Edit: Changed title to be more accurate.
Also here is the summary from Wikipedia on what Post-scarcity means:
Post-scarcity is a theoretical economic situation in which most goods can be produced in great abundance with minimal human labor needed, so that they become available to all very cheaply or even freely. Post-scarcity does not mean that scarcity has been eliminated for all goods and services but that all people can easily have their basic survival needs met along with some significant proportion of their desires for goods and services. Writers on the topic often emphasize that some commodities will remain scarce in a post-scarcity society.
I’d be willing to bet 3 out of 4 people in this thread couldn’t even define capitalism. I count myself among them.
I think the simplest way to put it is “an economic system where individuals are allowed to have exclusionary ownership of capital”
What’s “exclusionary ownership” mean here?
It’s the idea that because you own something, you’re the only one who is allowed to use it, whether you’re actually actively using it right now or not. You can contrast it with usufructuary rights, which are based on the idea that you only have rights to something while you’re actively using it
So that would be like one of those rental scooters, or a set of scuba gear if you lived and worked on a ship? It’s yours while you’re wearing it, or maybe while you have it checked out?
Yep! I wouldn’t say it would be “yours” exactly because you would never have actual ownership of the thing while you’re using it, but it would be your right to use it and profit from it so long as you don’t destroy it. A good example would be the way Native Americans viewed land use, following herds of wild animals wherever they went and moving from depleted areas to more fertile ones. This clashed heavily with European and American colonialists, who enforced their views of exclusionary ownership with barbed wire fences and violence.
Like territory. Your crew sets up camp somewhere, that’s your property until you move. You walk into a bar, you take over a corner. It’s your corner for the night.
Don’t see the problem in that
The problem comes in what you define as “capital”. Food and housing are the biggest issues for the modern world but there still exists the problem of PEOPLE being considered capital that can be owned by other people.
Food isn’t capital. Capital is wealth used to produce other wealth. A house definitely is. Foods just consumable.
Classic “capital” is a hammer owned by a laborer (that situation is one person playing both roles). The classic capitalist separation of layers is a guy who owns a truck full of tools, and he hires other guys to work on things using the tools, but he retains ownership of the tools.
You should be able to own a house. Everyone should be able to own a house. Food of course needs to be owned to be consumed.
Capitalism: The best system for harnessing the greed inherent in humans for the benefit of others. Capitalism produces the most wealth, and it’s spread more evenly, than any other system.
third person checking in here