@davidbsilver.bsky.social
Words like “capitalism” are tricky as people use them in different ways. I take capitalism to be an economic arrangement in which for-profit corporations play a significant role. Capitalism, so understood, is compatible with elements of socialism, such as in health and education.
26.10.2025 21:18 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Markets and capitalism are not *inherently* based on unequal status and power, even though they may often appear that way.
We can and should choose as a society to structure them in a way that empowers everyone as free and equal, or so I argue in my book
Fordham is hosting a book symposium with me in dialog with Joanne Ciulla (Rutgers University) and Nicholas Tampio (Fordham University).
Monday, November 10, at 5:30 pm ET at the Joseph McShane Campus Center Multipurpose Room 311 (Rose Hill Campus).
Zoom RSVP here:
forms.gle/6SiMaQahv357...
Smith was a philosopher who saw the market as a tool for enhancing human freedom and equality. In the free market, the butcher and baker do not subserviently serve the lord, but rather make a financial exchange with him on equal terms. Smith was aware of large corporations, but also wary of them.
26.10.2025 18:30 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0I’ve spent my career as an academic philosopher, and just now starting to write some public facing pieces. I’m working now on a short piece specifically directed to business leaders. I am also seriously thinking about writing a short book on how we all can reject fear and greed to act ethically.
26.10.2025 18:11 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0My personal aim is to look the history of America with a clear-eyed view of both how it has lived up to ideals, and to how it has failed. I will not be so cynical to say it never does good, nor so jingoistic as to say it never does bad. And I will always strive to make America its better self.
26.10.2025 06:39 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Many parts are worth preserving. But one core value is that we settle our disagreements through free and fair elections, rather than through violence. I worry about parts of both the political right and left that are rejecting democracy, and in so doing are leaning into and celebrating violence.
26.10.2025 06:18 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0America has always had a struggle between its ideals and its reality. I want to preserve the parts of the ideal we already have achieved, and to work to better achieve the parts we haven’t.
26.10.2025 05:54 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0It depends on what you understand capitalism to be. If you equate it with its most brutal version, then it is indeed incompatible with democracy. My academic work explores other historically rooted understandings of capitalism, and how we might create a more human, humane and democratic version.
26.10.2025 05:39 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0The United States has always been an imperfect democracy. But I am not so cynical to think that this 250 year experiment in democratic self-governance is without value, or that it is not worth preserving and defending.
26.10.2025 04:52 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0Democracy has co-existed with capitalism throughout American history. There have been more democracy-friendly versions of capitalism than we are seeing right now, and that is what I am arguing for.
26.10.2025 01:45 — 👍 7 🔁 0 💬 4 📌 0
Business leaders often convince themselves that they don't have moral responsibilities within democratic society. But they do, along with everyone else. I argue this in Corporations and Persons: a theory of the firm in democratic society. (Oxford 2025):
theconversation.com/businesses-h...
Business leaders often convince themselves that they don't have moral responsibilities within democratic society. But they do, along with everyone else. I argue this in Corporations and Persons: a theory of the firm in democratic society. (Oxford 2025):
theconversation.com/businesses-h...
