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by thegrimmest 7 days ago
It’s not a capitalism problem, it’s an ecosystem. Wherever living things compete for finite resources and opportunities, certain properties emerge from the system. And make no mistake we live in a crowded world full of fierce competition.

Among these properties are optimum behaviours such as hoarding the maximum you can defend (rather than the minimum you comfortably need) and using your power to forestall the growth of others. These behaviours are repeated in nature from microorganisms to apes to humans.

There is no social order which can prevent us from living in an ecosystem, and from these properties and behaviours emerging.

1 comments

The US American system is more capitalistic than the german one and the scissor between poor and rich is higher.

Thats definitly an indication that this plays a role in it.

And we do not have a problem of resources today, we have so much food, that its sometimes just spoils and no one cares and sometimes it even spoils in huge warehouses due to neglect or because a person decided not to sell it under a certain price.

Capitalism also sets priorities for resources. So instead of making sure everyone is fed properly, we also spend time and energy to diverge resource types like different plants, exotic plants etc.

> The US American system is more capitalistic than the german one and the scissor between poor and rich is higher.

And yet the US is a dominant player and Germany is not.

> And we do not have a problem of resources today, we have so much food

I never said there needs to be scarcity for an ecosystem to emerge. These properties emerge wherever living things compete for finite resources. Imagine a pond where you introduce a few small catfish. At first, food is plentiful. Yet the fish will grow and reproduce until it is scare. It's the same with resources. Individuals/companies/societies will grow to consume the maximum they can sustain, because this is the optimum behaviour in an ecosystem.

The point is that organisms which avoid these behaviours tend to lose, in every sense of the word, to organisms that do. The behaviours are emergent from the constraints of the system.

> that its sometimes just spoils and no one cares

Transportation costs are a major driver of food shortage. It's not at all free to get large quantities of food from where they are produced to where they are consumed. People are generally not willing to transport food (or do much of anything else) at a loss.