Money can be lend to buy goods or a home: consumption credit.   
   Money can be lend to use in a business: investment loan.   
   For being allowed the privilege to use someone's excess money,   
   the receiver may be agreed to pay more money back then received.   
      
   This seems to have the same formalities as a trade. A trade is where   
   two people exchange something they have or can do for something someone   
   else has or can do. When it concerns a service and not a product,   
   the service involves spending time doing work, "effort".   
      
   Not everything that follows trade formalities is understood to be   
   trade. If someone points a gun at you and barters your right to   
   live for your money, that also has the same formalities as a trade.   
   But it isn't trade, even though the robber is "working." When it   
   comes to money, the curious thing is no effort is displaced either,   
   the creditor only enters a state of "risk taking," which is neither   
   work or product.   
      
   Capitalism pretends that buying/selling money is an inherent part of   
   trade. But trade can exist without Capitalism. Capitalism has to be   
   identified as precisely as possible, and then neatly cut out. Like   
   a tumor.  An incompetent surgeon would simply rip out all organs in   
   sight, assuming to catch the tumor, and hope the patient will live.   
   Since this is such an invasive operation, it is only done when   
   the outlook is bleakest. Capitalism simply makes sure the outlook   
   won't get so bad as to warrant just any procedure, and they are set   
   for eternity. Because the radical left has not solved the economic   
   question, it is unknown how long this situation is going to last. The   
   ideas the radical left seems to come up with seem to be on a slogan   
   level, either involving regime-change, a pervasive plan economy, or   
   the abolishment of all organized culture (anarchism). These ideas   
   are so preposterously unworkable, that few people would even bother to   
   consider them, and hence they don't happen. We're stuck. The plan   
   economy was actually a good idea when the feudal system still worked   
   that way, but that time is long gone. Unfortunately the radical left   
   has not resolved to come up with new/better solutions (the plan economy   
   wasn't that great in the first place, but it could have evolved into   
   a nice trade economy without capitalism). When there are no options,   
   it is probably better to stick with Capitalism, now even mutated into a   
   less deadly strain (for people in the lucky areas at least).   
      
   Narrowing the definition of Capitalism, means analyzing what it   
   does and where that goes wrong. In the money "trade", there seem   
   to be roughly two types of loans: 1) gambling with companies and   
   2) consumption credit.   
      
   The worst problem lies in long term application of 1) gambling   
   with companies in a large group. The gamblers continuously   
   bet on companies with the best performance, and that need   
   invariably be the companies who are most dictatorial in their   
   organization in order for the profits to concentrate under one   
   person or small group of directors/owners so that the money can   
   be negotiated out of these people on the basis of more betting   
   money; and it needs to be invariably be the companies who behave   
   worst to "their" employees in order to extract more money from   
   their labor. In the long run, this investment practice chokes   
   all more enlightened modes of production that have creatively   
   been attempted. In the end this system strives to make companies   
   ever larger, so that higher profits can be concentrated into   
   fewer hands for extraction. The large capital groups formed are   
   better able to shape the world to their vision of more profit,   
   and to crush the small capital and small businesses. This eventually   
   degenerates into an economy that has only one monopoly business.   
   The economy would have become a dictatorship, a feudal system once   
   again. Only when that has happened does it become progressive again to   
   talk about a democratically led feudal system, since that is an   
   improvement over a dictatorially led one.   
      
   The future that "gambling with money on companies" has for trade,   
   is the practical end of business freedom, the end of the trade   
   economy. It is however doubtful that it will ever be allowed to go   
   all the way, because the people have rebelled against feudalism once   
   before. The Capitalist virus mutates for longevity; it seeks life and   
   pleasure. It does this by "concentrating power into tighter, righter   
   and higher hands", as someone put it once (paraphrased). But it has   
   learned not to go too far.   
      
   The "investment gambling" is small groups is not that big a problem,   
   because a smaller group can always come together and set practical   
   problems right quickly. There isn't a vast body of culture and people   
   that "goes wrong" over time, where individual people are being crushed   
   by the weight and size of the diseased community (diseased by Capitalism   
   in this case).   
      
   When it comes to consumption credit, they money goes into a product,   
   and the debtor himself is expected to work for the return. It is   
   as if it is lending to a business that will only ever employ one   
   person. Such companies can not degenerate into abusive dictatorships,   
   there is only one person. Therefore consumption credit in a narrow   
   sense (ignoring the build up of liquidity in a successful lending   
   business which might then be used for economic gambling), does not   
   appear to be problematic in the long run.   
      
   Is trade itself problematic, swapping services and goods between   
   productive people ? In the long run, only people who work are able   
   to continue to swap, the people who don't do something that someone   
   else wants, get into problems. This is a good thing, it protects the   
   people who work. It also provides a direct application of a reward   
   and punishment for doing something productive or not, which affords   
   a meaningful sense of living. It is a system that is both natural   
   and will run on its own. Because trade runs on its own, attention only   
   has to be applied to where the trade system goes wrong (such as   
   we're doing now with removing Capitalism from the trade economy).   
   The trade system isn't perfect, there may be a market for hired   
   killings for instance, and concentrations of power become abusive of   
   the markets. This power can be concentration of legislative power,   
   money, or ownership. Concentrations of power are problematic because   
   they alter the price from just to unfair, thereby undermining the   
   essence of trade. Capitalism (gambling in the economy with businesses   
   like horses on a race track) creates concentrations of power, and   
   in turn make that the powerless have to swap their goods/services   
   at an increasingly unfairly low price against ever more inflated   
   prices for the goods/services of the powerful. In order to "distribute   
   power into wider, brighter and finer hands" to make the trade system   
   fair and operate correctly, Capitalism narrowed down as `business   
   investments for profit' will be cut out.   
   --   
     http://www.xs4all.nl/~joshb/democracy.html   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)