Merchants of course would have loved it since they were the few people living in a reality that would actually become capitalism.
I disagree with your initial statement since there were obviously alternatives throughout history and countries that never fully bought into full trappings of capitalism. It is only our opinion that capitalism, heavily influenced by our education that lends us to believe that capitalism is the only way things can be.
I read an interesting take that the Free Market and Capitalism are natural enemies- in that, the ideal capitalist investment, one that makes tbe best returns, is in the creation of a monopoly, thus subverting the free market.
We can see that today that, given the USA has largely stopped externally enforcing anti-monopoly measures, that companies grow and grow in size in a very un-free-market way.
Fr. I find libertarians so laughable because I'm like... your ultimately free market would just lead to mega monopolies that would go from being warlords to emperors real quick. Which would immediately destroy the free market.
I wonder about the real quick part. Eventually surely, but before that would it not be cheaper to affect political system so that government takes these actions by themselves, with tax money from everyone and with good loaning of money to boot. Paying for all that gear and people is expensive, better have someone else to boot the bill and then when system crashes down capture it...
Yeah I do think some level of market is natural. But I do think on the whole humans would rather live in a society that leans socialist with market forces than a rugged individualist nuclear family hyper-capitalist society. Like, being a frontier cowboy is only fun for a short amount of time. After your adventure you just wanna return to the shire and share vegetables and chill with your friends.
But do they want to play that game? Dungeon and Dragons, plus the computer RPGs that it inspired, represent an idealized version of the "building up of the self" that one does in, say, contemporary urban China, U.S., etc.
What would a game set in a world of positive socialism be like? Is it like Sim City or can we tell compelling stories about people who are part of the plan?
Fiction needs compelling villains. Time Bandits on Apple TV fails at this and instead is a madcap ramp through character and setting where good and evil seem equally bad. Contrast that to Foundation where Tellum Bond was quite terrifying and set expectations for the Mule to be much more terrifying in the next season.
> education that lends us to believe that capitalism is the only way things can be.
It seems to be the only stable system that has allowed relatively stable and continuous growth to occur long-term.
> capitalism is the only way things can be.
Of course it depends on how you personally define "capitalism" (because it's really not clear at all) and obviously humanity has attempted to implement various different systems, they never really worked out.
Other more "natural" (i.e. not imposed by the use of violence) systems of course have existed (e.g. various hunter gather societies) but they seem to have a very low cap on productivity and therefore can't sustain any long-term economic growth and therefore were outcompeted by "capitalism".
I disagree with your initial statement since there were obviously alternatives throughout history and countries that never fully bought into full trappings of capitalism. It is only our opinion that capitalism, heavily influenced by our education that lends us to believe that capitalism is the only way things can be.