The Beauty of Natural Liberty and Spontaneous Order

[Separatist]

From Wilhem Ropke's Economics of a Free Society:

Consider, for a moment, the problem of the daily provisioning of a great city. Its millions of inhabitants must be provided with the basic necessities, to say nothing of the “luxuries” which cheer and brighten existence: so many tons of flour, butter, meat, so many miles of cloth, so many millions of cigars and cigarettes, so many reams of paper, so many books, cups, plates, nails, and a thousand other things must be daily produced in such wise that a surplus or deficiency of any particular good is avoided. The goods must be available hourly, monthly, or annually (according to the kind of good in question) in exactly the quantities and qualities demanded by a population of several millions. But the people’s demand for goods is necessarily dependent upon their purchasing power (money). The existence of purchasing power presupposes, in turn, that the millions who appear in the market as consumers have previously as “producers” (whether employees or independent proprietors) so adjusted their output, both in quantity and quality, to the general demand for goods that they were able to dispose of their stock without loss. Now the highly differentiated modern economic system encompasses not alone a single city, however great, not alone a country however vast, but, in a way to which we shall give our particular attention later, the whole terrestrial globe. The craftsman in an optical instrument factory makes lenses for export to the most distant countries, which in turn supply him with cocoa, coffee, tobacco and wool. While he is polishing lenses he is also producing, indirectly, all these things more abundantly and more cheaply than if he produced them directly.

This immensely extended and intricate mechanism can function only if all its parts are in such constant and perfect synchronization that noticeable disorder is avoided. Were this not the case, the provisioning of millions would be immediately imperiled.

Who is charged with seeing to it that the economic gears of society mesh properly? Nobody. No dictator rules the economy, deciding who shall perform the needed work and prescribing what goods and how much of each shall be produced and brought to market.

[Separatist]

The Beauty of it is:

The capitalist engine is first and last an engine of mass production which unavoidably also means production for the masses. . . . It is the cheap cloth, the cheap cotton and rayon fabric, boots, motorcars and so on that are the typical achievements of capitalist production, and not as a rule improvements that would mean much to the rich man. Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within reach of factory girls. - Joseph Schumpeter

[ChristopherABrown]

The Beauty of it is:

The capitalist engine is first and last an engine of mass production which unavoidably also means production for the masses. . . . It is the cheap cloth, the cheap cotton and rayon fabric, boots, motorcars and so on that are the typical achievements of capitalist production, and not as a rule improvements that would mean much to the rich man. Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within reach of factory girls. - Joseph Schumpeter

All of that is true, but not comprehensive to other manifestations of capitalism.

For example, the northwestern Indigenous tribes were capitalists, but different. Their society taught their children that power needed to serve love because love protects life. This manifested in the "Potlatch". Which was banned at some point, I think around 1890.

The wealthy Indians who had invested their capital well and worked hard could only gain recognition of their power by giving it away. At the Potlatch was where this was done.

Usually there was a lot of speaking associated with the giving. Some of it was educational, some spiritual, and some political. Then the giving. Those people with little listened well, because they may learn things that would help them to provide for themselves better. They also respected the spiritual views, because they they were benefitting from them. But also their voice in tribal matters might gain relevance that led to decisions that protected them or improved life for the tribe they were of. Spirituality merged with politics this way.

It finally destroyed their culture when the Potlatch was banned.