A world beyond Capitalism

@pianoplayingsteve Well, that and natural resources that ppl have laid arbitrary claims to.

@pianoplayingsteve A lovely idea that does not exist in reality. In the so called "free market" voluntary trade is only for the priviledged who are on the top of hierarchies.
Coercion, exploitation and inequality are the reality. Surplus labour is stolen in the name of voluntary exchange.

@Gloomy No, that's the literal reality. Anything contrary to that is ideology. The only alternative to that is non consensual trading of resources.

As for the second paragraph, I recommend looking into the pareto principle. People are not equal in ability, productivity or creativity, and so there will be unequal outcomes. Evolution, and all natural laws and existence, requires inequality to function. And discrimination - in every decision you make, you are discriminating against certain other actions based on a value judgment. Your issue really is with the inevitable suffering of being. And as for "surplus labour is stolen in the name of voluntary exchange". Me and my partner own a private school. We started it by gambling with our own money, we put a lot of energy into running it and we employ teachers who are able to use their pay to support themselves. Am I "stealing" from them? I used to teach music in a music shop. The owner would be paying rent etc on the building, he'd get me students and I'd pay him a fraction of what I made teaching. Is he "stealing" from me?

@pianoplayingsteve I don't advocate for equal outcome but with a wealth gap growing and people creating wealth through owning Capital and the work of others is something I consider a gigantic flaw.
I don't know how you run your school therefore I am unable to assess it. In general I am critical of private schools since it leaves the door open to a two class education and operates on a profit incentive.

@Gloomy Socialism creates those very flaws, too. In any system, a small number will be hyper productive and intelligent and do a lot of the work and become very successful and lift the group up as a whole, whilst a great number of people dont have such great ability and so they don't produce much, and so also do not bring the group up as a whole. The productive can use the extra resources to become even more productive, which then creates even more resources and now because there are more, these resources can now be purchased more cheaply. This sets a chain reaction off of the productive creating more and more and being able to provide it for less and less, which in turn means the less well off will have more opportunity. However, if you were to say to the hyper productive "you've got to give 50% of everything you produce to the less productive", these productive people now have 50% less to produce with, and so that society will now produce 50% less. I can make a great example of that with welfare scroungers. Where I'm from, the UK, almost everything is socialised. It is very easy to claim welfare for "mental health" to such a high level of resources that you could live off of it and never bother working. And many do. The money redistributed to them then goes to drugs, overeating etc ie producing nothing, money which if it was allowed to stay in the hands of the productive, could have produced even more for society. And again, from the UK, we have a sales tax of 20%, an income tax of 20-40% (which also sneakily rises to 60% in some cases), property tax and so on. This results in goods becoming more expensive, and the consumer having less money to buy these more expensive goods. This also reduces the amount of people being able to attain middle class living standards which would afford such people spare money to invest into business which would cause competition for the established big businesses and force the lowering of prices to avoid being undercut. It would generate more jobs for the working class etc. That all works to create an even bigger wealth gap between the ultra rich and the working class. I could go on, but it's the absolute opposite of the emancipation of the working class that it may be on the surface. Only voluntary socialism, among a high trust closely united (by whatever unit) group for a short period would be beneficial at all.

It is a constant in existence, it's literally a natural law referred to as the Pareto Principle, which states that in any given system, 80% of the power/resources/whatever else will be produced or wielded by 20% of the components/members/whatever else. And that is found among plants, socialist states, free market states, primates, colony species etc and you even find it in cosmological, anatomical etc processes too. You can't exist it, and attempts to stop it through forced manipulation of the free market by the state just makes things worse. Inequality is just a fact of life. A fact of evolution. I'd rather suffer the struggles of life voluntarily, then in a forced system that also claims to be above the free market.

Well, there isn't much too how the school runs. My partner invested the capital built up over several generations of wealth and attained a master's degree in child psychology and made the gamble of using all that to rent a building and build all the classrooms within it. I myself am an experienced educator and have had managerial roles within organisations. Parents contact us, they pay us a set amount per month, they all go to the school and we have several teachers who look after the children for a set pay. We also pay cleaners, builders etc. We organise and pay for school trips, additions, school meals etc. We also provide healthcare assistance to the employees. Basically, we do the admin stuff because it's our money that is being gambled with. We can leave the premises whenever and the business will keep going. We are hoping to expand to create a 24 7 day care, and courses for parents. I'm also hoping to use some of the profit to invest into a music school my friend started that I promised to help with. And with all that I hope to invest into charities I care about, and to provide opportunities and support to my family and close friends. And I just want to randomly give passers by money if I see them doing a selfless deed. I want to create opportunities for people with my capital, and I also invest it into physical wholesale that I sell undercutting big retail, making it cheaper for everyone. I have a capitalistic mind mixed with a genuine care for people and human progress, which means i want to keep reinvesting and creating. Capitalism isn't the issue, money isn't an issue. They are both conduits for the intentions of the person with the capital. And I'd like those with good intentions to have the freedom to invest that capital in ways they care about. Sure, I'm sure some people aren't nice with their money, but that's their choice and I can explain how socialism helps those people.

I'm glad private schools operate on a profit incentive. It means they have to provide a good service! It means they will have to lower their fees to outcompete other schools. It means if someone doesn't want to take a certain course, they aren't forced to pay for it through socialised education. If I were a state teacher in socialised education, there would be no incentive to go the extra mile. I'd just do the bare minimum as I'd get the same pay regardless. However, I teach piano on the side, and because i need to make a profit, I have to go the extra mile to make my lessons good!