I think the confusion here is capitalism vs free markets. They're pretty darn similar at first glance, but the absence of government control is only a feature of free markets [1]
A market free of government control is an abstract concept. All actual markets, even the free ones, experience a variety of government controls. Some more, some less, and of different kinds depending on the political, economic and social situation they are embedded in.
Government is very easy to define, a system of social control for which a group or entity is given the exclusive authority to use violence to enforce that control
Thus there are no voluntary governments, as if everyone agree to something no force is required, and all government actions are enforced via the threat of violence
This is simplistic and fails to cover all the arrangements that one might one to call a government.
It also shows all the hallmarks of an over-reliance on the internet-provided definition of a government (which of course pats itself on the back of seeing what all those silly academics couldn't see).
I mean, for goodness sake, just a quick browse of Graeber & Wengrow will reveal many forms of societies' arrangements for collective decision making that violate your description (in part because your description is about enforcement, which some societies eschew, and fails to deal with collection decision making at all).
>>This is simplistic and fails to cover all the arrangements that one might one to call a government.
This would then imply that all collective social arrangements of people must be called "government" and that any definition of "government" that does not include every possible social arrangement of people is flawed
I reject this over broad assertion, when we attempt to broaden the definition of words to that degree they lose all value in meaningful conversation as the word now means anything. These seems to be common in modern times something that should be resisted
> This would then imply that all collective social arrangements of people must be called "government" and that any definition of "government" that does not include every possible social arrangement of people is flawed
Wow.
As made clear subsequently, "government" covers the process(es) a society uses for collective decision making and enforcement of those decisions.
It does not cover the nature of marriage, the presence or absence of multi-generational households, the size of cities, methods of transportation or the religious demographics.
It is still a narrowly defined term, but just not narrowed down to the 30 year old look-ma-i-discovered-the-internet version of "it's about the monopoly on violence".
Your derision aside (which is not really a winning method if you want to convey your point or gain understanding with others )
Why do you believe my definition which is a very old definition dating back long before computers let alone the internet is " look-ma-i-discovered-the-internet version"
Or maybe that is suppose to be a weak attack on either my chronological age (which you believe to be 30, far from accurate) or that I am naive in my views even though I have been refining my political options for decades in various venues.
So who about you formulate a better agreement than your current dismissive weak ones where by simply because you only discovered this view on the internet you assume that is the only place it was present, and therefore should be dismissed out of hand. Seems like a lot of projection going on here.
The definition of government that you offered comes from a very distinct strain of philosophy, which doesn't go back that far, historically had few believers, and gained far more prominence with the rise of Usenet than it had ever had before in the history of humanity.
I'm also not interested in convincing you of anything. My only goal is to point out fallacies, so that simplistic depictions of "what is" don't go unchallenged. It's fine with me if you continue to believe what you already believe.
You can debate that with investopedia if you think their definition is inaccurate, but I've never seen a definition of free markets that builds in a requirement for government controls.
Functionally we have few, if any, modern examples of free markets but the same goes for communism. Practically we never really implement either concept and we erroneously call what we do implement by this names, but that doesn't change the original idea or definition.
It's not about the definition, it's about reality.
The reality is that markets free of all regulation have all sorts of problems, and so in order to keep them functional and retain (almost all of) the benefits of "free markets", the participants invite/consent/tolerate the "intrusion" of government.
It doesn't really matter if that is a part of the definition or not.
Sure I totally agree we don't actually implement free markets, whether right or wrong we decided they are too idealistic and some level of regulation is important. That just means we don't have free markets though, not that the definition of a free market should be changed to match what we have.
It's the same problem with communism. No country has actually implemented Marxism or communism, we only have countries ruled by oligarchs and/or monarchs that call themselves communist because it sounds better. I'm not saying I think communism would work, but we've yet to see it actually tried at the state level.
Free markets, in the original Smithian definition, require extensive government influence to keep the market free for new participants to enter and make opportunities for themselves. This means quashing bad actors including monopolists and other actors who seek to distort the market in drastic ways.
Free markets don't require any intervention, we choose to modify the model and have a free-ish market because we ultimately don't trust those invoked long term. That isn't the conceptual design though, ideally a free market handles monopolies on its own when customers simply walk away from the bad actor.
I can't find a source defining free markets as requiring government intervention, I'd be really curious to e one of you have it.
Adam Smith didn't think government intervention was necessary, as best I recall. He described what he called the invisible hand, but that is the natural market forces of self-interested parties not government control.
I copy/paste a quote from Investopedia right now for some reason, but Smith described his opinion of the tiles of government and it specifically didn't include controlling the free market
