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> that it teaches us to despise those who suffer, to see them as somehow beneath us. The contempt that was once the property of those few at the very, very top

by lprubin 14y ago

> that it teaches us to despise those who suffer, to see them as somehow beneath us. The contempt that was once the property of those few at the very, very top has become democratized, so that we may all join in in feeling it. To me, economics is purely a system of wealth creation and the regulation, or lack there of, of that wealth. I see it as an amoral system. I don't see a society of capitalism and a society of everybody making sure that everybody else is taken care of as mutually exclusive. Morality is influenced by a wide wide wide variety of isms, movements, culture, media, technology, population size, and famous people. The economic model of a society is certainly one of them but by no means the only issue that matters. I think this can be proven by tracing the moral compasses of various societies whose economic model has stayed roughly the same over a period of say 100 years but morality of the society has drastically changed.

unalone 14y ago
Unfortunately, our economy influences our culture, media, technology, and celebrity. The book Monoculture: How One Story is Changing Everything, published 2011, makes the argument that economy is the underlying force that defines everything else. It affects how our media reports stories, for instance, which creates openings for entrepreneurs who want to manipulate that system for their own profit, which in turn has made America's political process into a carnival sideshow, which discourages Americans from paying attention and makes the problem even worse. It also gives business owners an incentive to pay their employees as little as possible, and to oppose any sort of regulation that would force them to give employees any kind of benefits which would cost them time and money. I wish I could say that technology start-ups are exempt from this, that we enlightened bunch are nice enough and smart enough that we do capitalism right, and there are a bunch of tech companies that really do some great things for employees and charity and that try to minimize suffering. Unfortunately, even among start-ups you have some instances of awful jackassery, and even among the tech legends there is some less-than-good stuff happening. Amazon in particular has notoriously bad warehouse policies, and I've heard reports that even the higher-up employees are routinely treated like shit. There is a culture wherein we expect start-up people to undergo excruciating hours and a lot of stress for even the hope of success, and while I understand why that culture exists, I also think it's not especially healthy that we consider this process to be the norm. There are some people who truly do thrive under such pressure, but there are plenty others who are smart and hard-working and have good ideas who are either crushed by that process, or who are too intimidated by it to try working within it, and that's less than good. Some things capitalism does are great, and I suspect that they'll remain great as we slowly reform society. But the system as-is is too problematic in too many ways for me to excuse them all, or to forgive capitalism's flaws which allowed this.

by lprubin 14y ago

unalone 14y ago

Unfortunately, our economy influences our culture, media, technology, and celebrity. The book Monoculture: How One Story is Changing Everything, published 2011, makes the argument that economy is the underlying force that defines everything else. It affects how our media reports stories, for instance, which creates openings for entrepreneurs who want to manipulate that system for their own profit, which in turn has made America's political process into a carnival sideshow, which discourages Americans from paying attention and makes the problem even worse. It also gives business owners an incentive to pay their employees as little as possible, and to oppose any sort of regulation that would force them to give employees any kind of benefits which would cost them time and money. I wish I could say that technology start-ups are exempt from this, that we enlightened bunch are nice enough and smart enough that we do capitalism right, and there are a bunch of tech companies that really do some great things for employees and charity and that try to minimize suffering. Unfortunately, even among start-ups you have some instances of awful jackassery, and even among the tech legends there is some less-than-good stuff happening. Amazon in particular has notoriously bad warehouse policies, and I've heard reports that even the higher-up employees are routinely treated like shit. There is a culture wherein we expect start-up people to undergo excruciating hours and a lot of stress for even the hope of success, and while I understand why that culture exists, I also think it's not especially healthy that we consider this process to be the norm. There are some people who truly do thrive under such pressure, but there are plenty others who are smart and hard-working and have good ideas who are either crushed by that process, or who are too intimidated by it to try working within it, and that's less than good. Some things capitalism does are great, and I suspect that they'll remain great as we slowly reform society. But the system as-is is too problematic in too many ways for me to excuse them all, or to forgive capitalism's flaws which allowed this.