> That's a text-book whataboutism. You can't just dismiss the inherent problems with capitalism by just pointing out that other systems have the same or even di

> That's a text-book whataboutism. You can't just dismiss the inherent problems with capitalism by just pointing out that other systems have the same or even different problems. I’m not sure it’s whataboutism. You’ll need to help me get there. My stance is that this happens under capitalism. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a problem to solve at the capitalism layer of society. And I’m trying to tease that apart. I’ll try to restate to help. Let’s start with the argument “capitalism incentivizes this.” I don’t disagree with that. My definition of capitalism was incorrect, as a sibling comment pointed out. My definition is closer to free market capitalism. So I’ll use the siblings definition: “Private ownership of the means of production operated for profit.” If the single variable is maximizing profit, as you argue, we have to understand why anyone would be incentivized by profit. What value does profit offer an individual? I’d submit that, for most operating under capitalism, it’s what you can do with that profit. I’m sure there are exceptions where folks are racking up points like a video game, but I’d hazard a guess most view profit as a medium of exchange. So they aren’t motivated by profit, they have their own set of incentives for accumulating that capital. I’d also argue most market participants also have non-profit motives (I.e. operating in line with their personal values or directly exchanging goods/services without going through currency as a intermediary, like travel being a perk of the job). Incentives exist in every system. The things people want to use capital for under capitalism exist when you remove capitalism. Humans still want good food, shelter, and shiny bobbles. If you substitute capitalism for another form of self-organizing, and the problem doesn’t go away, I have a hard time understanding why we’d call out capitalism by name. I don’t see this as a condemnation of capitalism, but as a problem with how individual humans make decisions. My current mental model for this problem, that I’m asking for your help in updating is: “this is a thing humans do, we’ve (mostly) always done this across time and cultures when societies get big, how do we get ourselves to stop?” Given my understanding that this is a problem intrinsic to humans on average, the problem is with incentives and how to address individuals making decisions in their own self interest on a small scale (under any form of self organization) not being in line with keeping our ecosystems from collapsing and our societies healthy.