Downvote me all you want it's not not true. Rich people don't exist without exploiting the poor; so too with countries. I'm not sorry if you're wealthy and this is hurting too close to home, better live with it if you also want to be so wealthy.
I feel like in order to make this claim, you'd need a pretty detailed definition of what "capitalism" is.
My summary won't do it justice, but basically our society has a myth that society has always been capitalistic, but there is some evidence that is not true. It's a pretty interesting take on some fundamental economic thoughts and theories, because the author is an anthropologist.
> The history of capitalism is diverse. The concept of capitalism has many debated roots, but fully[quantify] fledged capitalism is generally thought by scholars[specify][weasel words] to have emerged in Northwestern Europe, especially in Great Britain and the Netherlands, in the 16th to 17th centuries.[citation needed] Over the following centuries, capital accumulated by a variety of methods, at a variety of scales, and became associated[by whom?] with much variation in the concentration of wealth and economic power. Capitalism gradually became the dominant economic system throughout the world.[1][2](subscription required)[need quotation to verify][3][need quotation to verify] Much[quantify] of the history of the past 500 years is concerned with the development of capitalism in its various forms.
> It is an ongoing debate within the fields of economics and sociology as to what the past, current and future stages of capitalism are.
This does not leave me filled with confidence that people know what they mean when they mention "capitalism".
The problem is that there are two broad paradigms of what "capitalism" should mean:
1. Whatever the United States does.
This is what most people seem to be talking about when they talk about "capitalism", but it leaves something to be desired on theoretical grounds. Many aspects of it are not particularly economic.
2. An economic system defined... somehow. Mostly by constrast with "communism", which -- unlike "capitalism" -- has a large body of theory attached.
This is what people want to claim they are talking about. It is more or less conceptually incoherent, being defined only as the absence of policies covered by the term "communism". But all of those negative policies are very old, historically.
It is probably better to contrast capitalism with socialism though, and classical economics with communist theory. Not all capitalists ascribe to classical economics, just like not all socialists ascribe to communist theory.
Marx gave capitalism a name to talk about it as a step in the thrust of history, contrasting it with earlier feudalism systems, and to argue that it would inevitably lead to its own destruction while advocating that communism is the logical next step. It wasn't just "anything before communism" even for him.
Keynes, Hayek, and Smith all have a common thread on their belief in the market, despite the fact that they would in many cases advocate for very different policies.
Is anything about that theory specific to any time period? Does any part of it refer to a system of "capitalism"?
Marx, and those following Marx, wrote their works under the banner of "communism". Adam Smith did not write under any banner. He made observations.
> Marx gave capitalism a name to talk about it as a step in the thrust of history, contrasting it with earlier feudalism systems, and to argue that it would inevitably lead to its own destruction while advocating that communism is the logical next step. It wasn't just "anything before communism" even for him.
You're not getting what I'm saying. Marx gave capitalism a name, OK. Did he give it a definition? The whole problem I'm talking about here is that people use the word "capitalism" without having a meaning in mind for it to refer to.
The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily: and the law, besides, authorises, or at least does not prohibit, their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work, but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes, the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, or merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks, which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year, without employment.
-- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm#link2H...
Under the feudal system, lords had at least a nominal obligation to see to the welfare of their charges. I'm not claiming the relationship was otherwise equal, but that sense of obligation is now all but wholly absent.
I need to write fewer posts when it's late at night...
For example, 'gold' imported by ill-gotten means from some far off land actually provides 0 value in terms of material value creation. Of course 'oil' does, but remember the 'House of Saud' is kept in power by the US not with the promise of US access to 'cheap oil', rather, with the promise it will be sold at full value, on the open market - just not in some kind of strategic/complicated/backwater setup with the then Soviet Union or China. The US didn't 'go in and take all the oil', which they definitely had the power to do.
This exemplifies, in perhaps a crude, ham-fisted realpolitik manner the 'enforcement of trust' in systems I alluded to in my original comment: it's actually the US (and ultimately everyone's) interest to uphold fairly basic commercial and humanitarian standards in the long run.
And to be fair, these problems are to some extent a function of capitalism, because only 'very large' systems have the opportunity to plan on the generational scale, ergo, there's effectively no commercial enterprise for which the implementation of such standards really matters, that's generally the purview of governments.
I don't feel like I can make much justice for those aspects but here's my two cents: Selling oil on the free market disproportionately benefits those that own the means to process and resell it further. Or rather, those that ultimately coordinate global oil logistics. The global fossil fuel market doesn't exactly seem like a "free" market. There are few players and they are powerful.
What is the basis for this comparison? Compare the profit margins of a gas station (tiny) versus the profit margin of a company that needs to purchase fuel to operate a factory (could be anything). Or for that matter a company that needs products produced at one of those factories (the rest of us). The benefit is widespread and it's not at all obvious who benefits most, commodity or not.
Exclusive control of 'easy access to Oil' is overwhelmingly the power in that value chain.
The 'first order' issue is earlier in the process, it's that 'House of Saud' keeps most of the surplus for their family and furthermore use it to do some suppressive things.
The fossil fuel market it is very open, and market oriented. It has obvious geostrategic artifacts (notably the petrodollar, some politicians refusal to build pipelines, military support of interventions, OPEC), but it's generally open season. Nobody controls the flow of spice melange.
> Exclusive control of 'easy access to Oil' is overwhelmingly the power in that value chain.
Singapore might disagree. But what do they know?
I believe resource inequality will exist until free or near-free energy sources are developed, and even then, you still need ever expanding amounts of land/space. I believe it’s a consequence of scarcity and human nature.
This is the same logic that explain why building more roads does not reduce traffic congestion, because new demand is created to use the new roads and the traffic stays bad.