I have just been hit with something. Smacked in the face really. It never ceases to amaze me how much in the dark I am (and probably most people). I have just looked at the dictionary definitions of 'Capitalist' and 'Capitalism'. However, not all dictionaries are created equally. Before jumping in, we need to talk about money.
Money
I've covered money before, but to reiterate, money is a concept backed by confidence. If you don't believe this then research examples such as Christophe, the King of Haiti who overthrew the French and based the new currency on Gourdes (even now Haitian currency is called the Gourd).
Money used to be tied to a physical asset such as gold. Nowadays money is printed by the governments or a private company who base it on bonds (which is just another form of printed paper) in a trail of complexity to make it hard to understand. So money is key to capitalism.
Capitalism
One definition of 'Capitalism' I came across is: 'an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state'. Ok. Just a lot of words to do with a system of government and trade yeah? Hmmm, not really. What this really means is that capitalists do not create anything. They use their money to make more money, but don't actually do anything themselves. 'He who has the gold makes the rules' as they say. They basically live off people who do the actual work. To me this looks like the actual system of government, not the 'democracy' we think.
I read Robert Kiyosaki's 'Rich Dad Poor Dad' a long time ago. A great book, but one part I resented was the fact he was promoting that you get people to work for you, you do nothing, but take most of the profit. Is this not paracitic? This is capitalism.
Entrepreneurs
The entrepreneur, the creators/producers, the managers, all these people make products or perform services for an exchange. An entrepreneur undertakes something. They see a need, or have a passion, and work at producing it.
You may say that most entrepreneurs wouldn't get off the ground if it wasn't for investors. Well possibly, but isn't that the sorry state we are in? The mindset of the average person is so indoctriniated in the system that they can't see outside the box. This is why I hate the phrase 'creating jobs'. You could pay one group of people to dig a hole one day, then another team to fill it in the day after, wouldn't that 'create jobs'? Yeah, it would be totally rediculous too. Today we have crowd funding. People want to be included and be part of something they themselves believe in. This is true democracy.