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So then it is not a morally defensible system, unless you believe the accumulation of wealth is inherently moral? It seems surprising that capitalism is so eas

by geofft 8y ago

So then it is not a morally defensible system, unless you believe the accumulation of wealth is inherently moral? It seems surprising that capitalism is so easy to argue against on moral grounds. Surely it has some benefit for the society that lives under it?

sokoloff 8y ago
> Surely it has some benefit for the society that lives under it? It does seem that societies with generally capitalist systems flourish to a much greater degree than societies that are organized under any other dominant economic system.
- dpkonofa 8y ago
  That really depends on what your definition of "flourish" is. The United States is really the only country that has "flourished" under a capitalist system and that's only if you define that through the definition of capitalism which is to say that there is more capital in the US than in other nations. Attributing that to capitalism, though, and not to years and years of industrial progress, human slavery, and, arguably, immoral behavior is somewhat naive, in my opinion.
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    The contemporary competitors to the US with different economic fundamentals (China and the USSR primarily) also experienced/inflicted slavery, immoral behavior, and industrial progress, yet they didn't see nearly the same level of economic or societal development for the overwhelmingly vast majority of their population over their time of heavy-handed central planning economics. If you knew you'd be assigned at birth to a life of 10th to 90th percentile (by status/money/class) in a non-wartime country and it would be US, UK, USSR, or China and your birth year would be 1880, 1900, 1920, 1938, 1960, or 1980, how many would choose the USSR or China?
    - geofft 8y ago
      How much of this is simply that capitalism is more efficient at producing weapons of war, and the US was able to force the USSR and China to spend significant resources on defense?
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - blackoil 8y ago
    As per `Homo Sapiens` Slavery was a direct result of capitalism. Humans like all other resource were optimized for maximum o/p and profit, and if not for Hitler to have taken racism to home and to extreme. People may not have seen error in the way. Its how as society we don't rise against treatment of cows in factory farming.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      How can slavery be a direct result of capitalism, when the latter appeared thousands of years after the former?
  - adventured 8y ago
    There are no affluent, liberal Democracies that do not utilize a free market based economic system, ie some formulation of Capitalism. Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Netherlands. Five of the wealthiest countries on earth, and generally considered five of the best to live in. None of those are Socialist systems. They all use the free market as the basis of their economic systems. Some with more or less government regulation, and with varying degrees of a welfare state. The same is true of the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Germany, Japan, France, Switzerland, etc. All have private ownership based economies, allowing for the vast accumulation of private wealth via business and asset ownership. Germany for example ranks #3 in billionaires globally, and Sweden ranks near the top in billionaires per capita. That is impossible under any implementation of Socialism, which requires state ownership of the means of production and does not allow such accumulation of private wealth.
    - krapp 8y ago
      >Some with more or less government regulation, and with varying degrees of a welfare state. The existence of government regulation means these countries do not have free markets, and all welfare programs are socialist in that they involve the government taking wealth from the people through taxation and redistributing it to those who haven't earned it by trading their labor. >That is impossible under any implementation of Socialism, which requires state ownership of the means of production and does not allow such accumulation of private wealth. You seem to have communism and socialism confused here, and you seem to be failing to see that socialism and capitalism exist on a spectrum, and most countries don't practice one or the other, but a mix of both.
krapp 8y ago
I don't believe the accumulation of wealth is necessarily moral or immoral, rather amoral. Capitalism can and does benefit society, but so can other economic systems. Nevertheless, the purpose of capitalism isn't to enrich society, it's to enrich the owners and shareholders by accumulating capital. The correlation between the quality or morality of a good or service and its value in the market isn't a strong one, since there are forces other than supply and demand at work determining value, and markets don't often optimize for greater societal good. If they did, agriculture and electronics manufacturing wouldn't depend on immigrant and forced labor, blood mining, and other immoral practices. Consumers put up with those things because the end result is bananas year round and cheap consumer goods. I think the mistake comes in demanding that societies prefer only one or another model, due to projecting moral dimensions onto them which may not apply, rather than accepting a balance between systems intended to benefit the few, and systems intended to benefit the many.

by geofft 8y ago

sokoloff 8y ago

> Surely it has some benefit for the society that lives under it? It does seem that societies with generally capitalist systems flourish to a much greater degree than societies that are organized under any other dominant economic system.

dpkonofa 8y ago
That really depends on what your definition of "flourish" is. The United States is really the only country that has "flourished" under a capitalist system and that's only if you define that through the definition of capitalism which is to say that there is more capital in the US than in other nations. Attributing that to capitalism, though, and not to years and years of industrial progress, human slavery, and, arguably, immoral behavior is somewhat naive, in my opinion.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  The contemporary competitors to the US with different economic fundamentals (China and the USSR primarily) also experienced/inflicted slavery, immoral behavior, and industrial progress, yet they didn't see nearly the same level of economic or societal development for the overwhelmingly vast majority of their population over their time of heavy-handed central planning economics. If you knew you'd be assigned at birth to a life of 10th to 90th percentile (by status/money/class) in a non-wartime country and it would be US, UK, USSR, or China and your birth year would be 1880, 1900, 1920, 1938, 1960, or 1980, how many would choose the USSR or China?
  - geofft 8y ago
    How much of this is simply that capitalism is more efficient at producing weapons of war, and the US was able to force the USSR and China to spend significant resources on defense?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- blackoil 8y ago
  As per `Homo Sapiens` Slavery was a direct result of capitalism. Humans like all other resource were optimized for maximum o/p and profit, and if not for Hitler to have taken racism to home and to extreme. People may not have seen error in the way. Its how as society we don't rise against treatment of cows in factory farming.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    How can slavery be a direct result of capitalism, when the latter appeared thousands of years after the former?
- adventured 8y ago
  There are no affluent, liberal Democracies that do not utilize a free market based economic system, ie some formulation of Capitalism. Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Netherlands. Five of the wealthiest countries on earth, and generally considered five of the best to live in. None of those are Socialist systems. They all use the free market as the basis of their economic systems. Some with more or less government regulation, and with varying degrees of a welfare state. The same is true of the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Germany, Japan, France, Switzerland, etc. All have private ownership based economies, allowing for the vast accumulation of private wealth via business and asset ownership. Germany for example ranks #3 in billionaires globally, and Sweden ranks near the top in billionaires per capita. That is impossible under any implementation of Socialism, which requires state ownership of the means of production and does not allow such accumulation of private wealth.
  - krapp 8y ago
    >Some with more or less government regulation, and with varying degrees of a welfare state. The existence of government regulation means these countries do not have free markets, and all welfare programs are socialist in that they involve the government taking wealth from the people through taxation and redistributing it to those who haven't earned it by trading their labor. >That is impossible under any implementation of Socialism, which requires state ownership of the means of production and does not allow such accumulation of private wealth. You seem to have communism and socialism confused here, and you seem to be failing to see that socialism and capitalism exist on a spectrum, and most countries don't practice one or the other, but a mix of both.

krapp 8y ago

I don't believe the accumulation of wealth is necessarily moral or immoral, rather amoral. Capitalism can and does benefit society, but so can other economic systems. Nevertheless, the purpose of capitalism isn't to enrich society, it's to enrich the owners and shareholders by accumulating capital. The correlation between the quality or morality of a good or service and its value in the market isn't a strong one, since there are forces other than supply and demand at work determining value, and markets don't often optimize for greater societal good. If they did, agriculture and electronics manufacturing wouldn't depend on immigrant and forced labor, blood mining, and other immoral practices. Consumers put up with those things because the end result is bananas year round and cheap consumer goods. I think the mistake comes in demanding that societies prefer only one or another model, due to projecting moral dimensions onto them which may not apply, rather than accepting a balance between systems intended to benefit the few, and systems intended to benefit the many.