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My parents always taught me to be honest and care about those around you. The older I got the more I realized that was mal-adaptive behavior in capitalistic so

My parents always taught me to be honest and care about those around you. The older I got the more I realized that was mal-adaptive behavior in capitalistic society. The real goal of capitalism is exploit or be exploited.

cobookman 9y ago
It's possible to do both. Look at the kibbutzim of Israel. Many after 50ish years have > 1mil/resident in assets. Many are a communist society with bad actors kicked out. and sell their goods in a capitalistic way. So you get the best of communism and capitalism. It doesn't scale for everyone but it's a good in between.
nickysielicki 9y ago
You're posting on a website of a venture capital group.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
forapurpose 9y ago
If we say, 'others are doing wrong; therefore I must do the same in order to compete', then we always will do wrong because there always will be people like that out there. If we say 'this system can be gamed by people willing to do bad things, therefore I must do them or I'm at a disadvantage', then we always will do bad things - every system is vulnerable.
icelancer 9y ago
> The real goal of capitalism is exploit or be exploited. The real goal of capitalism is to increase the amount of capital available. This fundamentally is not possible via exploitation alone. Capitalism - nor the economy - is not a zero-sum game. This type of simplistic thinking makes people dismiss real criticisms over the real-world implementation of American capitalism.
- ionised 9y ago
  > Capitalism - nor the economy - is not a zero-sum game. Can you tell me why you think this? It seems pretty fucking zero-sum to me.
- kunimu 9y ago
  >The real goal of capitalism is to increase the amount of capital available. This fundamentally is not possible via exploitation alone. This is a common view, however it was also a common view of the political economists before Marx published his critique of the field, Capital. It was his thesis that through the cycle of circulation, M-C-M' is observed, that is, the capitalist manages to leave with more money than what he started with at the beginning of the exchange. He turned what you have just said upon its head - one of the sources of profit is actually via exploitation alone, that is, the purchasing and usage of labour-power whose use-value takes the form of labour which is applied to the final products. It is value-adding. This is the contradiction that Marx aimed to solve, that is, if values are traded for values, how is it that the capitalist is able to make profit? Ending up with more money at the end, barring any kind of trickery or scamming, barring the fact that the economy does not solely run on collection of rent and interest, how can a profit be made? It's probably false to describe it as a zero-sum game, but that's only because both the worker and the capitalist benefit from the trade of labour-power for wage (assuming equal values are traded for equal values, the contradiction of labour and capital in incessant dialectical movement). It is clear however that the benefit of the capitalist is indeed greater and sustained by the fact that most workers must sell their labour-power to survive. This kind of analysis is extremely unsettling to capitalists, as value is not merely an outward appearance of a thing, but rather it is an essential quality, it is hidden away but works "behind the backs" of both the capitalist and the worker. In this sense, Marx notes that "they have acted without thinking first". One contributor to ignorance of capital and money is commodity fetishism, a term Marx borrowed from social anthropology, in which people are merely representatives of commodities rather than alienated people trying to survive on the "free market".
- nickthemagicman 9y ago
  'The real goal of capitalism is to increase the amount of capital available. This fundamentally is not possible via exploitation alone.' The south built an entire economy based on 'exploitation alone' in the early 1800's.... You need to qualify your statement: 'The real goal of capitalism is to increase the amount of capitalism available'. Available to who? humanity at large? Nope. Capitalists don't share their wealth. Capitalism increases capital for the people who control the capital. See every economic study made in the past ten years. The middle and working class exist to serve the capitalists aims. Slavery in a pretty package.

cobookman 9y ago

It's possible to do both. Look at the kibbutzim of Israel. Many after 50ish years have > 1mil/resident in assets. Many are a communist society with bad actors kicked out. and sell their goods in a capitalistic way. So you get the best of communism and capitalism. It doesn't scale for everyone but it's a good in between.

nickysielicki 9y ago

You're posting on a website of a venture capital group.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

forapurpose 9y ago

If we say, 'others are doing wrong; therefore I must do the same in order to compete', then we always will do wrong because there always will be people like that out there. If we say 'this system can be gamed by people willing to do bad things, therefore I must do them or I'm at a disadvantage', then we always will do bad things - every system is vulnerable.

icelancer 9y ago

> The real goal of capitalism is exploit or be exploited. The real goal of capitalism is to increase the amount of capital available. This fundamentally is not possible via exploitation alone. Capitalism - nor the economy - is not a zero-sum game. This type of simplistic thinking makes people dismiss real criticisms over the real-world implementation of American capitalism.

ionised 9y ago
> Capitalism - nor the economy - is not a zero-sum game. Can you tell me why you think this? It seems pretty fucking zero-sum to me.
kunimu 9y ago
>The real goal of capitalism is to increase the amount of capital available. This fundamentally is not possible via exploitation alone. This is a common view, however it was also a common view of the political economists before Marx published his critique of the field, Capital. It was his thesis that through the cycle of circulation, M-C-M' is observed, that is, the capitalist manages to leave with more money than what he started with at the beginning of the exchange. He turned what you have just said upon its head - one of the sources of profit is actually via exploitation alone, that is, the purchasing and usage of labour-power whose use-value takes the form of labour which is applied to the final products. It is value-adding. This is the contradiction that Marx aimed to solve, that is, if values are traded for values, how is it that the capitalist is able to make profit? Ending up with more money at the end, barring any kind of trickery or scamming, barring the fact that the economy does not solely run on collection of rent and interest, how can a profit be made? It's probably false to describe it as a zero-sum game, but that's only because both the worker and the capitalist benefit from the trade of labour-power for wage (assuming equal values are traded for equal values, the contradiction of labour and capital in incessant dialectical movement). It is clear however that the benefit of the capitalist is indeed greater and sustained by the fact that most workers must sell their labour-power to survive. This kind of analysis is extremely unsettling to capitalists, as value is not merely an outward appearance of a thing, but rather it is an essential quality, it is hidden away but works "behind the backs" of both the capitalist and the worker. In this sense, Marx notes that "they have acted without thinking first". One contributor to ignorance of capital and money is commodity fetishism, a term Marx borrowed from social anthropology, in which people are merely representatives of commodities rather than alienated people trying to survive on the "free market".
nickthemagicman 9y ago
'The real goal of capitalism is to increase the amount of capital available. This fundamentally is not possible via exploitation alone.' The south built an entire economy based on 'exploitation alone' in the early 1800's.... You need to qualify your statement: 'The real goal of capitalism is to increase the amount of capitalism available'. Available to who? humanity at large? Nope. Capitalists don't share their wealth. Capitalism increases capital for the people who control the capital. See every economic study made in the past ten years. The middle and working class exist to serve the capitalists aims. Slavery in a pretty package.