Mallspice

The gov officials set their own salaries and control the means of production. In that way it seems capitalist but in a way where everyone decides to become a single capitalist collectively rather than having individual capitalists wielding disproportionate power.

The most efficient mode of production doesn’t really matter if you want your economy to thrive, helping the working class does, and China is now better at than than the US. That’s why they’re doing well, not because they’re less capitalist. Capitalism can help the working class more than hurt it just as easily as not.

That’s actually a good point but I would argue when power is in the hands of the public as you say, the gov officials become the capitalists.

That’s a type of capitalism.

More like, capitalism is the road. There’s a lot ways to build a road, and some roads are better than others, but you need the road. When there is no road, you create one. Whether the currency is money, favors, ideas, or bartering.

The best you can do is control it for a time.

Yes and no. We conquer and dominate and build. All human cities look roughly similar. Productivity wins because it conquers those who aren’t.

Even China uses their own form of capitalism. Chinese history is more capitalist than most countries too imo. China hasn’t risen above capitalism, they mastered their own style of it, but as waves rise and fall, the state of a country’s economy is ever changing. Today they are wolves, but without the century of humiliation they might not be, just as America would not have had anywhere to fall if did not climb so high.