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The problem is incentives. If you are the only chip in town, who cares if you go for a long lunch and aren't that creative in pushing performance limits? Capatl
by mamurphy 7y ago
The problem is incentives. If you are the only chip in town, who cares if you go for a long lunch and aren't that creative in pushing performance limits? Capatlism creates winners and losers, and creates incentives for people to try their best to not be on the losing team.
- topmonk 7y agoThe problem is not incentives, but culture. From a view purely based on incentives, there is no reason to support your grandmother, for example, rather than kicking her out in the cold. Only our culture stops us to treat our closest family members this way. If we expanded what we thought of as “us” from just the individual unit, however small that might be (the familial unit for some, just the individual self for others) to to include the entire country and government running it, there is no telling what we could achieve.
- mongol 7y agoI would say empathy plays a stronger role than culture in your example.
- depressedpanda 7y ago> If we expanded what we thought of as “us” from just the individual unit, however small that might be [...], to include the entire country and government running it, there is no telling what we could achieve. Please consider that people have historically tried to achieve the Utopia you describe, where everyone is expected to put the State before the individual. It degenerates into totalitarianism, since forceful coercion and defining a "them" to the "us" is necessary for that to happen. I much prefer the arrangement of putting more emphasis on the individual and money being wasted on duplicated r&d than what you seem to be arguing for.