This doesn't mean that different economic systems have equivalent or comparable problems. Just like you can have a worse economic system than today's global capitalism, you could, in principle, have better systems.
Countries can have a highly regulated form of capitalism where trade and ownership is strictly controlled… and they’re often called socialist or communist, or a laissez faire system.
However, so long as people are using land, buildings structures, designing equipment… the laws of capitalism will apply.
We can use other systems that suit our goals better. Even if it’s a better form of capitalism than what we’re dealing with now.
This post-monetarist form of capitalism is killing people and this planet and enriching but a few. That’s not the kind of society most people want. A matter of time before there are enough have-nots and upheaval becomes a real problem for the capital owners.
Capitalism is the system where someone can claim ownership of land/buildings/ideas(typically due to prior ownership) aka "capital". If the laws don't allow someone to make and hold that claim of private ownership, how would the "laws of capitalism" still apply?
Silvio Gesell has developed an economic system inspired by Darwin. I don't mean social Darwinism, I mean that he deconstructs the economy down to self preservation and group preservation instincts which are biological necessities.
Self preservation is necessary to survive. A biological organism that does not self preserve will be selected out. This means that self preservation instincts represent egoism.
You might now say that this is the end, capitalism has won, except there is also group preservation.
Group preservation requires self preservation as a prerequisite. If you cannot meaningfully self preserve, you will most likely contribute nothing to group preservation as there aren't many situations where dying outweighs the cost of raising a member of the group.
This means self preservation instincts play a significant role all the way until they start threatening group preservation.
An organism that exclusively specializes in self preservation would always be a lone wolf with no socialization. The problem with this theory is that it would imply subsistence which is the opposite of capitalism. In other words, capitalism cannot be the result of simple egoism and self preservation because people would simply leave the capitalist society for the sake of self preservation if it were to become too stressful.
Thus there must be a significant group preservation instinct in humans and they have been evolved to survive in groups. In other words, capitalism has to leverage group preservation instincts somehow and therefore it is just another flavor of socialism or communism except in favour of people with capital.
Now, you can take it too far and entirely rely on group preservation instincts like communists claim but that doesn't work in practice either as self preservation overrides group preservation. Only people who have their basic needs met can engage in altruism.
Thus you can't expect a society consisting exclusively of altruists or egoists. Instead you would expect evolution to hit just the right balance between the two and that would imply the absence of both capitalism and socialism. It means both are an aberration that cannot be explained biologically.
Yes, that would imply that people can choose to participate in a market economy but it doesn't mean they have to and market economies don't have to be capitalist.
>Capitalism is not an economic system, it is a description of fundamental economics.
Theoretical economists have no concept of capitalism except maybe Keynes. In classical and neo classic economic theory there is no such thing as "capitalism". In theory it doesn't exist. There is a market economy with zero coercion and it does not intrinsically favor capital. You can't get richer through unfair means or corruption in these models either.
The gaps between the model and the real world are then filled with dogma and ideology. For example, you can just say that a positive return on capital represents a voluntary high time preference even if the return is higher than what would bring the economy into equilibrium.
The real world starts exhibiting cycles that make no sense in the model, meh. Let's claim capitalism is a constant of the universe even though biological dynamics imply the opposite.
Have you ever considered that this may be due to the fact that our brains evolved to exist in a world where our day is largely focused on gathering food? We're not well-equipped to exist in other modes.
primates don't spend the majority of their day gathering food; there's not reason to believe early humans were different.
As for a citation, ask anyone who's spent any amount of their life with not enough food available. If you ask them how much of their time is spent focused on getting food or thinking about food, or worrying about food, they'll probably tell you "most of it".
