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Capitalism is just private ownership of goods + a market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism I think you're describing something a lot more specific.



> Capitalism is just private ownership of goods + a market.

That's neither the definition used by the critics of the system who coined the term to refer to the complex system by which 19th Century developed countries directed the rewards of economic productivity to the owners of capital, nor a sufficient description of what is proposed by the modern proponents of "capitalism".

And that Wikipedia article is confused -- accurately portraying the "mixed economy" the dominant economic form of the modern developed world, but inaccurately painting it as a form of capitalism (when it is called a mixed economy because it draws elements from both capitalism and socialism, and is distinct from both.) It also refers to state capitalism as a form of capitalism (which is accurate by the original definition, as state capitalism shares the features that were originally criticized in capitalism -- which isn't surprising since both the original definition and the term "state capitalism" come from socialist critics -- but not by the definition in the article.)


There's a conflation of the precise economic definition of capitalism with the thought processes and gestalt that has grown up around it. You're using the precise definition, the grandparent is using the looser definition.


Private ownership of means of production, or "capital assets" in that article (it's just terminology). Neither private ownership of goods nor the existence of markets are specific to capitalism.




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