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Given the use of slave child labor on cocoa plants, blood diamonds and the chopping off of hands, abuses in the pursuit of rubber in Africa, the willful dumping
by yequalsx 9y ago
Given the use of slave child labor on cocoa plants, blood diamonds and the chopping off of hands, abuses in the pursuit of rubber in Africa, the willful dumping of toxic chemicals that cause birth defects, etc. that occur in the pursuit of profit by capitalists I’m not sure one can conclude that the worst thing about capitalism is much better than for communism.
Perhaps you could say that capitalism does a better job of dispersing the benefits but it’s worst aspects are quite bad. Overall, the thing to fear is concentrated power in too few hands and unregulated markets.
- JoeAltmaier 9y agoHm, the starvation of millions during Mao's control were pretty bad. Not sure mistreatment even comes close to 30 millions dead?
- yequalsx 9y agoThe worst of capitalism is sort of like death by a thousand cuts. It occurs in pockets and has a much more diverse set of bad actors. But a few slaves here and a few deformed babies there and pretty soon we are talking about misery On a grand scale. It’s just spread out over the planet in pockets and doesn’t have a single person to blame. The worst of Mao and Stalin was more concentrated and was more efficient. But let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that the worst of capitalism is anything less than evil and abhorrent.
- JoeAltmaier 9y agoIts all tragedy, agreed, every life is important. But nothing is more tragic than well-meaning people trying to run everything themselves, because they know better than the rest of us. E.g. Communism etc.
- yequalsx 9y agoYes. And E.g. Ayn Rand style capitalism and capitalism without proper regulation.
- danschumann 9y agoIf someone is a hand chopper-offer, people will not want to do business with them. Capitalism will punish him. And he does that not as a result of capitalism, there is no competitive edge to hand chopping off, it's just evil. Also, lets pretend the hand chopper-offer is not an individual running a business, lets say he's in charge of an all-powerful communist government. When you centralize power too much, you risk a tyrant seizing control of that power.
- yequalsx 9y agoI believe your first paragraph is naive. There are lots of examples of bad actors in capitalism that are never punished by the market or the government. Your belief in the wonders of the market correcting abuses is especially hard to understand when not everyone has perfect market information. As an example look at De Beers and how many people bought diamonds from this company that willingly did business with the hand choppers.
- danschumann 9y agoI believe you aren't objectively comparing the ills of capitalism with the ills of communism, or you simply can't do math. Communism means the government seizes control of the means of productions. There are few businesses that I would rather see ran by the government than by a citizen with skin in the game.
- yequalsx 9y agoI haven’t added the sum total of all misery (how can this be meaningfully quantified?) caused by capitalists and compared with the sum total of all misery caused by autocracies. Both are horrible and good people ought to strive for a world in which neither occur. Capitalism is better overall in that it does a much better job of dispersing benefits. But the misery caused by capitalists in the pursuit of profit ought not be overlooked. I believe the Bible is correct when it says that the root of all evil is the love of money (which includes power).