I like that segway, Jack.
Indeed, when we talk about capitalism, then we are actually not at the big-picture level yet. We must declare something else as well.
I use analogies as tool, and my analogy for capitalism is a horse. Naturally, horses in the wild are not where I am going, but rather the relationship of the horses with human beings.
Some nations are wildly capitalist while other nations are more regulated capitalist.
As such, the regulation in this analogy is the horse jockey.
If we have laissez-faire, then we have a rather petite horse jockey, so the horse can roam as much as it wants with little interference by the horse jockey. It means that the horse will also get out of bounds and we witness then the negative effects of uncontrolled capitalism.
With a stronger and heavier horse jockey, we have far more control, the horse remains better within bounds, and yet the heavier horse jockey will also weigh the horse down more than the light-weight horse jockey.
I hope you see that with the two-party system in the USA and UK, we have a light weight horse jockey, whereas social democratic nations on mainland Europe have heavier horse-jockeys. More people are found in poverty in the USA and the UK, while at the same time more extreme rich are found in the USA and the UK.
It is awfully hard to show folks in the USA and the UK that this form of democracy is less fair than what the other folks enjoy. For instance, the bottom 10 percent of folks in the USA end up getting 1.8% of the wealth of the USA, while in Denmark the bottom 10% of the Danes end up getting 3.8% of the wealth. With the dollar valued more, that 1.8% may be better than 1.8% is in Denmark, but it should be obvious that the poor in Denmark are richer than the poor in the USA.
The poor in the USA will have a hard time forming a majority that can win a seat in winner-take-all, while the poor in Denmark just need to vote to end up being represented by the ones they hand-picked themselves. They have a system of full representation; they do not have winner-take-all.
To get this back to the zero position, both the USA and Denmark are placing a zero position on top of the other nation's game. They are not playing the game the other nation is playing. They value the other game as zero, as not how they do it. One will always have a light-weight jockey (unless the world is on fire), and the other will always have a heavier-weight jockey.
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I have used the following structural perspective, that if we have 1 large group of people, and split them into two groups, take them apart, then we can discover something important.
Each separate group recognizes that there are now two groups, and each is asked to apply 1 or 0 to themselves or the other group. They can only use 1 once and they can only use 0 once.
While there are four different answers possible, the most common answer will be that each group will apply 1 to themselves, and 0 to the other group. Each group will value themselves if they are smart, and ignore (give zero value) to the other group. I hope you see that with zero, they are ignoring the importance of the other group.
It takes hard work to have all people value each other in similar ways.
I am a big proponent of capitalism, but I am also a big proponent of democracies being inclusive in nature and not exclusive in nature.
Good segway, Jack.
