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When I say the following: > Be the example that you don't believe exists. It's in response to you saying: > of an inherently exploitive system. A trivially

When I say the following: > Be the example that you don't believe exists. It's in response to you saying: > of an inherently exploitive system. A trivially small number of them actually added true wealth to the world And I agree, not everyone can be rich, but on an individual basis it's not that hard. The good thing about capitalism is that the average quality of life gets elevated. The rich do get richer (which we shouldn't focus on) but poverty also gets eliminated at the same time. And yes, as you say, people won't act like the utopia we'd like, so it's not perfect. But it's better than anything else by a long shot.

quadrangle 9y ago
> on an individual basis it's not that hard. Well, yeah, that's the difference between micro and macro. In a free society without a nobility or class system, it's possible for any one individual to rise from poverty to privilege with luck and hard work. But if it's a zero-sum game where one success is another's loss, then "being the example" isn't an example of anything, it's just being the winner instead of the loser. Of course, most success isn't entirely zero-sum, but it has too many zero-sum elements far too often and is also too-often entirely zero-sum. And some people try to ignore the entire issue of when or whether or how-much some success is zero-sum. > The good thing about capitalism is that the average quality of life gets elevated. Crediting "capitalism" here is entirely dubious. The correct credit goes to technology and innovation. There's nowhere near adequate evidence to conclude that capitalism itself automatically increases average quality of life. Perhaps you are mistakenly lumping all of trade and markets with "capitalism"? Markets are often positive for everyone, and trade is generally positive for everyone, raising everyone's quality of life. In our society, probably because of propaganda to this effect, people consider markets and capitalism synonymous sometimes, the same semantic way people in some contexts might consider "moral" and "religious" (or even "Christian") to by synonymous. In short, if you're just saying that markets and trade benefit everyone generally (but not necessarily), then we have no disagreement there.

quadrangle 9y ago

> on an individual basis it's not that hard. Well, yeah, that's the difference between micro and macro. In a free society without a nobility or class system, it's possible for any one individual to rise from poverty to privilege with luck and hard work. But if it's a zero-sum game where one success is another's loss, then "being the example" isn't an example of anything, it's just being the winner instead of the loser. Of course, most success isn't entirely zero-sum, but it has too many zero-sum elements far too often and is also too-often entirely zero-sum. And some people try to ignore the entire issue of when or whether or how-much some success is zero-sum. > The good thing about capitalism is that the average quality of life gets elevated. Crediting "capitalism" here is entirely dubious. The correct credit goes to technology and innovation. There's nowhere near adequate evidence to conclude that capitalism itself automatically increases average quality of life. Perhaps you are mistakenly lumping all of trade and markets with "capitalism"? Markets are often positive for everyone, and trade is generally positive for everyone, raising everyone's quality of life. In our society, probably because of propaganda to this effect, people consider markets and capitalism synonymous sometimes, the same semantic way people in some contexts might consider "moral" and "religious" (or even "Christian") to by synonymous. In short, if you're just saying that markets and trade benefit everyone generally (but not necessarily), then we have no disagreement there.