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It always interests me when people personify capitalism, as if it has human emotions. Capitalism doesn't require greed any more than it requires anything else.

by smhost 6y ago

It always interests me when people personify capitalism, as if it has human emotions. Capitalism doesn't require greed any more than it requires anything else. Capital is agnostic as to which behavior it parasitizes. If every business internally came to believe that it was saving the world from climate change for some heroic motive, that would work just as well.

rapnie 6y ago
Capitalism is not an impersonal, innate system either. It is spun up by the people that participate in it. As such it doesn't require greed, but it incentivizes it. It is a system - at least in the form it is evolving to - that cannot, should not act on its own or be left to its own devices. Because its mechanism is "winner takes all, survival of the fittest". It needs regulation to keep it in check, counterbalances. Or else the greediest, those willing to bend the rules or cross them even, will ultimately be the only winners. They'll be the elites, and they exist already.
- smhost 6y ago
  That's what i'm arguing. It is an impersonal system with its own internal logic. There isn't some cabal of cigar-chomping elites who are puppeteering Capital in accordance with their greed. It's the other way around. It's their greed that's being puppeteered by the logic of Capital.
  - LordDragonfang 6y ago
    I think personifying economic systems as having agency is no worse than person personifying chemical processes as being the result of the reagents "wanting" to be in a lower energy/higher entropy state. Not strictly correct, but useful for discussing among humans whose brains are hardcoded for pareidoliac personification. Also, I find the act of getting hung up over the phrasing of inanimate objects "wanting" to follow the laws of physics just derails the conversation for no good purpose.
    - smhost 6y ago
      You chose an example that's maybe the hardest possible subject to mystify, and still science educators find it important to make that distinction about teleology. The fact that human brains are "hardcoded" to overfit metaphors is the entire reason why it's important to point it out.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

by smhost 6y ago

rapnie 6y ago

Capitalism is not an impersonal, innate system either. It is spun up by the people that participate in it. As such it doesn't require greed, but it incentivizes it. It is a system - at least in the form it is evolving to - that cannot, should not act on its own or be left to its own devices. Because its mechanism is "winner takes all, survival of the fittest". It needs regulation to keep it in check, counterbalances. Or else the greediest, those willing to bend the rules or cross them even, will ultimately be the only winners. They'll be the elites, and they exist already.

smhost 6y ago
That's what i'm arguing. It is an impersonal system with its own internal logic. There isn't some cabal of cigar-chomping elites who are puppeteering Capital in accordance with their greed. It's the other way around. It's their greed that's being puppeteered by the logic of Capital.
- LordDragonfang 6y ago
  I think personifying economic systems as having agency is no worse than person personifying chemical processes as being the result of the reagents "wanting" to be in a lower energy/higher entropy state. Not strictly correct, but useful for discussing among humans whose brains are hardcoded for pareidoliac personification. Also, I find the act of getting hung up over the phrasing of inanimate objects "wanting" to follow the laws of physics just derails the conversation for no good purpose.
  - smhost 6y ago
    You chose an example that's maybe the hardest possible subject to mystify, and still science educators find it important to make that distinction about teleology. The fact that human brains are "hardcoded" to overfit metaphors is the entire reason why it's important to point it out.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]