[v-erne]

The ultimate goal and purpose of any economic system is to serve whole society - those people own anything because we as a society recognize that we are not able at present moment to build better system without their rent seeking behaviour. But this does not mean that they have some god given right to unlimited dividends from work of others. It all seems backwards (as in tail wagging the dog).

And don't get me wrong - I know that their behaviour is just part of human nature, that our culture tries somehow to tame and this behaviour is no different from monarchs and aristocrats of old days, but it does not mean that this is the ultimate system and there is no metaphorical guillotine waiting for them all somewhere in the future.

[eru]

> The ultimate goal and purpose of any economic system is to serve whole society [...]

Sure. But that's not in contradiction to individual parts of the system having individual (and different) purposes.

Btw, not all companies have to make a profit. That's just a pretty common goal. (And if you want your business to stay afloat in the long run, you have to at least break even.)

> But this does not mean that they have some god given right to unlimited dividends from work of others.

Duh, obviously you only get dividends from businesses you own.

[v-erne]

>> Sure. But that's not in contradiction to individual parts of the system having individual (and different) purposes.

But those purposes are only allowed because they serve greater purpose. On their own they are meaningless.

>>Btw, not all companies have to make a profit. That's just a pretty common goal. (And if you want your business to stay afloat in the long run, you have to at least break even.)

Maybe if You mean non profits like charitable fundations that holds water, but those are mostly not real businesses. I do not think is feasible to break event for normal companies. Its like with birthrate - if You naive You could believe that with birthrate equal to 2 (one children for each parent) to preserve status quo. But in real life minimal rate is around 2.1 to prevent population collapse. The same is with profits - You need some to account for future risks.

>> Duh, obviously you only get dividends from businesses you own.

It's only obvious if You ignore platform effects (amazon anyone?) and monopolies, but that's besides the point. The point is that owners collectively as a class are able to extract too much from the system. And by owners I do not mean the hatted guy from monopoly, or rather not only him, but also german pensioner with ever increasing life expectancy crashing his hundred thousand euro camper around Europe. Even here in Poland I personally know people that are retired for decades and their work life was mostly sitting around doing nothing (my own grandma was retired for almost 50 year and before that was a housewife and got pension from my grandpa work). Meanwhile most of younger generation will probably never be able to afford to buy own house (unless someone old dies and leaves them inheritance).

[chucksmash]

> But those purposes are only allowed because they serve greater purpose. On their own they are meaningless.

This gets it backwards. In most places, we haven't arranged society as "everything is banned except for this list of allowed activities," more as "everything is allowed except for this list of banned activities."

We're not necessarily good at divining utility of actions when deciding what should be banned, either.

That any individual activity serves some greater good is a happy accident, there's no natural law that individuals will take actions that are net positive when you zoom out.

[v-erne]

I was trying to build value framework, not legal one - it does not matters what is allowed or banned if we cannot assess its value in context of sth (I used society in this case).

The free for all strategy (libertarianizm?) may be a great diacovery strategy but it does very little for building and preservin things that works (that were discovered by it). I sincerlly believe that real freedom ends with strongest psyhopaths stomping down on week that are on their way to fullfill their desires.

So even if its all happy accident on the lowest level there is a meta game of rules far above it that prevents our world from collapsing (at least for now)