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Replacing capitalism with X will not eliminate the underlying socio-psychological factors that push humans to secure themselves at the expense of other humans a

Replacing capitalism with X will not eliminate the underlying socio-psychological factors that push humans to secure themselves at the expense of other humans and the environment. All capitalism does is give participants a high degree of agency that reveals these factors (and that’s also why regulation is needed—the market doesn’t work well when malicious actors exploit information asymmetry). In long term, we should understand and alleviate the origin of that chronic desire to win while others lose—however, replacing capitalism with X, depending on the degree of autocracy in X, may just obscure them instead, which seems counter to that goal.

kristopolous 4y ago
Disagree. It richly rewards and strongly encourages behaviors we consider asocial and destructive. Let's take Natchez, Mississippi. In 1850, half of America's millionaires lived there. It was the wealthiest city in the country because we richly rewarded and encouraged human enslavement. The brightest minds had very lucrative careers in slave economics and slave labor studies and there was lots of focus on optimizing human enslavement for maximum profit. It was the silicon valley of the 19th century and you'd have a bright and successful career if you pursued working in the slavery industry. Slave technology, slave accounting, slave management - you don't even need to directly interact, you can just make the tools. In fact speaking of silicon valley let's talk about the first rush of San Francisco. It wasn't gold, it was whale oil in the 1830s-1850s. San Francisco was the perhaps the largest whaling port in the world as people were highly encouraged through aggressive economic incentives to go and wipe out every species of whale off the planet. And they were well on their way to success when cheaper substitutes, by pure chance, became available. This is the problem. There's nothing "natural" about these things - they are human created systems that we have constantly redefined and had to because the base driving force is one of negligent exploitation and extraction. We have other systems, driven by hate and violence for example, such as racism and war. We don't make peace with richly rewarding and encouraging them. We instead seek to minimize these human tendencies. We don't look kindly on war profiteers or race-baiting crowd agitators. These things existing are as inevitable as any other human behavior, there's an angel and devil inside all of us, what we choose to reward and structure things around is a choice we can make. We can do better than total war, we can do better than Jim Crow, and we can do better than cooking the planet with capitalism. We have to. There's no choice.
- strogonoff 4y ago
  Disregarding the question as to why humans are inclined to behave in ways that benefit themselves at the expense of others and the environment—writing this off as “natural” or blaming it on a devil and an angel on our shoulders—is, in my opinion, key to ensuring the ongoing tragedy of the commons at planet scale. Yes, in a free society with capitalism people have more opportunities to behave this way. Yes, that’s why regulation is needed (as a stop-gap measure, not root cause treatment). While you don’t seem to be suggesting an alternative to capitalism for some reason, I’m reasonably sure that in any of them the society would suffer from the same issues, just less visible or more localised to ruling elites (which, by the way, doesn’t mean the scale of exploitation itself would be smaller). As abolition of slavery showed, ethical standards are evolving—and freedom is necessary for this evolution. Without freedom you are treated as an ignorant child, with decisions made for you. Made by humans who are just as fallible, with imperfect ethics, power-hungry and insecure, happy to use their positions of authority to benefit themselves, whom you’d be deemed not wise enough to elect.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    " suggesting an alternative to capitalism for some reason, I’m reasonably sure that in any of them the society would suffer from the same issues" capitalism is a term so vague its meaningless in a policy discussion Neoliberalism, on the other hand, is spesifically responsible for many of the problems we are facing now. the fact that people worship it is also a problem, we have media hosts calling large scale landlord "weath creators" for some reason people who make ground breaking discoveries are not called wealth creators and do not become billionaires. you have to consider who the system rewards, and who the system protects. shumpeterianism, for exanole, is a spesific alternative that rewards those that create new technologies and where government has an active role in shaping a sustainable industrial strategy
    - strogonoff 4y ago
      It’s not vague if the other side directly argues against capitalism. Then it means they can be arguing for is likely a command economy, which… yeah. Not going to solve anything. Which I am inclined to try to make abundantly clear in such a discussion. But I also disagree with you. “The system” should not reward anyone. People create value, and people reward those who they think provide value by becoming their customers or by investing into their business. Problems arise when this basic mechanic is abused: e.g., market participants lie about the value they create, including through concealment of side-effects (let’s drain the aquifers or dump PFAS into the river and pretend we didn’t know), use other measures than actual value when investing (line goes up so who cares if business is unethical or its business model is fundamentally flawed), etc. Which, again, ultimately comes down to humans trying to secure themselves at the expense of others and the environment.

kristopolous 4y ago

Disagree. It richly rewards and strongly encourages behaviors we consider asocial and destructive. Let's take Natchez, Mississippi. In 1850, half of America's millionaires lived there. It was the wealthiest city in the country because we richly rewarded and encouraged human enslavement. The brightest minds had very lucrative careers in slave economics and slave labor studies and there was lots of focus on optimizing human enslavement for maximum profit. It was the silicon valley of the 19th century and you'd have a bright and successful career if you pursued working in the slavery industry. Slave technology, slave accounting, slave management - you don't even need to directly interact, you can just make the tools. In fact speaking of silicon valley let's talk about the first rush of San Francisco. It wasn't gold, it was whale oil in the 1830s-1850s. San Francisco was the perhaps the largest whaling port in the world as people were highly encouraged through aggressive economic incentives to go and wipe out every species of whale off the planet. And they were well on their way to success when cheaper substitutes, by pure chance, became available. This is the problem. There's nothing "natural" about these things - they are human created systems that we have constantly redefined and had to because the base driving force is one of negligent exploitation and extraction. We have other systems, driven by hate and violence for example, such as racism and war. We don't make peace with richly rewarding and encouraging them. We instead seek to minimize these human tendencies. We don't look kindly on war profiteers or race-baiting crowd agitators. These things existing are as inevitable as any other human behavior, there's an angel and devil inside all of us, what we choose to reward and structure things around is a choice we can make. We can do better than total war, we can do better than Jim Crow, and we can do better than cooking the planet with capitalism. We have to. There's no choice.

strogonoff 4y ago
Disregarding the question as to why humans are inclined to behave in ways that benefit themselves at the expense of others and the environment—writing this off as “natural” or blaming it on a devil and an angel on our shoulders—is, in my opinion, key to ensuring the ongoing tragedy of the commons at planet scale. Yes, in a free society with capitalism people have more opportunities to behave this way. Yes, that’s why regulation is needed (as a stop-gap measure, not root cause treatment). While you don’t seem to be suggesting an alternative to capitalism for some reason, I’m reasonably sure that in any of them the society would suffer from the same issues, just less visible or more localised to ruling elites (which, by the way, doesn’t mean the scale of exploitation itself would be smaller). As abolition of slavery showed, ethical standards are evolving—and freedom is necessary for this evolution. Without freedom you are treated as an ignorant child, with decisions made for you. Made by humans who are just as fallible, with imperfect ethics, power-hungry and insecure, happy to use their positions of authority to benefit themselves, whom you’d be deemed not wise enough to elect.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  " suggesting an alternative to capitalism for some reason, I’m reasonably sure that in any of them the society would suffer from the same issues" capitalism is a term so vague its meaningless in a policy discussion Neoliberalism, on the other hand, is spesifically responsible for many of the problems we are facing now. the fact that people worship it is also a problem, we have media hosts calling large scale landlord "weath creators" for some reason people who make ground breaking discoveries are not called wealth creators and do not become billionaires. you have to consider who the system rewards, and who the system protects. shumpeterianism, for exanole, is a spesific alternative that rewards those that create new technologies and where government has an active role in shaping a sustainable industrial strategy
  - strogonoff 4y ago
    It’s not vague if the other side directly argues against capitalism. Then it means they can be arguing for is likely a command economy, which… yeah. Not going to solve anything. Which I am inclined to try to make abundantly clear in such a discussion. But I also disagree with you. “The system” should not reward anyone. People create value, and people reward those who they think provide value by becoming their customers or by investing into their business. Problems arise when this basic mechanic is abused: e.g., market participants lie about the value they create, including through concealment of side-effects (let’s drain the aquifers or dump PFAS into the river and pretend we didn’t know), use other measures than actual value when investing (line goes up so who cares if business is unethical or its business model is fundamentally flawed), etc. Which, again, ultimately comes down to humans trying to secure themselves at the expense of others and the environment.