Do you support sustainability, social responsibility, tech ethics, or trust and safety? Congratulations, you’re an enemy of progress. That’s according to the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.

  • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Trade and markets have existed for a long time, but prior to Hume and Smith the dominant economic model was mercantilism which asserted that there was a finite amount of money in the world and you could only get richer at the expense of others.

    They looked at this and re-interpreted it, subverting the dominant paradigm. That sounds like invention to me.

    • AtmaJnana@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Much ink has been spilled by historians on the roots of capitalism, and while there isn’t a true consensus on precisely where or when capitalism properly emerged, there is a consensus that capitalism existed long before Adam Smith, before the Industrial Revolution, before the field of economics existed, and before the rise of industrial capitalism which you seem to have conflated with capitalism more broadly.

      Industrialization may or may not have been “caused” by capitalism, better minds than I will have to answer that. That said, if you can’t understand how capitalism and the cost of labor were likely factors in the rise of automation and industrialization, then I guess we have nothing more to say to one another.