[minikites]

>Our culture seems to value efficiency above too much else.

Capitalism tells us that if we're not making money, we're worthless as humans. It's not about hard work or efficiency, just look at the lack of respect for work that doesn't make money (e.g. stay-at-home parents).

[Chris2048]

No it doesn't it says that the value of living in a capitalist society should be reciprocated with value, i.e. individuals providing value to society, as societal value is nothing more than the aggregation of individual contributions. I'm not saying this is entirely good/correct, but I am saying you misstate the message.

> just look at the lack of respect for work that doesn't make money

This conflates individual value with societal/communal. But why should anyone give a dam about stuff that doesn't benefit them? To be clear, I'm not saying people shouldn't give a damn, I saying why couldn't they i.e. why should they be forced if they choose not to.

There's also a nuance to value: Capitalism determines value on the basis on what money people are willing to spend. Firstly, if people go out of there way to ensure money is not involved with something, don't be surprised if it's value is miscalculated by a capitalist system: this is like not winning a competition you never entered. That said, the economic impact of packaging is undervalued because no one is attaching an accurate debt/penalty to it, which is arguably the real problem here.

Secondly, there is a notion that things of value create "market demand", so if little money is offered for something, then market doesn't want it, and people supplying it are refusing to offer what society actually wants. I think this makes sense: people have children even though parental benefits might be low suggesting they aren't really doing it for society, though I've discussed this before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24423077

TLDR: Capitalism only deals with societal value; so it only determines your value (of actions, say) on the basis of value to society. People are free to value things outside that system; If you think "people don't care about X" because "people don't provide money for X" then it is you declaring the value of something to be its dollar amount.

[jschwartzi]

> To be clear, I'm not saying people shouldn't give a damn, I saying why couldn't they i.e. why should they be forced if they choose not to.

In a lot of these cases it's probably true that there's no direct, measurable, benefit. One has to look past the direct benefit to the indirect benefit to understand why we would be forced to do something that has no direct benefit to ourselves.

For example, a property tax increase to pay for improved schools doesn't have any apparent benefit if you're a single adult with no children in school. In fact the whole education system has no measurable benefit to you if you're an adult. It seems like a waste of money. So we can say it has no first-order benefit.

But suppose that the increased funding would help pay for things like civics education. There's a second-order or third-order benefit to paying those taxes. By ensuring other peoples' children are educated in how our Democratic institutions work, they are better able to navigate those institutions, and they will make more informed decisions about their elected officials because of this. If you care about maintaining and improving those institutions then that tax increase is very worthwhile even if you have no kids. But it has no measurable economic benefit.

I think our Capitalist system has gone insane because it no longer acknowledges those benefits that have no tangible monetary value. It also encourages us to think in terms of money above all else. We've gone so far into the weeds with Scientific Management that if we can't measure the direct monetary benefit it doesn't exist. And that's not true.

Being unable to measure something simply means we can't quantify the benefit. It doesn't mean it has no benefit. And that's at the heart of a lot of economic arguments against tax increases. They're arguing that being unable to quantify the benefit implies the benefit doesn't exist. And that's patently untrue in a lot of cases.

[Chris2048]

> But suppose that the increased funding would help pay for things like civics education

That why can't I just opt for that, the civics funding?

I'm not saying that only things with measurable economic benefit should be funded, I'm saying only things with measurable economic benefit OR that people want to pay for should be funded. One or the other, or both. But if neither condition is met, you shouldn't get funded.

and if your opinion is that there is a non-tangible benefit, you need to convince people of that. Our Capitalist system does acknowledge benefits that have no tangible monetary value - by allowing people to freely spend money on what they care about.

[minikites]

>Our Capitalist system does acknowledge benefits that have no tangible monetary value - by allowing people to freely spend money on what they care about.

So the most "successful" society under this reasoning is one where every parent works and childcare is done by employees instead of parents. There's no economic benefit to raising a young child, so the only other option under your axioms is "people want to pay for it".

[Chris2048]

I'm not sure how this follows from what I said which only concerns people being forced to pay for childcare for other peoples children, but if a parent cannot afford to stay at home at look after their own kids then what is the alternative? I'm also not assuming "childcare done by employees" is necessarily worse than from their parents, at least employees could be regulated.

[mikem170]

> Capitalism tells us that if we're not making money, we're worthless as humans.

I agree that pure capitalism thinks that way, and some cultures are closer to that than others.