Economic activity, though familiar and commonplace, cannot be fully understood unless it is placed in its proper social, historical, and evolutionary context. A key part of this context is the basic patterns and principles of human nature, from which the idiosyncratic patterns and principles of economic, social, cultural, and political activity in human socioeconomic systems spring. To understand economic activity means to understand human motivation and the forces that shape it, and doing this requires that we subordinate our desire to be special so that we may understand what is common, what is shared - what is foundational - in all of us.

    This book, Capitalism and Socialism in the 21^st Century, discusses the key differences between capitalism, socialism, anarchism, and syndicalism in light of the basic principles and patterns of human nature, and then provides numerous real-world examples and commentary to illustrate the essential differences between these four different socioeconomic systems. The real-world examples range from the historical to the modern, including some from the 21^st century. However, this book is not primarily concerned with the historical details, but with the deeper ideas and general principles, and the examples are used to illustrate the validity and applicability of these ideas and principles. The book also discusses the underpinnings of economic and social behavior in the human psyche by way of additional examples, and it includes discussion of various claims made about capitalism and socialism (which are the two primary systems discussed in this book) that make reference to supposed inherent components of these systems - such as the idea that capitalism is inherently racist or sexist, or the idea that socialism is inherently democratic - in light of the essential principles of these socioeconomic systems spelled out earlier in the book.

    This book contains the following:

• PART I: Introductory material, including a brief discussion of the nature of ownership, a philosophical aside on the nature of boundaries between things in the universe as a precursor to a discussion of the natural boundaries between the different socioeconomic systems, and a brief overview of the primary distinction between the different socioeconomic systems.


• PART II: A more detailed discussion of the basic patterns of capitalism, socialism, syndicalism, and anarchism, and the essential differences between them.


• PART III: A detailed discussion of historical and modern examples of human societies, organizations, governments, and institutions in light of the earlier discussion of basic principles. In this part we answer the question of the degree to which each of the four socioeconomic systems is represented by the particular example. These examples include the following:


• Putin's Russia
• Xi's China
• Kim's North Korea
• The Taliban's Afghanistan
• The Ayatollah's Iran
• Hitler's Germany
• South Korea
• The American Far Left
• The American Far Right
• Central Banking
• FDR's New Deal
• America

We also discuss in this part the psycho-emotional foundations of extremism.

• PART IV: Deeper and broader implications of the socioeconomic ideas presented in earlier sections, which are of two kinds: (1) forward implications, which discuss what we can conclude about various aspects of society on the basis of the understanding of socioeconomic systems presented in this book, and (2) reverse implications, which discuss what we can learn about human socioeconomic systems on the basis of an investigation into the psychological, emotional, and, ultimately, evolutionary underpinnings of the idiosyncrasies of these socioeconomic systems. In this section we discuss a variety of topics, including (among others) the following:


• The Desire for Partial Infringement (in Chapter 8)
• Freedom to Complain About Corporate Behavior (in Chapter 8)
• The Hollowness of Easy Money (in Chapter 8)
• Racism, Sexism, and Capitalism (in Chapter 8)
• The Decay of the West (in Chapter 8)
• The Cynical Mindset (in Chapter 8)
• The connection between rationality, freedom, capitalism, and inner self-confidence.
• The connection between irrationality, slavery, totalitarianism, socialism, and inner insecurity.
• The Natural Inequality of Wealth Under Freedom (in Chapter 9)
• Tyranny of the Majority (in Chapter 9)
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its inability to solve the economic calculation problem of socialism (the entire subject of Chapter 10).
• The socialist Misunderstanding of the Concept of Individualism (in Chapter 11)
• Environmentalism and Tyranny (in Chapter 11)
• The difficulty that tyranny has in rising or establishing itself in a society which is mature in freedom (in Chapter 11).
• Artistic Appreciation Under Capitalism (in Chapter 11)
• Additional Commentary on Xi Jinping, the increasingly powerful leader of the Chinese Communist Party (in Chapter 11).
• The argument that capitalism leads to decadence (in Chapter 11).
• The Shrinking Middle Class (in Chapter 11)
• Free Energy (in Chapter 11)

Subsequently, we discuss the psychological underpinnings of the socialist mindset in a more direct way, and then conclude the main body of work in the final section.

• APPENDICES: Finally, three appendices are provided which discuss, respectively, using Wikipedia as a source, the ideas of libertarianism as represented by Murray Rothbard and their relation to the ideas presented in this book, and what this book calls the two types of interventionism. The appendix on interventionism presents a theoretical and moral discussion of interventionism, followed by detailed discussion of three different concrete examples - the 2021 power crisis in Texas, the claim by US politician Bernie Sanders that all individual wealth beyond $999 million should be completely confiscated by the government, and climate change - to illustrate and provide context for the general discussion.

    There is a long history of scholarly work on the ideas of human social and economic organization. But society changes as time passes, and it is important for the purpose of preserving and extending freedom to show that these ideas and writings are still relevant, and, in fact, that they are just as relevant as they have always been. A thorough expression, and, in various ways, reiterpretation, of these ideas in the context of both historical and modern societies, and also in the context of a deeper analysis of human nature and its source - biological evolution - not only provides a unique perspective on these ideas, but provides insight and clarity which can translate into actionable beneficial changes in individual and societal behavior.

    The world in which we live is a combination of circumstances beyond our control and circumstances we can control. A substantial portion of our evolutionary heritage, including specifically those genes which code for the basic emotional and psychological idiosyncrasies that we collectively call human nature, consists of things given to us that we cannot control, cannot undo, cannot refuse. On the other hand, our free will and rational capacity, which is also given to us by the evolutionary process, allows us to control and influence the world around us, including the behavior of others, as well as our own behavior. It is the latter which allows us the ability to take creative action to solve problems in order to make things better for ourselves and for society, but we must solve these problems in the context of those things which we cannot control or influence. This means that to understand how to solve our problems, both as individuals and as a global society, we must understand the idiosyncrasies of human nature; only then can we find realistic, and thus lasting, solutions.