• Azzu@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    Capitalism is imo so hard to remove because it’s a system that evolved out of our base biological nature. It’s a system very close to what’s “natural” if we didn’t have much education or philosophy.

    We have the possibility to think about better systems and ways to inhibit our base nature, but that requires effort and a willingness to do that. I think capitalism is what comes out if you don’t do this.

    I notice in myself all the time the impulses that fuel capitalism. To acquire more resources. To better my status. To be selfish at the expense of others. I have to work actively against them to live my life in a way that I think is right, and I still fuck up often. Unless everyone understands this and does the same, this system will stay.

    • gens@programming.dev
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      11 months ago

      Umm, no it’s not “natural”. I mean sure hoarding is natural, but so is taking care of each other. Disciplining or expelling greedy fucks is also natural.

      The stock market is completely un-natural in almost every thinkable way.

      • Azzu@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        You might’ve noticed I put natural in quotes, meaning I don’t actually think it’s a natural system in itself. The only thing I said is that it evolved out of our nature. I explained what I meant here.

          • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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            11 months ago

            Well, it has a lot to do with “conservative” (fascist) dogwhistles and the culture of faux-rationalism they’ve built around people like Jordan Peterson as he preaches a sociopathic doctrine of bootlicking and heirarchy worship but there’s a whole ecosystem to unpack there so I’ll just leave this short video by Cody Johnston instead, because I think he does the best job of laying out the case in an easy to digest way overall:

            https://youtu.be/hSNWkRw53Jo?si=UQx19sjjvtL2rLhC

    • fosforus@sopuli.xyz
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      11 months ago

      Capitalism is imo so hard to remove because it’s a system that evolved out of our base biological nature. It’s a system very close to what’s “natural” if we didn’t have much education or philosophy.

      “Natural” would be that the alpha male gets what you have or if you disagree he kills you. Capitalism is a system of financing prospects by selling future profits. It requires a society to uphold private property rights. These systems are about as far from each other than can be.

      Also if we look at the time periods before free markets arrived properly, the world was littered with centralized states, in which markets were dictated by kings, emperors and other royalties instead of letting them be – in pretty much the same way as that main competitor to capitalism tried to do in the 1900s. That’s also pretty far from a free market capitalist system, and you could say that those systems arose “naturally” from the base biological alpha male concept.

      • Azzu@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        I explained here what I meant.

        As a separate point though, private property is imo also very natural, very many animals have a sense of what is “theirs” and defend it as such.

    • orcrist@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      Maybe we need to start with the definition. What do you think of capitalism is? Do you understand that it’s completely different from commerce?

      I don’t think it’s natural to believe that someone should sit around at home while other people make a lot of money for them. If you ask me, if you asked small children even, we would all say it’s just ridiculously unfair. If you want your money, go out and work for it.

      • Azzu@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        If you’d ask small children, they’d say that mum and dad should make a lot of money for them :D

        Jokes aside, what I meant was that it’s in our nature to be selfish at the expense of others. Of course it’s also in our nature to be cooperative, but this also only because it was actually personally beneficial to us.

        Obviously, capitalism is not natural in the sense that that’s what would happen if you’d start over now. Of course it’s in total a completely arbitrary system with very weird and specific rules and mechanics that’re only there by chance and would never exist again if you’d start humanity over in a slightly different situation.

        I only said that it’s what evolved out of our nature - i.e. the complete selfishness we inherently have.

        Even our altruism is selfish, because cooperation is often better at acquiring resources than acting alone. (And for propagating genetic material, it makes sense to view your children as 50% of “you”, and so on with other relatives.)

        And if capitalism isn’t completely selfish, idk what else is.