I was just reading an article by 
I started to reply to the post itself but it was getting lengthy and I haven't written on this topic for awhile so I thought I'd turn it into a post instead. I will also be giving
Here was the quote from his article I began replying to:
Capitalism is the problem. The fact that private individuals are allowed, no, encouraged even to own the stuff that should be owned by everyone.
Uhm... no. Not at all.
The problem is Fascism, Cronyism, and Centralization of Power.
It is the EASY path to say it is capitalism and greed when what we have is not actually capitalism today. It is Fascism. This Fascist element is occurring in nations that claim to be Socialist, claim to be Communist, and claim to be Capitalists.
They love it when the entire Capitalism vs Communism vs Socialism trope is trotted out.
If you think the United States today is Capitalist then I could see why you would blame it on that. Yet I assure you it is not. The definition has been prodded and poked and pushed until it can fit the narrative desired.
So what you say MAY be true depending upon how you view capitalism.
For me I see it as FREE MARKET. Yet we don't have a free market and haven't for a long time.
We have entities, corporations, and people who are given smooth access by government while others are blocked by government. This is cronyism. It occurs whether you have a capitalist based society, a socialist based society, or a communist based society.
It is human nature because government centralizes power and through that centralization they become the gatekeepers and corruption ensues.
Now as to Capitalism itself you can pick moments in time and find anecdotal atrocities to cite as examples. Yet we can do that for other ideologies just as easily. Are any of them perfect? Not even close.
I want to pause here and address the part at the end:
stuff that should be owned by everyone.
By what merit? Why? Why should they own it? By nature that they breathe, they eat, they sleep, they procreate?
I don't personally have a problem with private property. I don't have a problem with someone spending their time and their MONEY (i.e. unit of value of time) to develop new technologies, contract with other people VOLUNTARILY to do things in exchange for money, and then explore with it. If they do all of that and then make it to an asteroid to mine I see absolutely NO REASON that you or I typing here deserve a piece of that.
You may think we have a right to live...
If you want to know what your rights truly are...
They are the things you can do for yourself. If another person must do it for you that is not a right. It is a privilege, an exchange, and agreement, etc.
What is worse is when we start pushing Socialist, Communist, or Marxist ideas people soon are convinced they have the right to FORCE other people to comply with their desires.
Somewhere along the line people decide that having the government solve their problems is a right. They think having a centralized agency use FORCE upon others is a good thing.
They also completely ignore human motivations.
We have the right to seek food. We have the right to speak. We have the right to attempt to heal ourselves. We have the right to educate ourselves. We have the right to defend ourselves.
These are all things we can attempt to do WITHOUT anyone else doing them for us.
Right to seek food does not mean the same as the right to force someone else to give us food.
Right to attempt to heal ourselves is not the same as the right to force someone else to heal us.
Right to educate ourselves is not the same as the right to force someone else to educate us. We simply have the right to seek knowledge.
Where the disparity often occurs is when people get to whether they have the right to create things that belong to them. We call this property.
If I build a house. I might be told by some that is not my house and it should be shared by all.
If I paint a painting. I might be told by some that it is not mine and belongs to all.
If I weave a pair of gloves out of my own shed hair. That too might no be mine.
I can keep citing examples. Typically when I do this I'll hit somewhere the person will say essentially "That isn't what it means." Where that line in the sand is crossed is different depending upon which person I speak to.
They typically will have a problem with property but at the root of it is envy, and their own personal greed they just don't see it while they are busy projecting it upon others as a convenient scapegoat to dress up their world view in.
They don't even realize they are doing it. When they see someone saying the things I said they will usually see it as a personal attack (ad hominem) when it is not. I don't apply this to one person. I apply it to all people that have this world view. I don't see them as damned, and without hope. I simply think they took what seems like an easy explanation and treated as the answer. It is easy for a reason. You don't need to put in much effort for it to make you feel like you have a goal that might be achieved and a target to point at. Yet it is a false target. It has emotional appeal. In the long term it is not feasible, ignores human nature, and makes a lot of assumptions about rights and when it is okay to FORCE compliance from other people.
Now to be clear in my case when I say Capitalism I mean Free Market. There are other words for the screwed up environment today. They do not fit capitalism. Fascism certainly applies. Corporatism certainly applies but ultimately is just another label for the same thing as Fascism. Ultimately it comes down to Centralization of power coupled with cronyism and this occurs whether you think you are using capitalism, socialism, Communism, or Marxism. There always ends up being centralized power that begins to block some, and favor others. This is where the corruption enters. It also appears to be an insidious facet of human nature that is not so easily eradicated as to simply wish it out of existence.
That's an important thing to realize. Because you like an idea doesn't mean you can pretend other factors don't exist.
I consider NONE of our ideas as perfect. They are all implemented by humans and our human nature. Now before you jump on the we could have an algorithm or AI do it. I have programmed both of those and they end up with my biases and my goals. You will centralize the power ultimately within the creation of select humans and their own biases. It is rigid and will have that persons flaws.
I do however look at history and while I can find anecdotal examples of bad events and I could choose to point them out as the norm I can also look at the poverty levels, what people's houses look like, what property they own, what services they have, and how much of that is voluntary choices. How many choices do they have.
In history under "Capitalism" those things have ALWAYS been higher than socialism, Communism, or Marxism.
Before you start trotting out European nations like Netherlands, Sweden, and other places. They have free market ideas as part of them. They are not Democratic Socialist countries despite the statements of people like Bernie Sanders.
They do have a fair amount of socialism at work as does the U.S. and just like the U.S. that has also seen the debt and other things begin to spiral out of control. This debt is not simply due to these actions though. There are so many things these centralized things we call government do wrong. They love it when we think it is as simple as blaming Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, etc. That allows them to play teeter totter with the blame. Push the pendulum.
Those entities will introduce and cause these problems regardless of which of those labels you give them. They will centralize more and more power and they will use propaganda to convince their subjects/slaves that it is for their good.
People have fared WAY better in free markets in history than any other type of ideology by a VERY LONG MARGIN.
As to space...
It doesn't belong to any of us unless we can get there to work it. I do think it is like a road though and we should not be denied transit if we too can make it there. That doesn't make some asteroid that people make it to and mine as though it should be mine simply due to the nature that I AM HERE.
I don't do socialism. I don't do communism. I don't do Marxism.
I am going to be blunt. If people are lazy or think that other people have to take care of them I truly don't have any compassion for such people.
I do have compassion for people that are having trouble even though they put forth effort. I will help such people as much as I personally can at the time. I will not demand some centralized authority do it because that is neither compassionate or wise.
As to space... You don't own shit. Neither do I. We are not owed anything if someone gets there and starts doing things when we do not. Unless perhaps you invested in such an endeavor and are owed something due to a contract/agreement.
If private entities get there... I don't suddenly get to claim their effort. If I were them and someone said "Give me some of that asteroid" without putting forth any effort or offering an exchange of value or reason then I'd laugh in their face. If the person said they were going to take it I'd say "I hope you are prepared to die for it, because I was when I worked to get here".
Free Market is the best solution we've found in history. No other comes close. The problem is it doesn't remain a truly free market due to the governments and cronyism.
Today the Corporations and the Governments around the world are intermingled and tightly woven together. This is essentially what fascism is. It is also why some people call it Corporatism.
It is no longer Capitalism. It began as that. It is no longer simply Socialism. It is no longer simply Communism.
The crony interest of these corporate entities that persist beyond the death of their creator infect ALL of these things via crony machinations.
The interesting thing about Space is it is big. If private interests can get up there and over time you can get a way to get there yourself because some private interest found an economical way to sell people ships then space could become a Free Market for awhile.
For a market to be free requires VOLUNTARY exchange. It requires the concept of property. It requires that you believe your life has value. There is one universal currency we all have. It is time. You have a finite amount of time that you will live. Thus, if someone asks you to do work in exchange for something they are asking if you will spend your TIME which you only have a limited amount of. Money is simply a numeric representation of the value of time. How much is your time worth?
That should be up to you to negotiate. Yet you should never be allowed to FORCE someone else to agree with you. That violates their rights. You only have the same rights as other people. Your rights are not superior.
