How many people murdered business rivals in the 1800's in the US?
The comparison isn't to murder -- you only need to drive the competitors out of business. How many people set fire to a competing business? Hire gangs to intimidate competitor's employees? Arrange some industrial "accidents"?
We're not debating moral equivalency, we're talking about whether sociopaths under capitalism are significantly more law-abiding ("bind themselves by the rules of the game") than under non-capitalist systems. The only reason that I can come up for that is that under capitalism, generally speaking, the rule of law is stronger, often much stronger, and so it's harder to go against it. I'm not sure it's sufficient for the conclusion we're talking about, though -- the risks are higher, but there's less competition for the rewards :-/
One can probably make an interesting argument that modern societies are more totalitarian in that avoiding "the system" is much harder than in the Middle Ages, for example, but I don't know if that can be laid at the feet of capitalism...
The comparison isn't to murder -- you only need to drive the competitors out of business. How many people set fire to a competing business? Hire gangs to intimidate competitor's employees? Arrange some industrial "accidents"?
Alright. So... how many times did this happen? And if you're not sure, would you expect this to happen frequently, given the dangers of retaliation? (Your rival losing his factory is a slight gain for you, as you don't gain all of his market share. His retaliatory strike burning -your- factory down is a -major- loss fo...
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