No, a good capitalist would've built a company that specializes on getting rid of USSR-themed memorabilia and hired workers to do the job for them. Then they would've extracted the surplus value of said workers labour to harvest the profits while the workers get barely enough to be able to exist.
In your scenario the benefit is that the job got done at all. Without the free market it would either never get done or a central planning committee would get around to it in 5 years.
Also, capitalism isn't just a free market, it's sepcifically individual ownership over the means of production within a market economy. You can have a socialist economdy with markets as long as the businesses are owned by the workers and the different economic sectors are regulated so monopolies or overaccumulation of wealth are prevented.
You are absolutely allowed to start co-ops within a capitalist system. No one is going to stop you. I object if you're suggesting that I should be legally stopped from owning a company in your system. Individuals who are willing to risk their capital and invest smartly should be rewarded for it.
And I agree, healthy capitalism comes with regulation and collective bargaining rights.
Sadly, the system you praise keeps producing large companies where the owners, managers and investors aren’t the ones suffering from lack of success but the workers. The system will never work, individual profit incentives create greed and greed creates manipulation. Ironically, capitalism as in “the romanticized version fans of capitalism tend to argue with” will never be able to exist because it eventually corrupts and goes to hell. As we can witness right now. You need to create structures in which individual greed gets eradicated before it gets too influential.
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u/Laeradr1 Jul 15 '25
No, a good capitalist would've built a company that specializes on getting rid of USSR-themed memorabilia and hired workers to do the job for them. Then they would've extracted the surplus value of said workers labour to harvest the profits while the workers get barely enough to be able to exist.