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Disagree. It richly rewards and strongly encourages behaviors we consider asocial and destructive. Let's take Natchez, Mississippi. In 1850, half of America's

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.
    - ClumsyPilot 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. Could be feudalism, could be technocracy, could be replacing all limited companies with coops, could be getting rid of publically traded companies and allowing only partnerships. > 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. This is exactly the fantasy-land neoliberalism that got us in the shit to begin with. It anwers none of the important questions of the day - what can be owned as intellectual property, who does it belong to, how long does it last, why is it that academic reseach is paid for by the tax payer but belong to private journals, why is it that when a company accuses someone of theft that the police investigates it at no cost to the company, but if you accuse the company of breaking the law you have to file a lawsuit at your expence. Can you claim compensation when a company sells you a product that is 'environmentally friendly' but turns out they lied? What law breaking puts you in jail, and what law breaking just looses you money. What law breaking is prosecuted by the sate, and what lawbreaking is prosecuted in civil court by claimants. Why is it that stock buybacks were illegal before 1982? Should they be illegal? All of that is 'the system' and absolutely does determine who are the winners and losers.
lobocinza 4y ago
Sure but what's the alternative? How can we do better? I don't dislike utopias my issue is that they tend to be dystopic when practiced.
- kristopolous 4y ago
  Start with the London School of Economics podcast series, read works by Oxford economist Kate Raworth, the late economic anthropologist scholar David Graeber, the finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, there's plenty of alternative configurations that don't have slavery, child labor, scamming and the sex trade as the default nodus operandi.
  - strogonoff 4y ago
    What is your own personal takeaway, from reading that material, as far as the alternative to capitalism (if any)?
    - kristopolous 4y ago
      That things as complex as macroeconomic systems can't be described in comment threads on internet forums. As an analogy and an extreme example, pretend there is an evolutionary biologist among a group that believes in creationism. The creationist has a very simple narrative, only takes a few words. The evolutionary biologist has a much bigger task at hand. They're starting not from an ideology but from a discipline of analysis. That's the struggle. The neoliberal models are extremely simple to explain, they are taught to elementary school children who all understand the logic of it. But the anthropologists and economic historians of the world have a different story to tell and they cannot be similarly summarized. They require careful study and reflection like learning any type of discipline, such as a new programming paradigm or the implications of a new kind of data structure. And that's my true takeaway here, the answers to your questions are as deep and rich as any other modern school of thought and like any other accurate depiction of reality, say modern physics, chemistry, or biology, there's simply no way to stuff it into 1-2 minutes of casual reading on a social news site. I guess that's it actually. Instead of starting from an ideology we start from a discipline of analysis. Any summary I can give here will only be totalling ideology, which is what we need to get away from. People presume that any critique of the system have an alternative sweeping simplistic all-encompassing dogmatic ideology. So this is a bad form for that kind of learning. --- As an aside that's a major breakthrough in a problem I've been struggling with for over a decade. "this is a bad form for that kind of learning." I'm going to print that out to remember it.

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.
  - ClumsyPilot 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. Could be feudalism, could be technocracy, could be replacing all limited companies with coops, could be getting rid of publically traded companies and allowing only partnerships. > 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. This is exactly the fantasy-land neoliberalism that got us in the shit to begin with. It anwers none of the important questions of the day - what can be owned as intellectual property, who does it belong to, how long does it last, why is it that academic reseach is paid for by the tax payer but belong to private journals, why is it that when a company accuses someone of theft that the police investigates it at no cost to the company, but if you accuse the company of breaking the law you have to file a lawsuit at your expence. Can you claim compensation when a company sells you a product that is 'environmentally friendly' but turns out they lied? What law breaking puts you in jail, and what law breaking just looses you money. What law breaking is prosecuted by the sate, and what lawbreaking is prosecuted in civil court by claimants. Why is it that stock buybacks were illegal before 1982? Should they be illegal? All of that is 'the system' and absolutely does determine who are the winners and losers.

lobocinza 4y ago

Sure but what's the alternative? How can we do better? I don't dislike utopias my issue is that they tend to be dystopic when practiced.

kristopolous 4y ago
Start with the London School of Economics podcast series, read works by Oxford economist Kate Raworth, the late economic anthropologist scholar David Graeber, the finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, there's plenty of alternative configurations that don't have slavery, child labor, scamming and the sex trade as the default nodus operandi.
- strogonoff 4y ago
  What is your own personal takeaway, from reading that material, as far as the alternative to capitalism (if any)?
  - kristopolous 4y ago
    That things as complex as macroeconomic systems can't be described in comment threads on internet forums. As an analogy and an extreme example, pretend there is an evolutionary biologist among a group that believes in creationism. The creationist has a very simple narrative, only takes a few words. The evolutionary biologist has a much bigger task at hand. They're starting not from an ideology but from a discipline of analysis. That's the struggle. The neoliberal models are extremely simple to explain, they are taught to elementary school children who all understand the logic of it. But the anthropologists and economic historians of the world have a different story to tell and they cannot be similarly summarized. They require careful study and reflection like learning any type of discipline, such as a new programming paradigm or the implications of a new kind of data structure. And that's my true takeaway here, the answers to your questions are as deep and rich as any other modern school of thought and like any other accurate depiction of reality, say modern physics, chemistry, or biology, there's simply no way to stuff it into 1-2 minutes of casual reading on a social news site. I guess that's it actually. Instead of starting from an ideology we start from a discipline of analysis. Any summary I can give here will only be totalling ideology, which is what we need to get away from. People presume that any critique of the system have an alternative sweeping simplistic all-encompassing dogmatic ideology. So this is a bad form for that kind of learning. --- As an aside that's a major breakthrough in a problem I've been struggling with for over a decade. "this is a bad form for that kind of learning." I'm going to print that out to remember it.