[jrjeksjd8d]

Capitalism is destroying institutions. Any new technology must be employed in service of "number go up". In this system externalities have to be priced in with taxes, but it's cheaper to buy off legislators than to actually consider the externalities.

This is how we get food that has fewer nutrients but ships better, free next-day delivery of plastic trash from across the world that doesn't work, schools that exist to extract money rather than teach, social media that exists primarily to shove ads in your face and trick you into spending more time on it.

In the next 4 years we will see the end of the American experiment, as shareholder capitalism completely consumes itself and produces an economy that can only extort and exploit but not make anything of value.

[vixen99]

I'll focus just on food here: people do have a choice. I don't live in the US but is it impossible to buy basic ingredients, fruit, vegetables, grains, meat whatever etc., and actually cook something? Eating this kind of food you can even stack your life chances more in your favor. Huge amounts of information abound as to the how you can do that. Consumers, if they are free to choose, determine value and entrepreneurs will respond. It can be profoundly distorted, that's true but at base, capitalism is doing something that someone else finds of value or not.

[anonymars]

Even if we ignore the siblings: but what is being selected for? Pure economic value, right? In other words, imagine two choices: a cheap meal that takes X time and Y money to prepare and eat, vs. a nutritious meal that takes X+n1 time and Y+n2 money to prepare and eat.

If the "fitness function" of the system is "produces more economic value" then it will select for (encourage) the first option because health and enjoyment of the consumer aren't being selected for. They are second-order effects at best, like pollution and other externalities.

I'm reminded of the RFK speech (the dead one, not the death-adjacent Jr.):

"Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile."

[anonymars]

> If the "fitness function" of the system is "produces more economic value" then it will select for (encourage) the first option because health and enjoyment of the consumer aren't being selected for.

(Re-reading this, the part I glossed over is that choosing the cheap/quick meal leaves more time for "work")

[trollbridge]

The basic ingredients are also lower quality and less nutritious. For example, vegetables and fruits these days (at least for the U.S. market) are grown almost entirely for size and appearance, not for the amount of trace nutrients they contain or other quality measures.

[psadauskas]

Sibling comment is correct, also in the US we have "Food Deserts"[1]: lower income areas that lack typical grocery stores, and might only have convenience stores that only stock prepackaged or processed foods. Any raw ingredients available are expensive and/or low-quality.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

[johnnyanmac]

>I don't live in the US but is it impossible to buy basic ingredients, fruit, vegetables, grains, meat whatever etc., and actually cook something?

Sort of. To add to what the other replies had to say, the US government subsidizes different things. That's why even basic ingredients may have high fructose corn syrup in it. Be it as a primary ingredient, or to try and dillute the actual ingredient you want in that particular piece of food.

and since it's subsidized, these can be cheaper to eat here than to get some good fruits and veggies.

[pas]

That's not capitalism. That's human nature. We want a better future.

Capitalism assigns a price to this, makes it more efficient. (By allowing people to buy/rent productive things (land, machines) hire people, and buy unproductive setups, improve it, and earn a profit on the effect of the improvement itself.)

If you think "shareholder capitalism" overplayed this, well, maybe, but it seems that manufacturing is getting fucked by tariffs, construction is getting fucked by NIMBYism, and ultimately the world is getting fucked by lack of improvements, by standing still, by regressing to a past that never was despite the costs, and not because people want to make number go up!

Of course there's a ton of problems with power concentration everywhere, but market liberalism correlates with liberty and well-being, and the solution is not USSR-style denial of markets (and in general, behavioral-, and micro- and macroeconomics), it's understanding them, and using taxes to help people to participate in them.

[jrjeksjd8d]

NIMBYism is a very obvious form of "number go up". Boomers were promised endless property value growth, and they've destroyed city planning to make sure it happens. If there was a market correction retirees would be furious.

> by regressing to a past that never was despite the costs

People assume that rejecting capitalism requires us to take a step backwards. Why would that be? If you woke up tomorrow and there was more public housing your iPhone wouldn't disappear.

[pas]

Density brings a lot of value increase.

Theoretically replacing capitalism with something else is not the issue. (As long as there are accurate supply-and-demand signals for efficient allocation of resources).

The issue is that people ideologically want to "set" inconsistent supply-and-demand curves. And since there's no signal things look fine and dandy initially. And then the usual smudging of the numbers start to happen. ( https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/24/book-review-red-plenty... )

Of course, in a capitalistic system there's a very crude exchange rate for the things we want and the things we have through the profit motive (with all the speculation and technological (im)possibilities and everything added in), but it's usually more "correct" than numbers set by committees of people really really wanting to have something while denying some specific - usually hard to separate - aspect of that. (For example lot of people really don't like it when people 'inherit' easy money for very good reasons and this gets amplified when it comes to real estate, and this is a very big factor why a lot of NIMBY ideas found good traction with young "progressives".)

[syawaworht]

I think the wrong lesson to draw for this is that it's just a systems problem. Somehow if we do a different song and dance, the outcome will be different. I've been thinking that the end state of capitalism and communism are not that different - what is the difference between wealth that you can't spend in a million lifetimes and "no" wealth at all? The endpoint is the same, the game becomes about relative power over others, in service of an unending hunger.

Capitalism is the manifestation of the aggregate human psyche. We've agreed that this part of our selves that desires to possess things and the part that feels better when having even more, is essential. This is the root we need to question, but have not yet dared to question. Because if we follow this path of questioning, and continue to shed each of our grasping neuroticisms, the final notion we may need to shed is that we are people, individual agents, instead of nonseparate natural phenomena.

We will have to confront that question eventually because we will always have to face the truth.

[johnnyanmac]

>what is the difference between wealth that you can't spend in a million lifetimes and "no" wealth at all?

Unimaginable wealth means you live as comfortably as you want. no wealth means you are out on the streets and can't even afford the basics needed to get yourself out of the rut society threw you in.

If I'm to take this as a comparison of "wealth ends up in the hands of one", the difference with communism is that the one with the wealth still needs to distribute it, lest they are driven out by a coup or by annihilating all the power they had (the power over their people, who are now dead or fled).

Captistlism makes no such promise of distribution, and who to uprise against is much less clear. toppling a monopoly leader also doesn't necessarily destroy the institution either.

>the final notion we may need to shed is that we are people, individual agents, instead of nonseparate natural phenomena.

If we give up our humanity to someone else, we may as well be. But that's not something I relinquish easily.

[jongjong]

It's not capitalism, it's the monetary system that's the problem. It's not a level playing field. Capitalism requires a fair monetary system as a precondition. Though I can agree that communism would be better than whatever perverse system we have now.

[throwway120385]

I think you're both right. Capitalism is an important part of a liberal society. But when we let private institutions become all-powerful then they can erode our freedom too. The problem isn't government or enterprise, it's the idea that only one of these things should be paramount. We need government to do unprofitable but necessary things and we need enterprise to pursue risky things. And we need government to regulate enterprise and enterprise to hold government accountable.

You can name a lot of symptoms of the problem but at its heart there's a lack of accountability in any of our power structures whether they be corporate or government.

[jongjong]

I disagree with the idea that regulations work. Just consider forever chemicals like phthalates... Known endocrine disruptors. They're everywhere disrupting our hormones and health. Carcinogens are everywhere. How is regulation really working?

What works is the threat of punishment and full liability as opposed to limited liability. Regulations just raise entry barriers and stifle competition which makes the system less fair. It's like trying to prevent a crime before it happens; makes no sense. If liability is limited it means that somebody is not being held accountable for some portion of the damage that they're doing. Limited liability just externalizes the surplus liability to society...

I think capitalism can work if operating on a level monetary playing field within simple guardrails but without regulations. We could have wealth tax above a certain high amount to prevent political power imbalance.

[watwut]

It would be all massively worst without regulations. In fact, regulation provably works. When you remove it, situation with pollution and health gets worst. If you add it, it gets better.

> What works is the threat of punishment

That is what regulations provide.

> full liability

Without regulation and just a court system, this is complete failure. This just ensure that you can harm people who cant afford expensive lawsuits. Which is why big companies who want to pollute preferer this over regulations.

And the most harmed companies are small ones. They do not know in advance what is allowed and what is not.

[johnnyanmac]

You're mad about loopholes and lack of enforcement. Not the regulations theselves. If you can't enforce it, it's not a good regulation.

And yes, some things do need higher bars to entry than others. That's a feature. You don't want just anyone handling the food you eat or the money you store.

[dostick]

One of biggest obstacles we will have to overcome is for people stop thinking that communism is the only alternative and cling to capitalism. Capitalism was tried by 120 countries in past 120 years. Not a single country can report harmonious society free of corruption and unnecessary suffering. Every country employ 50% of workforce on pointless jobs only because capitalism requires artificial scarcity.

[johnnyanmac]

>Not a single country can report harmonious society free of corruption and unnecessary suffering.

By hat metric, capitalism has failed as well. Any successes came from breaking the pure principle and either breaking apart competition (antitrust), regulating competition to comply, or employing non-capistialistic services to support it (social security being one of the big ones).

No point talking in absolutes.

[PlatoIsADisease]

>Capitalism is destroying institutions.

What year do you think was the first year of capitalism? Depending on your starting point, it caused the American Revolution and French Revolution.

It caused destruction of monarchy.