You can absolutely opt out of capitalism, and many have: you can get some likeminded people together and start a commune, or you can go sleep on a park bench and panhandle, or you can just leave and move to Cuba or North Korea. Nobody will stop you or hinder you in any way.
However, you cannot opt out of socialism. "Not having a job" is illegal in socialist countries. Don't like the job that was assigned to you by some bureaucrat? Want to start a mini-free market with your friends? Too bad, the alternative is the labor camps.
The border guards in capitalist countries are there to prevent illegal immigration into the country. The border guards in socialist countries are there to keep people from escaping.
FYI, there's nothing inherently socialist about what you describe. It's an artifact of countries that tried to implement communism in one way specifically.
Socialism at its core is simply the social ownership and democratic control of the means of production.
It's pretty common to consider social democracy a form or derivative of socialism, and personally I think its the form of government that has come closest to the socialist ideals, even though they didn't fully implement it the way classical socialists or communists imagined.
Communism just replaced the capitalists with a political elite. There's no difference between communism in practice, and simply one big corporation running everything. The people didn't gain social ownership, and certainly not democratic control.
Planned economy was naive. But having a democratic state have majority ownership in large, key corporations that compete in an otherwise free market gets to the social ownership/democratic control part, but without the oppressive government part that inevitably results from the naive approach to achieving socialist ideals.
> you can get some likeminded people together and start a commune
You still have to buy the land. Probably you wouldn't have too much trouble finding relatively cheap and fertile land still, but it might be getting harder. It's not like you can just settle down wherever and live off the land.
I think the main problem here is that if you'd like to grow a non-capitalist economy, you have absolutely no state support. All laws are written with capitalism assumed. So non-capitalist approaches have little chance to grow beyond a single commune. In fact, even if you tried to grow a new capitalist economy (in the sense of doing trade, not in the sense of Marx' definition), which isn't the state sanctioned variety of capitalism, you'd probably get jailed. Try starting a set of communes that trade goods with your own gold-standard currency, see what happens.
So no, you can't opt out. You, personally, if you have enough money, can perhaps do a big one-time purchase which will let you partly opt out for just you and maybe a few other people. But you don't really get to have any economic activity with more than a handful of people.
> or you can go sleep on a park bench and panhandle
I don't think that's what the parent post had in mind. That's not really opting out at all. You're completely dependent on capitalism for surviving that way, even if you don't have a job yourself.
> You can absolutely opt out of capitalism, and many have: you can get some likeminded people together and start a commune... Nobody will stop you or hinder you in any way.
This is patently false. If I go find a nearby piece of unused arable land to farm the police will arrest me and throw me in jail. If I try to trade milk for bread with my neighbor the police will arrest me and throw me in jail. If I build a house using indigenous materials the police will arrest me and throw me in jail.
Not immediately, but if I stick to my guns in any of these practices the legal path ends with me in jail. Maybe I can avoid enforcement through secrecy, but that doesn't make it any less illegal.
Many counties in the U.S. have made it illegal to live outside the capitalist system.
And your suggestion that no one will hassle you for sleeping on a park bench is completely absurd. People sleeping on park benches are perhaps the biggest target of police harassment of anyone.
That does not mean you are not part of the capitalist society anymore. You have to get enough capital to get land and you will have to continue paying taxes.
I would say the most offensive/dishonest aspect of this loaded statement is basically the implied isolation of "you guys go over there, leave the world to us" -- as if only the capitalists can claim the inherited knowledge of humanity (fenced off with copyright laws etc). As if only the capitalists, who have taken so many (all) natural resources, have a right to the land we are born on and we must slave to pay for small parcel of land just to exist. How exactly is that "opting out" of capitalism again?
It's more akin to playing socialism than actually living in it.
However, you cannot opt out of socialism. "Not having a job" is illegal in socialist countries. Don't like the job that was assigned to you by some bureaucrat? Want to start a mini-free market with your friends? Too bad, the alternative is the labor camps.
The border guards in capitalist countries are there to prevent illegal immigration into the country. The border guards in socialist countries are there to keep people from escaping.