[prewett]

Society should care about people making profits because otherwise those people do something else instead of providing goods and services. What happened in Communism is instructive on this point. Now if you want to argue that the pursuit of maximum profit as an end is a problem, there's a case to be made. The US had something like a marginal tax rate of 90% around the 1940s/1950s, if I recall correctly, and it obviously didn't hurt innovation, but people got paid in perks and corner offices and status instead of just money.

I think people are misled by Marx and derivatives, and misdiagnose the problem. I don't think people are upset by the CEO making lots of money as much as they are by the HBS management style of using people as a tool, or even as interchangeable "resources". However, the philosophical materialism of Marx & Co. pretty much makes this inevitable. (The secular view is also materialism, so you get it on both sides.)

[egypturnash]

> I don't think people are upset by the CEO making lots of money as much as they are by the HBS management style of using people as a tool, or even as interchangeable "resources".

How about both? Both are pretty terrible for society IMHO. Some shithead's making 6000x of what average worker at their company because they're on top and they're treating everyone under them as interchangable tools with zero compassion. If they were limited to only making like 3x then they'd be on a much more equitable place with their underlings and might even be more likely to see them as fellow humans instead of disposable work units.

[eecc]

Perhaps it’s not capitalism that’s the problem but the unboundedness of the greed of a few, with respect to the other needs of humanity.

Also Adam Smith implied that unbounded avarice is irrational and disruptive to society.

The assumption is that morality survives grotesque wealth accumulation, we see many examples proving otherwise

[inglor_cz]

"unboundedness of the greed of a few"

Lots of people claim "greed", but the stereotypical Tech billionaire doesn't simply roll around in gold like Scrooge McDuck, doing nothing and demanding more. They invest and reinvest it into new enterprises.

Of all the ways of dealing with massive wealth, this is probably the second least disruptive one. (The first one would be just giving it to honorable causes.)

[fireflash38]

They claim greed because they always choose the path that makes them more money even if it has clear, evidence-based proof of societal harm.

Ya know, just like the Sacklers and pushing oxycontin.

[inglor_cz]

You don't know in advance what is going to make you money. Investments are risky.

In 2026, we know that SpaceX is a huge success. In 2002, it was just one of very many space startups, the vast majority of which ended up bankrupt, and before the last Falcon 1 flight, it was already on the brink of bankruptcy. They were incredibly lucky that the last rocket they had money for actually reached orbit.

During the same time, John Carmack invested into Armadillo Aerospace, and lost money.

Was he less "greedy" than Musk only because in retrospect we know that one didn't pan out and the other did? Or were they both simply risk takers in an uncertain field, motivated by a mix of incentives?

[fireflash38]

That is a complete distraction from Meta in particular selling social media hard to kids even knowing that their work explicitly caused mental harm.

This is not a I own stock am I culpable issue, it is a company knowing their product is dangerous and ignoring the issues because it doesn't make them more money.

Same shit as the tobacco industry. People do banally evil shit for money.

[vladms]

"Capitalism is the problem" by itself is like saying "unix operating systems are a problem". There are so many flavours, so many parameters (laws, tax, etc.) that I do not see value in generalizations.

I think morality is quite hard to define and any system should take into account unboundedness of some human attributes (being greed, stupidy or other) in some humans.

[nickpp]

Capitalism is the only known system that aligns natural, normal individual greed with the benefit and advancement of the society.

[shimman]

Call me crazy but society should care about giving people meaning, providing healthcare, and an education. You know the three things that lead to productive humans.

Notice in my comment I mention nothing about taxes? Maybe people are mislead about neoliberalism? All it has done was sell out American jobs, get civilians addicted to drugs, and manufactured a political class that cares about donations over material needs.

This is an economic system that isn't even 50 years old and you're already going with the Marx scare quotes as if US branded capitalism hasn't already killed 10s of millions of Americans in the pursuit of profit.

Let's not even peel back the founding of this nation, a colonial white slaver state with minority protections baked into the constitution to impede people's chances of progress with every life.

[simonh]

>Call me crazy but society should care about giving people meaning, providing healthcare, and an education. You know the three things that lead to productive humans.

Things that are paid for by economic surpluses. No profits, no investment, no taxes.

It's very much a matter of balance, you're not wrong that those services you mention are vital as are many others generally provided by governments. However it's all funded by a dynamic efficient economy.

The question of private wealth is the hardest, but private wealth by itself isn't a problem. The question there is, who should own and run productive economic activity. If it's not the state, it's private individuals. The wealth of billionaire industrialists doesn't consist of one big pile of money they wallow in, like Scrooge McDuck. It consists of their ownership and control of companies that do things in the economy.

Taking away that wealth means taking away those companies, and doing what with them? if you sell them to other private individuals, now they own and run those companies. If you can just take companies away from people like that, why would anyone build or buy them? If you take the companies into public ownership, now they're run by civil servants and politicians, but you'd have to pay for the companies, right? If you just seize assets, nobody is going to invest in anything that can be seized.

I do think inequality is a growing problem, but there are no easy answers.