[Arainach]

Stop optimizing for financial leeches sucking value out of the system and externalizing all the societal consequences, start optimizing for the vast majority of the population.

....sounds better when you elaborate on the categories you selected.

[robertlagrant]

The vast majority of the population are consumers. Each of us consumes far more services than we produce. Making life better for consumers is making life better for everyone.

[brabel]

You're ignoring the proportions. Your happiness is maybe 80% related to your job and salary (at least up to a point where you can be considered wealthy, after that there's decreasing returns), and each product you consume from each different company affects your wellbeing by a minuscule amount. Even adding them all up won't give more than, say, 15% as most of your expenses are not on products, but things like housing and transport.

Given that, if you could make everyone's jobs more fullfilling and increase people's salaries at the cost of things costing a bit more, you would definitely increase overall wellbeing. People would afford a small amount less, but that would not impact them significantly, or maybe at all.

The problem I see is that in global competition, you may be put out of business by countries that give much less shit about worker's wellbeing because people will still spend almost all their money on the cheapest available option (even more so if they can afford less!), and that IMHO explains why American companies have taken over so many markets overseas (and now, China seems to be doing it even more). When that happens, everyone in the country loses. So there needs to be a balance, which I think Europe is doing more or less well: people still have great working conditions but can afford less than in the USA, where people have very near the worst possible working conditions (nearly no vacation mandated by law, no parental leave, no healthcare except for the best jobs), but can buy more useless stuff.

[mantas]

EU is on the same path. Actually even worse with over-the-top ecological requirements. Making it harded for local businesses, while making trade deals with iffy countries left and right. For now it's rolling on selling assets to China or US. But obviously that's not sustainable long term. Either we need to protect our internal market and tax the crap out of imports, or the party will be over.

[Qwertious]

>Actually even worse with over-the-top ecological requirements.

That seems hard to judge in the short term - if in 50 years some economically-critical ecosystem collapses like the north atlantic fisheries did, they will have been absolutely necessary in retrospect.

[mantas]

No matter what ecological requirements would EU impose on local businesses, the rest of the world would happily pollute to cover its part. And eu itself would by that stuff. Point in case - fertilizers. EU regulations for fertilizer plants are getting stricter and stricter. Local produce prices are sky-high, especially after cheap gas was cut off. Yet imports from Russia (!!!) are massive.

[sumeno]

Given that wealth is continually being concentrated towards the very rich I don't think this is accurate. As a whole the working class is producing more value than they are consuming, but the excess is going to the rich not those producing the value

[tempfile]

By definition, the average person consumes as much as they produce. Generally speaking, the poorer someone is, the more they produce relative to what they consume. Making life better for producers improves the lot of the poor; making life better for consumes improves it for the overconsumers (i.e. the rich).

[fuzzfactor]

>Each of us consumes far more services than we produce.

Speak for yourself, not everyone is in debt all the time, and some never in debt whatsoever even when they have no unusually above-average earnings.

But as part of a vast majority, you are as correct as possible.

Then again capital is just plain Other Peoples' Money, and you can't be a capitalist without capital, no matter how much you wish it was true.

One problem with housing is that real estate has investment potential but for decades it has been too expensive for average people. Debt is crafted to barely make it possible to get into a property, and you may do well if values increase but there is an entire system in place so that others profit more from the same piece of property than you. Vehicles are another high-dollar item where debt is usually incurred, but these almost always depreciate fast. You can draw the line there and be pretty realistic, but there are plenty of people who are at the extreme where everything that costs money is borrowed.

So that's about as close to capitalist as most people get. That's about all of OPM they have at their disposal, and the only thing invested in that has upside potential is the home. For those fortunate enough to have gotten in when it was more within reach. And there can still be a gradual spiral downward which is too slow to notice until it's too late.

Sometimes it helps to do the math and not be afraid to admit how far from capitalist you actually are compared to how capitalist everbody thinks they are.

Disclaimer: this article was DOA & flagged instantly with zero comments, but it seemed OK to me and I vouched and now look at it. Nobody's fault but mine.