This is getting deeper in the weeds, but two things are common in ALL the forms of capitalism: private property and the profit motive. Throughout the history of mankind, these factors have proved to be part of our "natural" make up. Communal arrangements tended to be relatively short lived, or they were overtaken by societies which allowed people to express their desire for economic and social freedoms.
Types of capitalism:
There are many variants of capitalism in existence that differ according to country and region. They vary in their institutional makeup and by their economic policies. The common features among all the different forms of capitalism is that they are based on the production of goods and services for profit, predominantly market-based allocation of resources and they are structured upon the accumulation of capital. They include advanced capitalism, corporate capitalism, finance capitalism, free-market capitalism, mercantilism, social capitalism, state capitalism and welfare capitalism. Other variants of capitalism include anarcho-capitalism, community capitalism, humanistic capitalism, neo-capitalism, state monopoly capitalism, supercapitalism and technocapitalism.
And this, which I also believe:
Relationship to political freedom:
In his book The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek asserts that the economic freedom of capitalism is a requisite of political freedom. He argues that the market mechanism is the only way of deciding what to produce and how to distribute the items without using coercion. Milton Friedman claimed that centralized economic operations are always accompanied by political repression. In his view, transactions in a market economy are voluntary and that the wide diversity that voluntary activity permits is a fundamental threat to repressive political leaders and greatly diminishes their power to coerce. Some of Friedman's views were shared by John Maynard Keynes, who believed that capitalism is vital for freedom to survive and thrive. Freedom House, an American think tank that conducts international research on, and advocates for, democracy, political freedom and human rights, has argued "there is a high and statistically significant correlation between the level of political freedom as measured by Freedom House and economic freedom as measured by the Wall Street Journal/Heritage Foundation survey".
It's most certainly not a perfect economic system by any means. But compared to systems which are based on centralized government committees and bureaucrats deciding what is good and what is bad, picking winners and losers (often times based on corruption and bribes), capitalism tends to win out because it allows people an incentive and an opportunity to better their station in life, i.e. freedom to win (or lose). Many young people these days want to be cared for, from cradle to grave. So they're more comfortable with a nanny state arrangement. They focus on the few who take excessive advantage of the capitalist model, and ignore the many who take chances with capital and build comfortable, though not "excessive" wealth. My father's generation (certainly) and even my generation (for the most part) were more comfortable standing on our own two feet... playing the game and taking our chances. And now that we live in an age where technology allows greater access to capitalistic endeavors, along with a growing "gig"/service economy, there are SO many opportunities now that my generation didn't have.
But these days, Karl Marx is more popular on college campuses than Adam Smith. Combined with this fairly recent desire to be a victim, I don't think that'll lead to anything good. But, oh well, we'll see how that works out for them. :dunno:
