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This is the trap of equating "work" with "make money". Not all work is economically lucrative, even if it may provide real human value. Consider artists, for ex
by beat 7y ago
This is the trap of equating "work" with "make money". Not all work is economically lucrative, even if it may provide real human value. Consider artists, for example. The arts don't pay very well, to the point that lots of people who would like to be full time professionals cannot afford to do so. But it adds tremendously to our social wealth.
- aantix 7y ago>But it adds tremendously to our social wealth. All art adds to our social wealth? Like anything else, some art does, lots probably doesn't. And how do we decide what is bringing us value? Which art should be promoted and which is just a scam, a big pile of poop put in a mason jar? We circle right back to capitalism. Giving the populace a mechanism to vote for what has value and what doesn't. Money. Attention. Time. Esteem. Fame.
- beat 7y agoCapitalism has a built-in failure mode. As Peter Thiel (not exactly a commie, him) points out, capitalism only functions in its failure mode. The ideal world that all the economists and conservative politicians argue for, where pure competition sets the price, is a race to zero. In ideal capitalism, profit is impossible. Profit only happens where there is friction that prevents the market from working fully.
- aantix 7y agoAnd that friction is innovation. Something that adds value. That isn't a commodity. That would be hard to copy. Innovation's biproduct is profit.
- beat 7y agoFriction isn't necessarily innovation. When you pay $6 to get popcorn at a movie, it's not because they've created better popcorn. It's because they've created a local monopoly where you have no choice but $6 popcorn or nothing. Really, the vast majority of profit is from non-innovative friction.
- aantix 7y agoYou do have a choice - the choice not to go to an overpriced theater. People vote with their dollars all of the time.
- jodrellblank 7y agoAnd yet advertising works. If we really believed people have free choice, there would be no uproar about Russian interference in elections, or political advertising on Facebook and Twitter, because it wouldn't sway people's behaviour in any way. Certainly you aren't ordered around in total, but you are a finite amount of brainpower with well known biases and failure modes, and Capitalism is rewarding those who exploit them and condition people's behaviour most effectively.