4 ms·

This person has been demoralized, and unknowingly wishes to inflict that fate upon everyone they come into contact with. The frenetic obsession with "capitalism

This person has been demoralized, and unknowingly wishes to inflict that fate upon everyone they come into contact with. The frenetic obsession with "capitalism" and the hopelessness of the future is simply the claw of the crab, pulling its victims back down into the bucket.

anthk 2y ago
Funny you say that when capitalism has no morals beyond profit. Just have a look on what Boeing it's doing.
- istultus 2y ago
  The market (which I think is what you mean when you say "capitalism," a word devoid of content) is an abstract thing and indeed has no morals. Humans do. They act together to reduce harm, usually, given our arc of history. When humans form totalitarian "anti-capitalist" regimes they usually go about killing a few million other humans. Hurray for their superior morals.
- sickofparadox 2y ago
  Its very funny how many creatures have convergently evolved into crabs.
- queuebert 2y ago
  Boeing's bad decisions were not based on shareholder votes, but rather a cabal of bad actors. You could have this happen in any economic system. In fact, Boeing planes, even with all the cheating, are statistically safer than those produced by the former USSR.
  - agos 2y ago
    I would hope that today's planes are safer than 40 years ago!
  - anthk 2y ago
    Who cares about the USSR, a system who basically turned into Soviet (council) based modern era overnight from feudalism without stepping inside Enlightenment. Of course, it didn't end well. I'm talking about America, with a so-called democracy far older than the USSR. Regulations? New Deal? Wisdom over centuries? What's that? That doesn't make happy my shareholders, so forget that, right? Said this, Boeing it's a disaster.
    - queuebert 2y ago
      > I'm talking about America, with a so-called democracy far older than the USSR Technically America is not a democracy -- it's a federal republic composed of states with widely differing interpretations of democracy.
      - jowea 2y ago
        Question: where does the idea that democracy and republic are incompatible comes from? I keep hearing this am curious where it started. Is it because the Founding Fathers wanted aristocratic elements to keep popular will at bay? To me the USA is obviously a (or maybe the) federal democratic republic. There is no contradiction. Sovereignity resides in the people and there's no monarch so it's a republic and elected representatives hold most of the power so it's a (representative) democracy.
        queuebert 2y ago
        Do you think we the people chose the presidential candidates we keep having? There are multiple levels of representation, and all of them are tainted by special interests and partisanship. The primary system can choose candidates however they wish -- the Constitution does not specify the method [1]. A Democratic challenger to Biden this time was blatantly refused ballot access in many states. Backroom deals can cause good candidates to drop out and support worse candidates (see Buttigieg dropping out in 2020 and supporting Biden, and then Biden appoints him SecTrans). Kamala Harris was among the worst performers in the 2020 Democratic primary, but for some reason she was chosen (not elected, mind you, but chosen by Biden's team) as Biden's running mate, so now the Democrats have no good choices. The Electoral College is winner-take-all in many places and the congressional districts are often gerrymandered to completely eliminate representation of the minority party. For example, Nashville had a Democrat representative, but after redistricting the city was split like a pizza among three mostly rural GOP districts to completely eliminate its member of Congress [2]. It is the capital of the state and largest city but has no member of Congress now. I'm glad you have such a positive view of US democracy, but many of us living here are extremely worried about our trajectory. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_primary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_pri... 2. https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2022-11-04/nashville-how-tennessees-blue-island-was-lost-in-a-sea-of-red https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2022-11-04/na...
  - jowea 2y ago
    Surely those bad actors were motivated by profits? The shareholders might not have voted for a "profits over safety" motion but the entire system created the incentives that led to bad actors acquiring their positions and doing bad stuff. And the system here is shareholder focused capitalism. Although I agree this could happen in other economic system too, in a communist system it could be simply an order from above for example.
- lanfeust6 2y ago
  > capitalism has no morals beyond profit. Liberalism does, to the extent the goal is human flourishing. Denigrating Capitalism for not being about morals makes as much sense as denigrating a tractor for not being about morals. Capitalism is merely what is employed as a tool (in part, as we used mixed-market economy) for the economic branch of our system.
  - anthk 2y ago
    That's just trading goods for valuables. Not capitalism. Every system in the world since the Neolithic used tokens to interchange goods.
    - lanfeust6 2y ago
      "That", i.e. the economic branch of Liberalism, is Capitalist, which is a combination of the right to private profit and property + market economy. > Every system in the world since the Neolithic used tokens to interchange goods. They used a bartering system. Price signaling came later. Coinage was technically existent rather early but did not see widespread use. Systems devoid of price-signaling a) don't scale, b) are irredeemably terrible. I guess you agree that it ought to have nothing to do with morality because this appears to be a non-sequitur.
- FredPret 2y ago
  Boeing is a good example of capitalism working. Go and look at their financial statements. Look at their stock over the past half decade. It's all deep in the red. They're still alive because their past achievements are significant enough to carry them through this and they will probably still be salvaged. Otherwise they'd be long bankrupt, freeing up immense human, physical, and financial capital to go do something else. In other words, the system is built to allocate resources to companies based on performance - of course that doesn't mean each company always works perfectly. Pointing to a bad company as an example of capitalism failing is like pointing to a lazy civil servant and saying we should abolish all government.
  - jhbadger 2y ago
    But Boeing is the only remaining US-based manufacturer of airliners (among other things). This didn't used to be the case, but through mergers and acquisitions it's true today. There is just no way the US government would ever let Boeing go under and let the Europeans or Chinese dominate airliners. Like the banks in 2008, Boeing is just "too big to fail".
    - FredPret 2y ago
      That's true but it's hardly a failure of the market. Airliners are big, complex products that are apparently best managed by big, complex companies (not my opinion, just an observation). If the government decides airliners are a strategic priority and decides to interfere with the market, the cost of that decision is that tax money is going to be used to prop up the incumbent, instead of funding for the poor. I think a little bit of industrial policy can be a good thing.

anthk 2y ago

Funny you say that when capitalism has no morals beyond profit. Just have a look on what Boeing it's doing.

istultus 2y ago
The market (which I think is what you mean when you say "capitalism," a word devoid of content) is an abstract thing and indeed has no morals. Humans do. They act together to reduce harm, usually, given our arc of history. When humans form totalitarian "anti-capitalist" regimes they usually go about killing a few million other humans. Hurray for their superior morals.
sickofparadox 2y ago
Its very funny how many creatures have convergently evolved into crabs.
queuebert 2y ago
Boeing's bad decisions were not based on shareholder votes, but rather a cabal of bad actors. You could have this happen in any economic system. In fact, Boeing planes, even with all the cheating, are statistically safer than those produced by the former USSR.
- agos 2y ago
  I would hope that today's planes are safer than 40 years ago!
- anthk 2y ago
  Who cares about the USSR, a system who basically turned into Soviet (council) based modern era overnight from feudalism without stepping inside Enlightenment. Of course, it didn't end well. I'm talking about America, with a so-called democracy far older than the USSR. Regulations? New Deal? Wisdom over centuries? What's that? That doesn't make happy my shareholders, so forget that, right? Said this, Boeing it's a disaster.
  - queuebert 2y ago
    > I'm talking about America, with a so-called democracy far older than the USSR Technically America is not a democracy -- it's a federal republic composed of states with widely differing interpretations of democracy.
    - jowea 2y ago
      Question: where does the idea that democracy and republic are incompatible comes from? I keep hearing this am curious where it started. Is it because the Founding Fathers wanted aristocratic elements to keep popular will at bay? To me the USA is obviously a (or maybe the) federal democratic republic. There is no contradiction. Sovereignity resides in the people and there's no monarch so it's a republic and elected representatives hold most of the power so it's a (representative) democracy.
      - queuebert 2y ago
        Do you think we the people chose the presidential candidates we keep having? There are multiple levels of representation, and all of them are tainted by special interests and partisanship. The primary system can choose candidates however they wish -- the Constitution does not specify the method [1]. A Democratic challenger to Biden this time was blatantly refused ballot access in many states. Backroom deals can cause good candidates to drop out and support worse candidates (see Buttigieg dropping out in 2020 and supporting Biden, and then Biden appoints him SecTrans). Kamala Harris was among the worst performers in the 2020 Democratic primary, but for some reason she was chosen (not elected, mind you, but chosen by Biden's team) as Biden's running mate, so now the Democrats have no good choices. The Electoral College is winner-take-all in many places and the congressional districts are often gerrymandered to completely eliminate representation of the minority party. For example, Nashville had a Democrat representative, but after redistricting the city was split like a pizza among three mostly rural GOP districts to completely eliminate its member of Congress [2]. It is the capital of the state and largest city but has no member of Congress now. I'm glad you have such a positive view of US democracy, but many of us living here are extremely worried about our trajectory. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_primary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_pri... 2. https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2022-11-04/nashville-how-tennessees-blue-island-was-lost-in-a-sea-of-red https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2022-11-04/na...
- jowea 2y ago
  Surely those bad actors were motivated by profits? The shareholders might not have voted for a "profits over safety" motion but the entire system created the incentives that led to bad actors acquiring their positions and doing bad stuff. And the system here is shareholder focused capitalism. Although I agree this could happen in other economic system too, in a communist system it could be simply an order from above for example.
lanfeust6 2y ago
> capitalism has no morals beyond profit. Liberalism does, to the extent the goal is human flourishing. Denigrating Capitalism for not being about morals makes as much sense as denigrating a tractor for not being about morals. Capitalism is merely what is employed as a tool (in part, as we used mixed-market economy) for the economic branch of our system.
- anthk 2y ago
  That's just trading goods for valuables. Not capitalism. Every system in the world since the Neolithic used tokens to interchange goods.
  - lanfeust6 2y ago
    "That", i.e. the economic branch of Liberalism, is Capitalist, which is a combination of the right to private profit and property + market economy. > Every system in the world since the Neolithic used tokens to interchange goods. They used a bartering system. Price signaling came later. Coinage was technically existent rather early but did not see widespread use. Systems devoid of price-signaling a) don't scale, b) are irredeemably terrible. I guess you agree that it ought to have nothing to do with morality because this appears to be a non-sequitur.
FredPret 2y ago
Boeing is a good example of capitalism working. Go and look at their financial statements. Look at their stock over the past half decade. It's all deep in the red. They're still alive because their past achievements are significant enough to carry them through this and they will probably still be salvaged. Otherwise they'd be long bankrupt, freeing up immense human, physical, and financial capital to go do something else. In other words, the system is built to allocate resources to companies based on performance - of course that doesn't mean each company always works perfectly. Pointing to a bad company as an example of capitalism failing is like pointing to a lazy civil servant and saying we should abolish all government.
- jhbadger 2y ago
  But Boeing is the only remaining US-based manufacturer of airliners (among other things). This didn't used to be the case, but through mergers and acquisitions it's true today. There is just no way the US government would ever let Boeing go under and let the Europeans or Chinese dominate airliners. Like the banks in 2008, Boeing is just "too big to fail".
  - FredPret 2y ago
    That's true but it's hardly a failure of the market. Airliners are big, complex products that are apparently best managed by big, complex companies (not my opinion, just an observation). If the government decides airliners are a strategic priority and decides to interfere with the market, the cost of that decision is that tax money is going to be used to prop up the incumbent, instead of funding for the poor. I think a little bit of industrial policy can be a good thing.