You are attacking the concept of marketing / advertising as a fundamental evil, and the idea that starving people existing negates the entire system we have which has proven to be successful. I would love to see a successful country that is not capitalist at its core
> You are attacking the concept of marketing / advertising as a fundamental evil
It is. It's exploitation of the human mind, like a drug. It exists to hit the right triggers to open the gates of a person's decision making.
It's like a backdoor. Except, not really. Because the human mind is much easier to exploit than a computer.
We can do it very obviously, maybe with nicotine. But we don't even need substances. Just some bright lights and a bar you pull is enough to get people to drain their entire savings. You can even tell them "this doesn't work, you won't win" - it doesn't actually affect the exploit, because the exploit is occurring on a physiological, survival level, and logic is at a higher level than that. It's like trying to stop an active rootkit with Windows Defender.
Advertisement is gambling, but normalized. The goal is to develop an exploit to compel humans to work against their interests, to actively harm themselves in hopes of something they require.
It's typically simple things like joy or love. They might appeal to the innate desire for socialization, the innate need to be recognized and respected.
But, actually, you don't even need that. Even just exposing a brand image, over and over again, with no messaging creates an exploit. Now, they are primed to buy from you as opposed to competitors. Not based on logic, or even emotion - no, something much more intrinsic, much more fundamental to how neurons operate. Pattern recognition.
The exploit is so effective and deep-seated that you cannot even be aware if it has occurred, nor can you undo it. Some people believe the point of advertising is to get people to buy things. No, not at all. The point of advertising is for people to buy things all on their own, and make them believe it was done on their own accord. That's the golden goose. Any idiot can hold a gun to someone's head. But true manipulation doesn't require a gun.
If people are still dying of hunger and preventable diseases in capitalist countries, then it has not lifted all of humanity. I wasn't saying some other system is doing better than capitalism, just that capitalism has not succeeded in bringing all of humanity out of absolute poverty.
Anyway, just because capitalism is the best we've come up with so far doesn't mean we can't do better. Would you look at the fastest car today and say "there's no example of a faster car you can provide, therefore this is the fastest car there can ever be". No, we can do better, especially with the technology we now have.
Capitalism is not a designed system, it is an emergent phenomena. Even in the most restrictive, communist societies (North Korea) the black market is the primary way the common people don’t starve. As they accumulate wealth they continue to invest in their black market enterprises.
There is no alternative to letting people trade, which results in successful traders accumulating more than others. That’s it. There is no other system because it goes against human nature
Markets != capitalism. By limiting what can be owned and for what reason, we could get rid of capitalism without completely getting rid of markets. It'd be quite easy to prevent private ownership of land or large businesses without black markets for those things forming.
It is incredibly easy. All the state needs to do is stop recognizing such property claims, and, therefore, stop using its monopoly on use of force to protect them. Capitalism doesn't exist outside of a framework of property rights that allows for accumulation of capital, which requires a legal system to enforce it. Remove that legal system, and the rest collapses.
No it's impossible, because if the state steps down, other criminal associations will take it's role. You are effectively saying, if we delete mentions of gravity in physics textbooks, it will cease to exit.
People have always traded, since the earliest pre-human artifacts. Trade makes both sides wealthier. Outlaw property rights and people will use other mechanisms to defend their property.
What the parent comment says is not to outlaw property rights absolutely, read the comment again "private ownership of land or large businesses", it's a very specific subset of ownership.
Trading and markets are not the problem. Unbounded accumulation of capital is. Capitalism is actually anti-free-trade and anti-free-markets because it creates a positive feedback loop where the more capital you have, the more economic rent you can extract from others, which can then be used to grow the capital. At the end of that loop is a degenerate market dominated by a single monopoly or a few oligopolies, not free in any meaningful sense.
Therefore, if society wants free trade and free markets, it needs to prevent this. And the easiest way to do so is by making unbounded capital accumulation impossible, by refusing to acknowledge it as legitimate property right past a certain point, and thus withholding society's protections for it. It doesn't mean that all property rights are gone.
There is no such thing as "rent extraction" in a free market. I am gaining capital because I am serving others well, so they voluntarily give me their money. Trade is not zero-sum, we are both better. Capital I accumulate is reinvested, or spent on things I want. There is no problem with capital accumulation.
You have come to the exactly incorrect conclusions
Government by definition (at least through Hobbes' Leviathan) is the restriction of some freedoms through the monopoly of violence.
It restricts your freedom of robbing others, of killing people, of not abiding by a contract, there are many "freedoms" you don't have that are necessary for society to function.
As the other comment mentioned, markets != capitalism, capitalism is a specific system to exploit markets but it doesn't mean it's the best way that will ever be found to provide incentives to produce what society wants or needs.
Capitalism relies on a government enforcing its rules just as much as any other system. How do you think someone can own businesses, buildings and large swathes of land? Because if someone tries to claim them as their own, the government will come and restrict their freedom to do so. We also quite successfully restrict ownership of people these days.
