In one episode of Community, the study group took over the supply of deep-fried chicken (in a mafia movie parody), and Abed was in charge of distributing it to the rest of the school. When told to stop, and that the mafia movie was over, he replied “I’m not doing a mafia movie. In fact, I don’t need movies or tv shows to talk to people anymore. Before I only needed them because the day to day world made no sense to me, but now everyone’s speaking the same language, chicken. I understand people, and they finally understand me.”
Everyone has different terminal goals. Some people want to cure cancer, some want to win a race, some want to eat spaghetti, and some want to meet new people. This should make it very difficult for two people to interact and exchange goods or services, since they want different things and have no way of knowing what the other wants (short of directly asking). However, in capitalism, everyone shares one convergent instrumental goal, money.
Completing your terminal goal, whatever it is, is probably exceedingly difficult without money. This means that everyone needs money for one reason or another. This may seem bad (since not everyone can necessarily get money) but it means that everyone understands what everyone else wants, and it opens the door to interaction, cooperation, and trade.
Everyone understands the language of money. Just as making a friend with someone who doesn’t speak your language is more difficult, trading with someone who is entirely uninterested in what you have to offer (or if you are entirely uninterested in what they are offering) is much more difficult.
If you produce lots of honey, and all you want is goats, then if I want some of your honey I’ve got to find goats from somewhere (figuring out what the goat guy wants in the process). Probably this ends up with you having only honey and no goats, and me having no honey. However, if I had money, and you could be assured that the guy with the goats wants money, then we can trade. All of a sudden trade becomes possible, I get honey, you get goats, and everyone’s happier. Trade could only really happen when we both spoke the language of money.
Furthermore, when you meet someone in a capitalist society, that person represents an opportunity for fair, mutually beneficial trade, and should thus be treated kindly. On the contrary, when you meet someone in a world without money, where you’re supplied with resources free of charge, that person represents a potential drain on your resources, and is thus a threat.
Capitalism unites people. It gives everyone one incentive, one goal, that everyone works together to strive toward. It doesn’t matter that Joe wants blankets and Bob wants beef wellington, they both want money, and they both know that the other can help them get it.
This doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be crime, or incredible acts of immorality. There will always be people who choose evil, but in capitalism there are avenues for cruel people to get what they want in mutually beneficial ways. Some will decide that these avenues aren’t economically favorable to illegal or cruel methods, but these passageways exist for the many who do decide that they are favorable.
Well that’s it, I guess we should pack it in.
Greed is the root of all evil
That doesn’t mean it’s evil to collect resources to care for yourself and your family. Even of you collect a lot of resources, it might be done out of a desire to care for and protect yourself and your family.
You could do it out of green, and capitalism has mechanisms to minimize the damage of greed, but you don’t have to do it out of greed.
Yeah 99% of people are good, and the system gets ruined by those who go too far and corrupt it. I never called families evil.
I think I see.
The system does a good job of accommodating those bad actors though. The way for them get rich is to cut costs, raise prices, and sell more, which are mechanisms capitalism is built around.
The only way for them to really ruin the system is by encouraging government intervention in their favor (or, similarly, by getting the government to turn a blind eye when they do something illegal).
The solution to that is less government intervention and equal punishments.
Our system as it is right now is built off of greed, and intervention in the favor of corporations has become commonplace. Quality of living for everyday people and public infrastructure has been forgotten in the name of profits. Corporate criminals are given a slap on the wrist as opposed to low-income or minority criminals.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you ideologically, and it’s hard to know for sure, but many European countries which have used harsher regulation against these companies has lead to more fair business practices. Lack of regulation leads to companies in a given industry banding together to unify on predatory practices, because when left unchecked, greed and corruption overpowers decency.
I absolutely agree that companies that break the law are not punished harshly enough. It’s a huge violation of justice.
I’m not sure what you mean by regulation though. Typically, government controlling companies or the market is harmful for the consumer. Without government intervention, competition is what protects people from harmful business practices.
the latter part of your statement is simply not true, it’s just what you’ve been taught to repeat by our capitalist society
The people who benefit from non-regulation promote this philosophy without any real evidence. Look at Europe. Govts regulate the companies to avoid exploitation of the consumer and everyone is happier
I honestly don’t know much about what’s going on in Europe. It seems to me that they’ve got a lot of ineffective, corrupt bureaucracy that causes a lot of problems though.
If you allow for regulations left and right, it seems like companies are going to take advantage of that as soon as possible and buy favorable interventions. That’s how most monopolies are made, government intervention. I don’t see any reason to place confidence in governments to regulate favorably.
Competition is how people, very flexibly and democratically, choose what business practices they want to see more of. Less regulation means it’s easier for entrepreneurs to start from scratch and present new, novel options. If companies start banding together, exploiting people, and harming their customers, people make other options. The way companies squash these new competitors is with government assistance.
Quick disclaimer, I don’t believe in no-regulation, since that’s just anarcho-capitalism, but you really need very little. Don’t murder people, stick to contracts you sign, don’t force people to engage in business, maybe protect patents and copy-rights (though for much less time than they’re protected now), stuff like that all seems good.
