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I didn't say it would be easy. What I said is that the potential for change is rooted in organizing and class struggle. > regulatory capture Regulatory captur
by topaz0 4y ago
I didn't say it would be easy. What I said is that the potential for change is rooted in organizing and class struggle.
> regulatory capture
Regulatory capture just is the capitalist class organizing to shape the structures of society to their continued advantage. It is class struggle. The only solution is to struggle back.
- pdonis 4y ago> the potential for change is rooted in organizing and class struggle I don't think this is a useful way to view it. I would say the potential for change is in people shifting to a more long-term viewpoint instead of always chasing short-term gain and satisfaction. > Regulatory capture just is the capitalist class organizing to shape the structures of society to their continued advantage. If you don't think of yourself as a capitalist, you are dooming yourself to always be on the losing side of interactions with those that do. Particularly if they are predators. Regulatory capture is just one way that predators use the system to their own advantage at the expense of everybody else. But not all capitalists are predators. The immense wealth our society has was built by people who were both capitalists and cooperators: wealth building is positive sum, the aggregation of win-win interactions over time. But sustaining wealth building requires taking a longer term view in order to preserve the social institutions and social trust that are necessary for it to happen. Unfortunately, the current trend is in the opposite direction.
- kilna 4y ago> not all capitalists are predators That is simply untrue. Sure, some capitalists have good PR, touting their non-capitalist efforts in ways that intentionally confuse them with capitalism for the purpose of increasing PR value. The increase in PR value is just a more oblique means of wealth extraction. The actual act of being capitalist, i.e., extracting excess value from labor by leveraging capital (piles of money, factories, infrastructure, etc)... that is inherently predatory in nature. Capitalists use the fact that they own stuff, and the fact that workers need food, shelter and healthcare, to grift the maximum amount of value for the minimum amount of public good, PR notwithstanding. It's codified into the cornerstone concept of shareholder value. Capitalism itself is distinct from any charity or other social good that a capitalist or company might engage in, and all capitalism exploits labor. Not every act a capitalist does is predatory, but every capitalist is a predator.