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by idiotsecant 686 days ago
>capitalism extracts labor from wealth gradients

This is the sort of thing that sounds very truthy but I don't think that's actually very true. I don't think that this property is particularly unique to capitalism. As long as people have existed society as a system, whatever 'isim' it was labeled with (and even before) has extracted labor from power gradients. It's more simply stated that people tend toward forming more stable and longer lasting social systems (in which more gets done) in the presence of a strong hierarchy.

1 comments

> extracted labor from power gradients

That’s true, but in capitalism wealth and power can’t be separated. Even in democracies, economic power gives the very rich political power that’s only achievable otherwise trough elections.

> It's more simply stated that people tend toward forming more stable and longer lasting social systems (in which more gets done) in the presence of a strong hierarchy.

Until the system collapses because of its rigidity.