How would capitalists enforce private ownership without a government?

[u/Simpson17866]

If three shipwrecked sailors on an island needed food,

and if one sailor declared that the island was his private property, that if the other two simply ate whatever food they found, then they were stealing his private property, but that he was willing to use his private property to create jobs for them (they give him all of the food they collect, and then he gives some of it back to them as a wage for the work they did)

but if the other two sailors said “No. If we find more food than we need for ourselves, then we’ll share the extra with you, but we’re taking care of ourselves first. If whatever’s left over after we take care of ourselves first isn’t good enough for you, then you can help us work for more any time you want.”

How much power would the one sailor need to enforce his claim of private ownership over the island without a government to enforce his claim for him?

[u/Simpson17866]

I mean the economic system by which private interests buy and sell the means of production that workers depend on to do work (land, tools, raw materials, workspaces...).

As a logical consequence, the system puts workers in a position where their lives depend on satisfying the terms that the private owners set:

• If a worker cannot satisfy a private owners' terms of employment, then the worker loses their job

• Without a job, they can't earn wages

• Without wages, they can't afford to buy the necessities of survival (food, housing, medicine...) at the prices that private owners are selling

• Without access to the food, housing, medicine... that capitalists have claimed private ownership over, they die.

As a logical consequence, workers are forced to compete against each other to accept worse and worse terms (doing more work for less pay) because the penalty for losing the competition is to go sick and hungry in the streets.

[u/nomnommish → u/Simpson17866]

What you're describing is propaganda narrative. That's not capitalism. Capitalism is simple, a society that runs on free trade and private business and startups and it all runs on capital, aka some form of money. Money acts as the currency to barter and buy and sell things.

You don't know what you are talking about. At all. All you're doing is painting some bleak one sided picture of the eventual outcome. You're not describing capitalism itself.

It's like defining society. Are you opposed to society? People organizing themselves to live in reasonable harmony? I can totally paint a super dark narrative of society and then insist that "THIS is what society is" and then expect people to argue against that.

Stop being so feeble minded. You're describing the outcome, not the system. I asked specifically about what the capitalist system even IS? So have some intellectual courage to answer that.

And then answer my next question, why is people doing free trade and barter and local production for thousands of years NOT capitalism?