this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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As a resident of a state where deer kill more people than the mountain lions we eradicated ever did, this rings true.
Along that line, you could argue that capitalists perform a similar function in economic ecosystems, exploiting the poor and swallowing up the weak. But then human society isn't built to create an efficient profit mechanism. It exists to provide safety, cooperation, discovery, and the betterment of all humankind. Nobody needs to suffer at the hands of the economic predators.
For that to be true then generational wealth wouldn’t be a thing.
If everyone truly started at 0 and only those with better “genes” rose up, then you should argue it’s at least “fair”.
But even that is inhumane by many standards.
Unlike in nature where you can just rip whatever you want away from whatever has it, under capitalism the only way to “prey” on others is to provide them something they willingly choose to buy.
Food, water, shelter, and healthcare are not things one chooses to buy, but things one is forced to buy to survive.
To buy these, you need money. To get money, you need a job. You also need enough money saved up to survive after you can no longer work a job.
To get and maintain a job you need to buy some other things. Exactly what other things varies by job and climate, but in general: clothes, transportation, phone, electricity.
That's a lot of things that you cannot willingly choose not to buy if you want to live.
Under a free market you choose whom to buy your food, water, and shelter from.
Water is less free than the other two markets, because water through plumbing can only come from one state-sanctioned monopoly. But there are many ways to get water outside of plumbing.
Yes, life still requires effort, even though we have civilization. When I refer to freedom, I am not referring to unconditioned consciousness arising from pure void, or whatever matter-and-energy-free state you seem to think free markets should be compared to.
Same points repeated.
Yes. In case there’s any confusion, “free market” does not refer to a state of being free to choose whether to eat, sleep, drink, etc. Freedom in this case does not refer to a godlike state of unconditioned bliss.
What that means practically, in this discussion, is that when a person is selling water in a free market, nobody is forced to do business with them because they have competition.
A person who gets rich selling water in a free market does so by providing the best water at the best price.
If all the sellers of vacuum cleaners decide to have high prices, people can just choose not to buy vacuums. If all the electricity providers or food providers in an area decide to raise prices, people in that area are still forced to buy it.
I believe capitalism doesn't work without the option of not buying it at all. In markets with few options and that you cannot choose not to buy it, sellers can all collectively jack up prices.
Here's an FTC report saying that they found that large food retailers used the supply chain issues to make deals with suppliers to supply them over smaller grocery stores. This harmed small local groceries. The report also says they found reason to further investigate the large grocery chains taking advantage of this lack of supply to local groceries to increase prices for customers by more than the increase in input cost. They were able to price gouge because only 8 firms control over half of grocery sales and people can't choose not to get groceries.
Electricity providers are a special case because they are a (government-enforced) monopoly.
Water providers have an incentive not to follow the other ones when they raise prices, because they can make more profit, when others raise their prices, by raising their own less so, or not at all, than they would make by raising their prices to match the competition’s prices.
If one starts charging $10/gallon while the others stay at $1/gallon, he loses all his business. That’s called an “incentive structure” and while it doesn’t force them to keep low prices the same way a gun to their head would, but it does do so effectively, by making that the optimum path to profit.
As it turns out, people are motivated to make more money, which is why markets work at all.
Yes what you said is true: IF everyone starts charging more for water, then people must pay more.
The reason that statement doesn’t matter is that the IF condition is never true in a free market. That’s exactly what free markets provide: the incentive structure from competitive pricing that regulates prices and keep price fixing from happening.
Oh, you sweet summer child.
I’ve lived in nature before. I appreciate capitalism because I’ve been outside of it.
What’s the most danger you’ve lived in, my tough winter child, that you think getting rich is equivalent to predation?
You're confusing capitalism with civilization. You don't need to wrassle bears for your share of the picnic baskets in order to recognize that capitalism feeds the wealthy at the expense of the masses.
TIL agriculture = capitalism. I bet they think the free market is exclusive to capitalism too.
This whole exchange is hilarious as the DK is strong in your counterpart. The best part is how smug and condescending they are (winter child lolol) despite clearly having no idea what they're talking about. My money is on him being a libertarian.
Edit: hoooooly shit, I was right!
To be fair, OP is also confusing capitalism with civilization. This is definitely Lemmy's "say the line, Bart"
Capitalism is the free market system. It’s the one where to get something from someone, you have to get them to agree to give it to or trade it to you.
Private ownership, voluntary exchange. Capitalism. If you consider this to be “civilization”, that’s great. So do I. Trade is civilized. Consent to exchange goods is civilized. It’s also called a free market.
Capitalism is civilization. That’s a great way to put it.
If capitalism happens at the expense of the masses, why are the masses getting wealthier? That doesn’t make any sense.
Capitalism, civilization, whatever you want to call the places where people only work together willingly, those so-called “free markets”, those places produce enormous quantities of wealth, and everyone in them gets wealthier. Those are the places you have your main problems being obesity, addiction to endless entertainment and novelty, boredom. Wealthy people problems.
Civilization is a comfortable place. I’ve been in both places and I’d sooner choose to be fat, addicted to video games and pot, and bored, before I would choose to be malnourished, cold, and scared.
I mean, unless there’s something fun going on in the second one, and I know it’s going to end in finite time
Actually capitalism feeds everyone. If you disagree you are welcome to provide evidence of calorically restricted people living in a capitalist place.
Capitalism feeds everyone better than any other economic system and definitely better than nature.
OK, I'll bite:
You appreciate civilization because you've lived in nature.
People die of starvation in a world that literally has enough food for everyone - because speculating with food is more profitable than feeding them.
People die of diseases that have known cures with low production cost - because the market will only finance medical research if the resulting drug comes with a net gain price tag.
There are literal wars being fought and people being shot for economic gains.
Humanity doesn't have a resource problem. It has a distribution problem.
And the current method of deciding distribution of goods is capitalism.
Genuine question: Where do you believe a millionaire's millions ultimately come from?
There is only so much net economic gain one can create with their own two hands. Everything beyond that is created by other people's hands.
Give me an example of starvation, past or present, that resulted from something other than uncontrollable weather, or government interfering with the food market?
I’ll take as many examples as you can give me, but one is probably a good place to start.
I agree
Wouldn’t people dying of diseases with known cures be a problem with the market not producing known drugs, and not a problem of research?
Wal-mart’s recent entry into the insulin market comes to mind. A capitalist endeavor if there ever was one, immediately rushing in to make profits by saving lives the moment they are permitted to do so by the government.
As a result of Wal-Mart’s acting like a profit seeking capitalist endeavor, insulin dropped in price by like 80%.
Not sure if I’m being clear enough here: the opening of free market conditions around insulin led to it becoming cheap enough to allow people to live.
Whatever was keeping insulin so expensive before that, it definitely wasn’t the free market.
Right. That’s bad. Not very capitalist though, given capitalism is defined by free markets, voluntary exchange, and wage labor. Those are the alternative to shooting people for their stuff, if you didn’t know that.
Before anyone wastes their time replying with links and facts, which you'll choose to ignore for some philosophical principle, what's the general point you're trying to make here? So far you're a cosplay mountain man who blames consumers for their stupidity/gullibility and praises Wal-mart (guessing libertarian? /s). It might be more useful to debate the viewpoint, you're looking at the same world and coming to different conclusions.
Civilization predates Capitalism by a few hundred thousand years. Capitalism did not create civilization.
And capitalism is better than systems we had before, like feudalism and slavery. We critiqued and revolted and improved on those, and we can do better than capitalism too.
Capitalism is not the worst we can do, but it's not the best either.
I guess it depends on how we’re going to define capitalism.
Cooperation between humans, in a state of nature, ie before civilization, incentivizes free trade. Why fight the dudes on the other side of the creek if you can trade with them?
Why fight with them when you could leave them alone entirely?
If communicating, why not trade with them?
If you want all their stuff for yourself, is it really worth those four gourds and a bead necklace to fight to the death for it?
Coercion is costly, and it’s more costly the closer you are in strength to another person.
Trying to coerce somebody your own size is a bad idea. Trying to coerce someone smaller is inefficient assuming they’re not trying to kill you, which they won’t be because that’s suicidal on their part.
So the first arrangement we had with other people was free trade, governed by everyone’s capacity for violence and willingness to fight back if attacked. Probably less human-v-human hatred when nature was so relatively powerful too.
This is before civilization mind you, when we just had tribes.
In a separate thread it might be good to consider whether the classic dating of civilization to have dawned when agriculture created food surplus, is the first historical example of the capitalist/worker relationship. But that should be in a separate thread.