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Comment by tempfile | Hacker News Reader

What are you talking about? You said:

> Capitalism is about moving wealth more efficiently: easier to allocate money/wealth to X through the banking system than to move sheep/wealth to X's farm.

It's not. That's what money's about. Any system with an abstract concept of money admits that it's easier to allocate wealth with abstractions than physically moving objects.

Capitalism is about capital. It's an economic system that says individuals should own things (i.e. control their purpose) by investing money (capital) into them. You attempted to correct the previous commenter, but provided an incorrect definition. I hope that clears up the relevance issue for you.

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> Capitalism is about capital. It's an economic system that says individuals should own things (i.e. control their purpose) by investing money (capital) into them.

Yes. It's not about stealing land and kicking people out and raising sheep there instead. That (stealing) happens of course but is totally independent from any capitalist system.

JFC, the same sentence could have been said with communism in mind.

> You attempted to correct the previous commenter, but provided an incorrect definition. I hope that clears up the relevance issue for you.

You are confusing the intent of capitalism - which I gave the general direction of - with its definition. Does that clear up the relevance issue for you ? Did I fucking not write wealth/money intentionally ?

The OP is talking about (land) enclosure, not stealing exactly, and enclosure is a precondition of capitalism. To be fair, it's a precondition of feudalism as well. But in order to turn resources that are essentially held in common (like land, and ideas) into capital, they have to be made private. That's what happened with the literal commons in medieval Europe, and it's what's happened with the intellectual commons in the last hundred years.

You didn't describe the intent or the definition of capitalism. You just mentioned that moving resources from A to B is easier if they're abstract. The intent of capitalism is that the society is improved when people who have a vested interest (literally vested, as in with money) in a company determine its actions.

Can you calm down, please? You were the one who started saying my comment was irrelevant. I don't think it makes much sense to parrot that back to me.

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