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Economics is amoral. It doesn't know good from evil. The biggest mistake on the right is thinking that capitalism is Good. The biggest mistake on the left is th
by beat 7y ago
Economics is amoral. It doesn't know good from evil. The biggest mistake on the right is thinking that capitalism is Good. The biggest mistake on the left is thinking that capitalism is Evil. It just is. It's like thermodynamics. If you get burned by a hot stove, it doesn't mean physics is evil. And it doesn't mean getting burned is just your imagination, either.
Without intelligence guiding them, such systems can easily destroy themselves with feedback loops. Power differentials etc, in an amoral environment, lead to low-level employees getting screwed and owners/upper management getting rich. This feedback loop can eventually destroy a company, or a society.
So what I find hard to understand isn't that employees go along with this system that screws them (they need to eat, y'know?), but rather that they think it's good, that it's what's best for everyone, that maximized profits will be equitably distributed. We have an angry, populist working class that has completely accepted the systematic inequalities of neoliberal-flavored capitalism, and the socialist welfare-state hacks that come with it mostly to keep the whole thing from self-destructing this year at least. They're mad they're getting screwed, but think their bosses are completely right to screw them.
It's really hard to grok that.
- conanbatt 7y ago> Economics is amoral Such a thing does not exist. It is the study of exchange between individuals, any model that brings down morality to 0 will not be useful, practical or a applicable. There is a reason why the most iconic political economists were all philosophers!
- beat 7y agoWhen you buy something from Amazon, is it an exchange between individuals? When you get a paycheck from a corporate employer, is it an exchange between individuals? No, that makes no sense. It's an exchange between an individual and an abstract legal/financial entity that engages in economic activity, but is in no rational way a human being. And what about B2B exchange? Clearly, it's economics, but when Wal-Mart buys a wholesale lot of shampoo from Proctor & Gamble, it is absurd to think of that as "between individuals".
- conanbatt 7y ago> When you buy something from Amazon, is it an exchange between individuals? Yes. You exchange your labor, divided into an unseen number of customers for another one's labor, divided into an unseen number of customers. Remove individual interactions and see everything disappear. Its the building block of society.
- beat 7y agoOk, even if you take humans as the motivating agent... how does it become a moral act? How is an exchange of money for goods/services an inherent good, or an inherent evil for that matter?
- conanbatt 7y agoIs it done under coercion? Is the exchange forbidden, or punished? Is the exchange harming an innocent third party? Is the exchange guaranteed by a third party? etc.