Free markets, free trade, and money are not unique to capitalism; they existed before capitalism and are also components of other economic systems because they are effective at answering central economic questions.

Capitalism as it exists today is a relatively new phenomenon that only really started taking shape with the Industrial Revolution, making it easy to erroneously conclude through natural selection that it is the optimal way of organizing economies.

In extreme hypothetical versions of a Georgian capitalist economy, the only tax would be the land value tax, which would further encourage development of enterprise to improve real economic output.

Critics of capitalism point to rising inequality, exploitation of natural resources, and erosion of human rights in the name of maximizing output as equally important drawbacks.

A person with a master's degree in engineering will produce more economic value per hour than someone with a forklift license, who will produce more than someone using bare hands; capitalism incentivizes skill acquisition because people are encouraged to provide labor they are good at, providing more value to the economy.

Almost every country in the world today operates its economy through some form of capitalism, even countries that built a national identity in opposition to capitalism have either willingly or begrudgingly adopted a lot of its characteristics.

Free markets allow people to decide what they want by spending money on things they value, which signals to producers what to produce more or less of, thereby allowing economies to more effectively allocate limited resources toward what people actually want.

This system of labor markets is much more effective than centralized organization determining who does what, which existed before capitalism where roles in society were delegated by ruling classes and most people were laborers or farmers anyway with little need to efficiently allocate skilled labor.

In reality, capitalism as a system to encourage capital development has done a lot of good for the world and undeniably provides major benefits, but this doesn't mean it's perfect or inevitable.

Capital development, the motivation for innovation, the drive to work harder, and the efficiencies of the free market are major benefits of capitalism that have made civilizations thousands of times wealthier than in pre-capitalist centuries.

Tribal support for or criticism of capitalism as a binary choice (like opposing sports teams) prevents productive analysis of economic systems as tools to be optimized, similar to how a mechanic would choose the right tool for the job rather than committing to one favorite tool.

To understand capitalism, one must answer three foundational questions: what is capitalism, why has it become so dominant in modern global economy, and whether better alternatives exist.

Capitalism, socialism, communism, and anarchy are all competing systems to solve the fundamental economic problem: humans live in a finite world with unlimited desires, so decisions must be made about what gets produced, how it gets made, and who it gets made for.

Attracting investment in pre-capitalist systems was difficult because unless a potential investor was a member of the ruling class, they would struggle to get a return on investment before it was claimed by some Lord whose land it was developed on.

Ancient Rome's economy didn't produce goods and services at the scale modern economies do because it lacked capital—machinery, technology, and infrastructure—and as a result most people dedicated most of their effort to making enough food to eat.

Marx and Lenin called for workers to seize the 'means of production,' which more accurately translates as seizing the 'factors of production'—not just factories and machinery, but also land and labor—because capitalism incentivizes capital owners to exploit these factors.

Private ownership of capital incentivizes owners to make capital as efficient and effective as possible for adding value to the market economy, but private land ownership provides far more drawbacks and very little upside because land is very hard to improve in the same way technology can be improved.

Expensive land puts pressure on people who would innovate in an economy to not take risks for fear of losing a place to live, thereby reducing the incentive for productive innovation.

There is a compelling moral argument that land of a country should belong to the people of that country, and if an individual or business wants exclusive rights to use that land they should compensate everybody else for it.

The modern free market for labor sounds like a significant improvement over pre-capitalist role assignment, and it is, but it is not without serious problems.