[no_wizard]

There was a time when capital knew its place though.

I humbly suggest we start to think about how we all can get back to that time. It’s come to rule the roost over all other concerns and we are not seeing the bright future we deserve as humanity in part but not solely, due to this fact.

We can change that, but it means drawing the line. And I mean all of us

[elevaet]

How can we change this? I want so desperately to live in a world where capital takes a back seat but have trouble seeing the path to that.

[BJones12]

The only thing people love more than money is status. I suggest you start your search there.

[nickdothutton]

I think you are right there. However everyone has been endlessly told "everyone is equal" (and not just in the eyes of the law of the land) for decades now. So there will be enormous inertia. As Lee Kuan Yew said, "humans are an unequal animal", so there is hope that reality might eventually break-out in their minds.

[Applejinx]

and thank goodness for that, or we'd rapidly get stuck in local maxima and stagnate. Some of these things are kind of non-intuitive, but if you've studied artificial life you pick up some helpful insights into how populations work.

Ideally, everyone is sustainable. 'equal' is neither possible nor desirable, and naively trying to reward the 'superior' is a path to Hapsburg-ville.

[hnthrowaway0315]

Capital doesn't "know" its place. It just happened that technological advancement gave it greater returns back then so it went with it.

It has always been the same. Knowledgeable citizens who can push back are the only defence.

[danaris]

I don't think this is fully accurate.

There's been a huge cultural shift over the past several decades, which I would broadly describe as moving from a philosophy of "companies are here to provide a good or service, and make money by doing that" to "companies are here to make as much money as possible, and most of them have to provide a good or service in order to do so."

Naturally, there were people and companies with the latter philosophy before, just as there are with the former now, but the overall attitude of our corporate world has moved more to the latter.

I think that to a large extent, this has correlated with the dismantling of regulations, the gutting of unions, the relaxation of antitrust enforcement, and the rise of the unchallengeable power of wealthy corporations. (Causality is definitely murkier, and probably goes both ways to some extent.)

[no_wizard]

It doesn’t in current state of affairs.

There was a time - however brief - that it wasn’t line it is now. Where shareholders and investors didn’t have primacy

[MichaelZuo]

This doesn’t make sense, considering more than half of the population are shareholders (at least in the US).

By definition, if a large enough group wields the majority of political power then they will always have “primacy”.

It’s like complaining about rivers flowing downhill instead of uphill.

[no_wizard]

It’s a clear reference to shareholder primacy and it’s not wielded democratically nor is it something most even have a chance to participate in even though most have stock market exposure through retail buys, 401Ks, IRAs etc.

[MichaelZuo]

How does this affect the prior comment?

[no_wizard]

Half of the us population being shareholders doesn’t translate to a seat the table economically, not to mention is a red herring to the topic

The real issue is that there is legal doctrine that makes it hard for businesses to not be dominated by their largest investors / shareholders in such a way that extracting short term profits every quarter has taken precedence over building healthy sustainable businesses. Everyone is chasing the absolute most % of profit to the detriment to even the business