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> You wouldn't want capitalism in your house, but it's the best thing at scale. Interestingly, I think it's the best thing at low to mid-scale. Once it reaches

> You wouldn't want capitalism in your house, but it's the best thing at scale. Interestingly, I think it's the best thing at low to mid-scale. Once it reaches our current scale, the externalities of profit-driven production cross various thresholds that plunge us into existential crises. At-scale, we need some form of production that much more closely measures potential for externalities and allows assigning direct costs to these. Prices are incapable of doing this directly, and the promise of the liberal state to reign in externalities is more and more clearly an empty promise.

BobbyJo 4y ago
Externalities and profit pursuit are exactly why it functions at large scale. Those things exist in every economic system, capitalism streamlines how you direct them. > At-scale, we need some form of production that much more closely measures potential for externalities and allows assigning direct costs to these. Prices are incapable of doing this directly, and the promise of the liberal state to reign in externalities is more and more clearly an empty promise. That's the role of money and taxes. You price the externalities. The reality is, every capitalist country is perfectly capable of reigning in externalities, the just don't, because we're playing a huge game where we try to maximize our living standards without killing ourselves. If we priced CO2, living wages, and plastic cleanup into our lives, it would be a huge set back to our daily lives.