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When I review human history, in all its approaches to organizing technologically advanced societies ever since the plow, I see profit-seeking behavior everywher

When I review human history, in all its approaches to organizing technologically advanced societies ever since the plow, I see profit-seeking behavior everywhere, even in societies deliberately engineered to thwart the profit motive, so evidently, altruism never scales much further than an extended family. I see profit-seeking behavior when I watch a squirrel hoard nuts, or a dog snap at a scrap of meat on the ground. I see the entire biosphere as a profit-seeking process, and I don't want to set my morality against the very biosphere that created everything I value, and my very ability to value.

blamestross 4y ago
That is a level of rationalization of capitalism that I had not previously imagined. Competition doesn't have to be unbound. All things in nature find satiation. We can be satisfiers not optimizers.
- MockObject 4y ago
  This goes far beyond capitalism, and describes all forms of human complex societal organization, from the ancient slave states described by Marx, to the Leninist states in our modern times. Nature's balance is found as each organism struggles with all its might and ability to expand, but not by any organism voluntarily refraining from maximizing its production.
  - blamestross 4y ago
    > Nature's balance is found as each organism struggles with all its might and ability to expand, but not by any organism voluntarily refraining from maximizing its production. This is both right and wrong. What makes an organism? You are a multicellular system of cooperating cells. If this statement was true, you couldn't exist. The truth is that the most powerful adaptation to increase your organisms ability to compete is to in fact build a bigger organism. Your body is a product of that strong evolutionary trend. Bacterial mats, multicellular organisms, forests, fields of grass, mamals, families, civilizations. All of these things are escalations in survivability due to every part of them choosing to "voluntarily refraining from maximizing its production." in favor of behavior that improves the status quo for others. We call portion of organisms that revert to this competitive mentality "cancer" and eventually it does win. That doesn't make it morally right, just the last parts of a body to die after it kills the rest in shortsightedness.
    - MockObject 4y ago
      > Bacterial mats, multicellular organisms, forests, fields of grass, mamals, families, civilizations. All of these things are escalations in survivability due to every part of them choosing to "voluntarily refraining from maximizing its production." in favor of behavior that improves the status quo for others. Cooperation is definitely a popular strategy for survival, and our instinct for altruism benefits the survival of human families and small groups. Consider though, that in each of your examples, the collective entities formed then grow to the greatest extent, limited only by resource constraints and competition from other entities.
      - blamestross 4y ago
        And access to higher trophic levels is unlocked by learning to work together in bigger groups instead of fighting each other. Growth is bottlenecked by "othering"

blamestross 4y ago

That is a level of rationalization of capitalism that I had not previously imagined. Competition doesn't have to be unbound. All things in nature find satiation. We can be satisfiers not optimizers.

MockObject 4y ago
This goes far beyond capitalism, and describes all forms of human complex societal organization, from the ancient slave states described by Marx, to the Leninist states in our modern times. Nature's balance is found as each organism struggles with all its might and ability to expand, but not by any organism voluntarily refraining from maximizing its production.
- blamestross 4y ago
  > Nature's balance is found as each organism struggles with all its might and ability to expand, but not by any organism voluntarily refraining from maximizing its production. This is both right and wrong. What makes an organism? You are a multicellular system of cooperating cells. If this statement was true, you couldn't exist. The truth is that the most powerful adaptation to increase your organisms ability to compete is to in fact build a bigger organism. Your body is a product of that strong evolutionary trend. Bacterial mats, multicellular organisms, forests, fields of grass, mamals, families, civilizations. All of these things are escalations in survivability due to every part of them choosing to "voluntarily refraining from maximizing its production." in favor of behavior that improves the status quo for others. We call portion of organisms that revert to this competitive mentality "cancer" and eventually it does win. That doesn't make it morally right, just the last parts of a body to die after it kills the rest in shortsightedness.
  - MockObject 4y ago
    > Bacterial mats, multicellular organisms, forests, fields of grass, mamals, families, civilizations. All of these things are escalations in survivability due to every part of them choosing to "voluntarily refraining from maximizing its production." in favor of behavior that improves the status quo for others. Cooperation is definitely a popular strategy for survival, and our instinct for altruism benefits the survival of human families and small groups. Consider though, that in each of your examples, the collective entities formed then grow to the greatest extent, limited only by resource constraints and competition from other entities.
    - blamestross 4y ago
      And access to higher trophic levels is unlocked by learning to work together in bigger groups instead of fighting each other. Growth is bottlenecked by "othering"