> Sorry my friend. It isn't. It costs money to do anything on this planet ... > Altruism aside ... We need resources to keep existing and we need people to wo

> Sorry my friend. It isn't. It costs money to do anything on this planet ... > Altruism aside ... We need resources to keep existing and we need people to work to make resources, in almost every case people need other's work to survive. The concept that these transactions can and should be conceptualized via their monetary value (rather than civic duty, status, noblesse oblige, etc.) is capitalism. Feudal nobles needed food to eat the same as us, but they did not live in a capitalist society. We could convert their military power, their family links to nearby nobles, and the willingness of their subjects to obey them to some kind of monetary value, but all of these things did not behave as capital. > Everyone tries to earn more than the raw costs to exist. That's your profit. It allows you to save to get things you want, navigate tough times, support a family, go to school, etc. This is scarcity not capitalism, if you only have subsistence level of resources you have 0 capital. The main characteristic of a capitalist system if that resource ownership and production happen in a market. for example Mexican avocado cartels compete in a globalized capitalist market, but the farmer they extort live in very different system. --- I am not passing any kind of judgment on capitalism here, not saying whether we can/should move away from it, but there have been societies not built on capitalism.