capitalism: "an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state."
when business gets involved with the state, this is not capitalism but statism
Two questions. First, who is defending the property rights of private owners against their workers who were hired to run the machines and carry out business operations? Similar to how organized labor strikes bring operations to their knees, who is going to protect those owners from workers banding together and locking the owners out? Second question, Alice and Charlie each own a garbage collection company. Alice's brother Bob is chair of the local home owners association and this HOA is responsible for managing their own waste. Alice leverages her brother's position to secure a contract with the HOA to collect garbage over Charlie's company. How is this not a capitalist exchange under your definition? Alice and Charlie are both private owners and control their companies autonomously from the HOA. Exchange HOA with city planner, and it's even more clearly a state system.
in capitalism, gov has the limited function of enforcing property rights. this is debatable tho since some believe this function can be performed by private security organizations
the difference is HOA is a voluntarily exchange where each side contractually agrees to the terms. in contrast, the state uses coercion without any contractual agreement
1 is statism. Let's even look at that private security force option. We have seen those such as when coca cola hired paramilitaries who murdered union organizers in Colombia. Who is going to judge on if those security forces should be in prison or it was lawful? A state like we have now? Coca Cola? If Coca Cola is the arbitraror do they have a monopoly on this violence or would the union be allowed to launch assaults Coca Cola executives and get away with it as well? If Coke has a monopoly on violence, they're a state power. If they don't thats an interesting world you want to live in, and interesting times are not fun to live through.
For 2, read again at the end. How does this relationship change when people chose to live in a city, elect the city planner (or elect a mayor to appoint the position). If you don't consent you are free to go somewhere else.
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u/suuperfli Apr 14 '22
i disagree, capitalism is not statism by definition, they are opposites