[fallingfrog]

“Around 800 children will die of malaria today. A small group of super rich people could stop it for a sum of money so small that they would likely never even notice its absence. But they choose not to.”

Brutal.

The theoretical appeal of capitalism is that it allocates resources efficiently, is it not? Can someone explain to me how letting all these children die of malaria is efficient, given the cost/benefit of eliminating it? Is our economic system really allocating those resources in the best way?

Edit: come on guys if you’re going to downvote me then try to think of a reason I’m wrong..

[fallingfrog]

I think the reason that capitalism does not allocate money to save children’s lives is that the investor cannot claim any of the child’s future income. That’s also the reason that capitalism tends to under invest in things like education and nutrition for kids, or environmental protections or fighting climate change- how are you going to recoup that investment?

There is one way. If everyone were slaves, then the capitalist really would own every child they saved. You’d probably see rates of malnutrition and disease plummet. Of course, then we’d all be slaves. But that would be a purer, less dysfunctional capitalism. Maybe that’s the only direction capitalism can go- it might go that way through a maze of debts and complex contracts and property rights rather than legal ownership of persons, but that’s probably the direction capitalism is going to go, if you assume that capitalism is evolving to be the most economically efficient version of itself.

[ZguideZ]

Let's not delude ourselves, workers are already slaves under capitalism. How many times have you heard someone say they were working until they could buy their freedom? That's what saving for retirement is, after all - and most end up failing and having to work in some capacity until they are either unable or dead. Wage slavery is slavery.

[fallingfrog]

It is slavery in the sense that you are slaving your will to another for most of your good waking hours in order to not starve. But I do try to be careful about what I call slavery because that conjures up the gruesome image of hotboxes and whippings, which still do exist in parts of the world, but a wage earning software developer in the USA is in a materially better position than that. I guess I would just say there are gradations of oppression and I want to not give the impression that I’m papering that over by calling it all the same word. Solidarity.

[ZguideZ]

Capitalism requires workers and consumers. The places those children are have plenty of workers and do not generally produce consumers of any volume. Capitalism weighs human life only in terms of profit and loss. It is profitable in capitalism for those children to die because they do not require resources, diminish worker capacity etc. Ugly system probably created by and for evil.