Once again, Renton, me saying you're wrong isn't me saying the polar opposite of your position is right.

When I raised those concerns, we were playing imagination with a world of no-states and only corporations, and in that imagination-land they were perfectly coherent critisms.

Now that we're talking about this world, I think it's clear that Capitalism is awesome, but that pure Capitalism very likely is not more awesome than some modified form of Capitalism.

I don't think this because I'm afraid of capitalism, or because I can't conceive of the infinitude of wealth/jobs/resources, or because I'm tripping over fallacies I can't see, or don't believe in true freedom, or whatever reason you have to believe of me to believe that you are right and for some reason I can't get there.

I believe the method you use to come to the sort of absolute statements about capitalism is obviously flawed. It's great for a lot, but it can not tell you the future. It isn't predictive without error.

So when you say things like

"We can prove on a really basic level that certain things about capitalism's positive effect on world poverty are true by noting that each shithole third world country perpetually remains a shithole until free (or freer) trade is allowed to take place."

Prove is absolutely the wrong word. You can demonstrate that given certain simplifying assumptions and constraints not prove. Or that's what you meant about 'basic level' but in Economics, the things that hold for basic-levels do not necessarily hold when you scale up.

I found a great site that seems to have pretty level headed people chipping in their thoughts and on it, one great comment I found that helps make my point.

http://economics.stackexchange.com/q...igor/6141#6141

A brilliant overview on the flaw of Economic thinking. A weakness that is inherent in EVERY statement you make about Capitalism or people or whatever that is informed by your understandings.

"Results in Economics can be fully rigorously argued, ever since Economics adopted mathematical symbolism to express itself. The issue is not with the process of argumentation, but with the premises one starts from."

This is the absolute rub. The one thing I can give to you that I know is right. Everything you think you know is balanced on where you start. And if you start somewhere that isn't reality, well, you're overwhelmingly likely to be wrong. So you always have to keep an open mind and let in the fact that the future you imagine probably won't pan out for reasons you're completely unaware of.

http://economics.stackexchange.com/q...-loses-correct

Bonus thread where people argue that economics isn't a zero-sum game. A premise I accept in the large blurry view, but that I don't accept as definitively true of every corner of an economy as it could ever exist between people. One commenter mentions the existence of lose-lose trades, I still believe in win-lose trades, but all of this, as another commenter mentions, is built on a world where people don't take forcibly, don't steal, don't find anyway to play the game of free-trade with an advantage outside the rules. Which I believe they will, because we are selfish creatures developed by a mechanism that drives for selfish gains.

Bonus post for inspiration on that selfishness.

https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/...e_many/cs8poh5

Natural selection doesn't care about specieis, it cares about individuals. When you say stuff like "Well, we all see the value in police/justice system/lack of violence/whatever, so we value these things, so we'll invest that value to maintain them." I think you have to consider that "we" would need to selfishly value these things for them to exist, and I don't suspect that'll ever happen.

Bonus bonus on selfishness

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/...d_economi.html