corporatism starts, and rightfully condemning corporatism.
I see your points.
We are dealing with Abstract Nouns.
Capitalism is much more abstract than Entrepreneurialism.
Which makes it harder to confuse in my view.