Democracy Capitalist System vs. Authoritarianism Capitalist Alliance — in the short term

A democratic capitalist system is ideal for promoting peace, prosperity and innovation in contrast to an authoritarian capitalist alliance that relies on suppression, depravation and backwardness.

In a democratic system capitalists will need to please the majority. There will be more than fewer capitalists and wealth will find it hard to be concentrated in a few due to regulations and oversight.

A democratic system will ensure through governance that the effect of its capitalistic society addresses the needs of the majority to enjoy the prosperity generated by the overall economy.

By contrast capitalists under authoritarian rule will focus on what the regime demands in exchange for their complicity and will get in return benefits that almost always to the detriment of the whole population. Over time there will be a concentration of wealth transfer to the regime and the capitalists will neither have extraordinary wealth nor power but will be subservient to the regime.

A democratic capitalist society will be highly innovative as the capitalists who will be many will need to compete, and the only way forward will be through innovation. Therefore innovation, because it becomes a primary principle of their own survival. A democratic system can reward innovation through taxation and policies which capitalists by themselves cannot do because it goes against their competitive nature.

Authoritarian capitalists will only do what they are told to do, and many times from people who are entirely unqualified. They will avoid taking risks and provide a minimal or a token level of innovation to please the leader. Ultimately they are always behind, they need to steal and copy ideas or to produce sub-quality or even fake inventions.

To be fair everybody is equipped with authoritarian and anti-democratic tendencies. They are a product of survival in the animal world.

While people tend to say they like competition, almost everything they do is to create conditions where competition is eliminated.

Who wouldn’t want to invent or produce something that everybody needed and had to pay dearly for and there would be from then on no other competition or need to change. Unreal, but a base, if not admitted dream of every innovator entrepreneur cum capitalist.

The word fair competition is also a shady concept. What is fair depends on which side you are on, but everyone can agree that fair should result in more benefits for their side.

Capitalism without democratic control will tend towards authoritarianism even through the final outcome will be the capitalists own downfall. Study any country where authoritarian rule introduced itself and see how capitalists were complicit and eventually found themselves in a very diminished role far from what they had previously enjoyed.

In a system the concept of majority doesn’t necessarily mean the most number of people. It can be wealth, power, intelligence or other factors that provide comparative advantages.

Capitalism is based on majorities of elements other than people. People are a sources of wealth as long as they can be controlled.

Left alone, capitalism will trend towards authoritarianism because of these tendencies. A true capitalist does not want competition. It makes more sense to spend less and get more. Fairness is expensive and innovation doesn’t always result in profits. Create a monopoly, fix prices, pay less for labour and other inputs is ideal.

Democracy as a governing system provides checks against these tendencies based on the will of the majority of people.

From a mathematical point of view the “majority of people” is most important because if you can maximise the benefit of “society” as whole there is a greater potential for peace, prosperity and innovation.

Peace because given most people are satisfied they will be less willing to take up arms against a system of rule. Prosperity because more people will be able to share in the benefits of an economy. And, innovation because capitalists will need to compete through innovation in order to retain their relevance.

In a capitalist society a corporation represents the majority of wealthy people which is a minority of the population. The purpose of a corporation is to maximise wealth not to create a better more equitable society.

Though-out history we can see steps capitalism has trended towards autocracies as a rule of nature.

In American politics corporations support any political entity that can serve this purpose, with no regards to collateral damage to the society they depend on. Any corporation that practices democratic principles does so as not to bring upon itself any controls or regulations that can interfere with their main goal of wealth creation.

Recent and past history has shown that an authoritarian regime of any kind needs either the power (military), wealth (wealthy class) or population. Many times it is much easier to gain the support of the wealthy class because they have so much more to gain in the short term.

The United States is going through such a period of time where true wealth has been allowed to concentrate in so few people. It is only natural for them to want to maintain their hold on this wealth and an autocratic system provides the biggest short term gains. After all, life is at most 80–100 years.

People think they are better off because they seem to have more things or possessions around them. In terms of true wealth they have nothing. Most of what they have is borrowed or financially unsustainable. The 401k they have are a guise to make them feel they are part of the corporate world. So when they hear Wall Street they think it means the economy, it means them. So they tend to back the will of the corporations where they as individual have literally bought into the idea that the economy means the well being of the collective rule of the corporation.

In 2020 the average consumer debt of an American is almost $100,000 while the average net worth is just $124,200. Wealth interestingly enough has always been a measure of per capita, which is the same if you measure Jeff Bezoz and the 1% like him average amongst the 365 million people in America. When you measure true wealth, Americans are far worse off than they were 50 years ago.

Technology doesn’t mean people are better off. The majority of families today cannot afford to be supported with one income and buy a home with that income like they were 50 years ago.

What has changed is that there are more shiny objects to keep people distracted.

People have been trained to be short-term thinkers regarding what is important in their own life. That the value of their society is based on how many likes or friends on social media, what movies they’ve seen all the way through on Netflix and what phone the have.

People have become short term thinkers. There are more short term objectives, problems and mysteries for things to do that give people an immediate sense of accomplishment or failure.

Because of these things people are less inclined to be democratic thinkers. They look for the instant satisfaction that can only be provided by elements that go against the grain of long term thinking.

For most capitalists short term thinking is built in to way of doing things that make up their daily habit. Democratic thinkers on the other hand are more idealistic and look to future generations. These two sentiments are diametrically opposed and will result in considerable conflicts the likes we are seeing today.

Therefore the politics of today will tend to be short-term thinking and short-term strategies against long-term thinking and long-term strategies.

Unfortunately, in the short run, history has shown that short term usually wins.