[john_b]

Capitalism as a system has many impersonal qualities, but capitalism per se does not value anything. It just provides mechanism (market prices, investment dollars, and so on) by which the value that people attribute to things can be known.

If "capitalism" values the "wrong" things it's because people at large have the "wrong" values. If that is a problem, it's probably not an economic one, but something deeper.

[TeMPOraL]

Nope, capitalism as a system very much values particular outcomes. It's not a machine that perfecly translates human values into economic output; it's a system that actively prefers one type of values over other. The powerful feedback loops of markets that - I very much acknowledge this fact - led us to prosperity we enjoy today have a side effect that is increasingly becoming apparent: they slowly throw away any human value that stands in a way of being more competetive.

Anyway, that's a long topic. The TL;DR of my point is: it's not our values that control the system, it's the system that controls our values.

EDIT:

Case in point, from other HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916146.

> And a serious question: How do these people have money and especially free time for this [clever hack involving suspending a jaccuzzi under a bridge]?

That this is actually a serious question shows that there is a strong mismatch between our values and the system we live in.

[dragonwriter]

> Capitalism as a system has many impersonal qualities, but capitalism per se does not value anything.

It values capital and the capitalist class, which is why it was named "capitalism" by its critics (specifically, its socialist critics.)

The free market justifications in terms of Econ 101 simplifications that, in addition to applying to a simplified version of reality in operational terms, also apply to a system different than capitalism as ever actually implemented, came later.