Capitalism! The new cousin of (Science!) tm.
I started poking around the Kindle sample of the relentless revolution. I am drawn more to the other October Contraptions book club reading, The Birth of the Modern World, but the introduction's definitions* sparked a few ideas.
Specifically the crisp clarity on what constitutes capitalism:
Stated simply, capital becomes capital when someone uses it to gain more money, usually by producing something. We can add an “ism” to “capital” only when the imperatives and strategies of private investments come to dominance as they did first in England and the Netherlands, next in Western Europe, and then in the American colonies.
And what it replaced:
To prevent social unrest, rulers monitored the growing, selling, and exporting of grain crops. Where there were legislatures, they passed restrictive laws. Hemmed in by regulations, people had few opportunities to make trouble—or undertake new enterprises. Most manufacturing went on in the household, where family members turned fibers into fabric and made foodstuffs edible. Custom, not incentives, prompted action and dictated the flow of work throughout the year. People did not assign themselves parts in this social order; tasks were allocated through the inherited statuses of landlord, tenant, father, husband, son, laborer, wife, mother, daughter, and servant.
The folks I know personally (not famous master of the universe types) who are the biggest defenders of capitalism tend to have an atavistic attitude towards preserving the established order. Which is incredibly antithetical to the original impetus and growth of capitalism through risk taking and incentives.
Folks I know who actually use money to gain more money by producting something tend to be more pragmatic. Particularly if they're actually close to producing something and not up in the ether of our abstracted economy.
This reminds me of something VGR said about how Science! (tm) types tend to not be actually interested in the cultural specific behaviors that make up science such as experimentation, testing, predictive power etc. Instead its a rallying cry and political banner. I'd be curious if others have similar experiences and anecdata.
This Capitalism! rather than capitalism framing also helps make sense of the substantial rentseeking we see at the national level. There is increasingly capital invested not in productive enterprises so much as the symbolism of that, larps of doing big important risk taking things rather than actually going forth and boldly building.
There is a lesser mirror of that in state capture locally and in labor union and green economy dynamics where the language of incentives and competition and risk taking is co-opted by cozy interactions between moneyed interests and government power.
On a secant, I find that defintions and introductions can be quite revealing for what they take to be axiomatic. I used to enjoy reading math textbook introductions for exactly that purpose.
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