If capitalism is zero sum then how do countries with capitalism manage to succeed and grow for hundreds of years?

By pillaging and conquering nations that have abundant resources through violence and coercion

Like this is the entire history of capitalism and it’s not even close

the fact that other organizations (USSR, China) do the same thing (horde property and then use consolidated resources to enforce economic heirarchy) but don’t call it capitalism doesn’t make it any less true

They can say “communism” all day but if the functional properties of the system of the Russian Federation or CCP are that Property control is limited to a small group of elites who then use those resources to create a command economy that is purely capitalist philosophy.

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zozbot234 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> By pillaging and conquering nations that have abundant resources through violence and coercion

That's pretty much backwards. The industrial revolution was the first time in human history where people could get rich on a very large scale via some way other than pillage and conquest. If you think "capitalism" started in the late 18th century and is essentially coterminous with industry (which is quite nonsensical since you had forms of capital as far back as ancient farming societies, but that's the way many scholars choose to use the term) that's exactly what let us choose something that was not plunder and conquest.

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nuancebydefault 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The hording and eliteness is not a property of the capitalistic system. It might be an unwanted side effect. Imperialism, greed, urge to expand control, subordination of others are unfortunately human traits. You might attribute that behavior to any system, why single out capitalism?

	▲	AndrewKemendo 18 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Because capitalism explicitly encodes transactionalism into the social structure by alienating labor from the fruits of the labor. There’s no period of time where that has not been true for some portion is society, but we reached a point to which there are no places where that is not true.