What’s the argument against capitalism/international trade in this context? Trade increases the cost of war, which is a good thing, right?
One might ask if such an arrangement is good for society if most people are left struggling to survive.
However this is all based on a rhetorical question: does “capitalism” the word include this arrangement of firms? Is unrestricted free trade likely to lead to this arrangement of firms? Would a different structure of firms, like cooperative ownership, alleviate some of those problems? You could still have “trade” in an economy of cooperatives. But would that still be “capitalism” or would this be considered something else?
People are divided on whether it should be called something else. But a lot of people who think we should “move beyond capitalism” do not want to eliminate free trade, just the societal norm where most firms are controlled by a small number of people.
I have never met two people who can agree on how this would actually work. Just some basic questions:
Is there still government controlled currency and interest rate? If not, how is the money supply in the economy managed? Am I allowed to print my own currency?
Is there intellectual property? If there are no trademarks, there is no such thing as counterfeit goods, so I can produce a laptop and call it macbook.
Does that mean Cartels are allowed? Is market manipulation allowed? Presumably unrestricted trade means I can run pyramid schemes and call them banks?
What happens if the seller lied about the product?
Is there adverse possession of property and planning permission? If not, can I dig down or build up as far as I want? What if I block sunlight to your solar panels on purpose?
Can I sell my kidney? If yes, can I trade in someome else's kidneys?
Can I give out loans with crazy interest rates? If yes, you just legalised debt bondage, a form of slavery.
Is there bancrupsy?
Are there air rights and rights over electromagnetic spectrum?
Any conceivable set of anwers to these question amount to rules and regulation. You can't actually function in anarchy
So, monoplies (and feudalism, and dictatorships, and pretty much any centralization of power) are bad.
The obvious solution is to have strong antitrust regulation. That leads to regulatory capture and corruption. I'm not sure what happens next. We haven't had a democracy that was also a superpower collapse yet. Rome comes to mind, but they didn't have nukes and a global for-profit surveillance network propping them up.
Anyway, we really need to start enforcing antitrust law, and get back to de facto "majority rules" in the US.
Fragility - one byte from a bat, one lockdown in China and United Kingdom runs out of toilet paper.
This works particularly well for cheap items, where raw material costs (which are mostly just the energy cost of mining and refining) and shipping costs dominate. Usually, things are shipped around so they can be processed in the most specialized/energy efficient facility available. For small items, the pollution associated with shipping via ocean freight is miniscule.
As for the second point, the current system is fragile, but compared to what? If I had to pick a pandemic to live through at any point in time so far, covid would be my first choice.
It’s all comparative advantage and win-win scenarios until you find yourself dependent on despicable foes for your food, energy, and basic necessities.
The vulnerability created in those situations may actually encourage bad actors to declare war opportunistically.
Capitalism has many problems. The video only highlights a possible advantage.
