Chapter 1

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2. excessive hope: everyone with effort can become the boss. showing luxury. possibilities and disappointments are huge.

3. We have too much freedom: society doenst really care what you do and it is not confident for people to dont have answers to the big questions of your life.

4. atheism: sense of community which religion offer is highly important. Capitalism has nothing to replace this

5. weakening of the nation and family: dont give the feeling of being part of something anymore. how can we create new ways of belonging

A contract, according to Durkheim, would not be effective in a society where selfinterested individuals are allowed to do whatever they want, but only in a society where self-interest is restrained and subordinated to society as a whole. “The contract is not sufficient by itself, but is only possible because of the regulation of contracts, which is social in origin”

Georg Simmel

competition can take the form of tertius gaudens (“the third who bene- fits”). In this situation, which involves three actors, Actor A exploits the fact that actors B and C are competing for her favor—to buy or to sell something, for example. Competition is consequently not something that concerns only the competitors (actors B and C); it is also related to Actor A, the target of the competition.

competition implies parallel efforts, which means that society can benefit from the actions of both actors. Instead of destroying your opponent, as you do in a conflict, in competition you try to do exactly what your competitor does—only better.

Money is also surrounded by various “economically important sentiments,” such as “hope and fear, desire and anxiety” (171). Without trust, Simmel argues, society could simply not exist; and “in the same way, money transactions would collapse without trust”

Joseph Schumpeter

theory of entrepreneurs to explain the rise and fall of bourgeois families. As entrepreneurship fades away, after one or two generations, so do the wealth and the status of the family of the entrepreneur

basic idea is that imperialism is precapitalistic and deeply irrational in nature, and is essentially an expression of a warrior class or stratum that feels it must constantly conquer new areas or otherwise will fall back and lose power. Capitalism and imperialism, he says, have nothing in common.

creative destruction

Karl Polanyi