It's ok to be angry about capitalism

[immortalfrieza]

The behaviour of a species at immature stage of development is not an indication of the fundamental nature of that species.

Actually it is. The fact that we have to bombard our children with teachings of peace, love, and understanding all the time is proof that peace, love, and understanding are foreign to us and have to be forced into us rather than being something innate. If we weren't inherently a selfish species we wouldn't have to bother because most everybody would just be full of peace, love, and understanding by default and even if we started out selfish we would just naturally grow out of it without needing any prompting at all.

 

[Buyetyen]

Actually it is. The fact that we have to bombard our children with teachings of peace, love, and understanding all the time is proof that peace, love, and understanding are foreign to us and have to be forced into us rather than being something innate. If we weren't inherently a selfish species we wouldn't have to bother because most everybody would just be full of peace, love, and understanding by default and even if we started out selfish we would just naturally grow out of it without needing any prompting at all.

That makes a lot of assumptions. None of them good. For one thing, if we were an inherently selfish, cruel and evil species, we probably wouldn't have evolved from social primates.

No, the capacity for good and evil is equal in every person. It's a question of whether you nurture creative of destructive behaviors.

 

[Kwak]

Actually it is. The fact that we have to bombard our children with teachings of peace, love, and understanding all the time is proof that peace, love, and understanding are foreign to us and have to be forced into us rather than being something innate. If we weren't inherently a selfish species we wouldn't have to bother because most everybody would just be full of peace, love, and understanding by default and even if we started out selfish we would just naturally grow out of it without needing any prompting at all.

But the brain hasn't finished developing all it's connections yet, so it can't be.

 

[Majestic_Manatee]

Actually it is. The fact that we have to bombard our children with teachings of peace, love, and understanding all the time is proof that peace, love, and understanding are foreign to us and have to be forced into us rather than being something innate. If we weren't inherently a selfish species we wouldn't have to bother because most everybody would just be full of peace, love, and understanding by default and even if we started out selfish we would just naturally grow out of it without needing any prompting at all.

How any kid in history was raised at all without love or peace is a mystery. How any humanitarian collaboration in our civilization's history survived is anyone's guess.

 

[immortalfrieza]

But the brain hasn't finished developing all it's connections yet, so it can't be.

That makes a lot of assumptions. None of them good. For one thing, if we were an inherently selfish, cruel and evil species, we probably wouldn't have evolved from social primates.

No, the capacity for good and evil is equal in every person. It's a question of whether you nurture creative of destructive behaviors.

Then tell me why we bother to teach peace, love, and understanding? If peace, love, and understanding were innate, there would be no reason for us to do so, because even if it takes time to develop it would still happen to almost everyone. Thus, we would never have developed the teaching of peace, love, and understanding because we wouldn't need to.

The reason is because we are actually innately selfish and have to be taught otherwise. We have to be taught to empathize even if it's only in a tit for tat way. We're a social species, that's not the same thing as not being innately selfish. We from our births take advantage of those around us to survive, a behavior that is reinforced later in life. At the most we care about our immediate family and the community we directly interact with, with anything wider becoming more and more abstract.

 

[Buyetyen]

Then tell me why we bother to teach peace, love, and understanding? If peace, love, and understanding were innate, there would be no reason for us to do so, because even if it takes time to develop it would still happen to almost everyone. Thus, we would never have developed the teaching of peace, love, and understanding because we wouldn't need to.

The capacity is within us, but that does not make it inevitable as you mistakenly believe.

The reason is because we are actually innately selfish and have to be taught otherwise. We have to be taught to empathize even if it's only in a tit for tat way. We're a social species, that's not the same thing as not being innately selfish. We from our births take advantage of those around us to survive, a behavior that is reinforced later in life. At the most we care about our immediate family and the community we directly interact with, with anything wider becoming more and more abstract.

This is all just so much words to say, "I'm not an asshole, it's the fault of our genetics."

 

[Majestic_Manatee]

Then tell me why we bother to teach peace, love, and understanding? If peace, love, and understanding were innate, there would be no reason for us to do so, because even if it takes time to develop it would still happen to almost everyone. Thus, we would never have developed the teaching of peace, love, and understanding because we wouldn't need to.

The reason is because we are actually innately selfish and have to be taught otherwise. We have to be taught to empathize even if it's only in a tit for tat way. We're a social species, that's not the same thing as not being innately selfish. We from our births take advantage of those around us to survive, a behavior that is reinforced later in life. At the most we care about our immediate family and the community we directly interact with, with anything wider becoming more and more abstract.

If inherently selfish, capitalism must be the only answer? A convenient logic, to serve the already powerful.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

I mean, the reason we have to keep preaching peace and love is because a relative handful of greedy assholes keep seizing power and preaching the opposite.

Look at the sort of blatant lies and massive bribery they need to have to recruit people to go across the world and kill others.

 

[Silvanus]

Not really, those are things that happen when you end up with under regulated/policed markets.

So... when capitalists aren't allowed to use capitalist frameworks as much?

Sounds like the capitalist system incentivises the problems (of greed and grift), and then regulations exist to try to prevent them succeeding. Which they will inevitably not be fully successful in doing-- with the capitalist system also incentivising the circumvention or destruction of those regulations.

 

[Silvanus]

Then tell me why we bother to teach peace, love, and understanding? If peace, love, and understanding were innate, there would be no reason for us to do so, because even if it takes time to develop it would still happen to almost everyone.

"If sex is natural, why do we have sex education"?

To learn to do it right. The inclination will (usually) be there anyway at some point, but not necessarily the cognitive tools or understanding.

 

[Hawki]

It's not OK to be angry at me.

But the rest of the Mane 6 get angry with you every other episode. 0_0

 

[Kwak]

hen tell me why we bother to teach peace, love, and understanding? If peace, love, and understanding were innate, there would be no reason for us to do so, because even if it takes time to develop it would still happen to almost everyone. Thus, we would never have developed the teaching of peace, love, and understanding because we wouldn't need to.

But if we have the concepts at all, they must exist in us. Unless you are saying all morality was handed down to us from outside by a god or aliens.

I think our "inherent selfishness" is just attachment to forms and sensation in the Buddhist sense, and our early childhood reactions to that are crude but get more complex as we age and learn more.

 

[Kwak]

Also, even though we may be truly self interested, we learn our self interest is best served by community cooperation with others. We can do things for ourselves better working with and helping others than alone.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Sounds like the capitalist system incentivises the problems (of greed and grift), and then regulations exist to try to prevent them succeeding. Which they will inevitably not be fully successful in doing-- with the capitalist system also incentivising the circumvention or destruction of those regulations.

Capitalism is a system that needs to be saved from the capitalists every few decades.

 

[meiam]

It's more complicated than "people are inherently asshole" or "people are inherently monster". Baby don't have the brainpower to understand something like "if I help other, other will help me in the future and everyone doing so on a society scale means we'll have a prosperous society, so being a good person is obviously the right way to live", baby/kid only understand "need/want = take". But if you don't correct that behaviour in a baby, then they'll grow up as adult that will have learned that "want = take" is a great way to live and that's how they'll live their life. If kid would grow up good person no matter what, they all the spoiled kid from parent who grew without ever lacking anything would turn out as wonderful people, I don't think I have to explain that's not the situation.

Then there's the problem that someone asshole behavior is someone else benevolent action. Some people truly believe that the best thing people can do is pray to the specific god they believe in, for them prayer is an absolute good no matter what. In a position of power, these people would gladly brainwash and/or force people to pray to their particular god, they'd even accept some lesser evil (say killing a few dissenter) because of the incredible good of prayer, in the same way that someone else would be okay with stealing bread to feed a starving family. There's no universal good that kid will naturally grow up into, even things that you would thing would be deeply rooted in every human can be countered. You'd think everyone would follow "pain = bad" to the absolute letter, but plenty of people enjoy some form of pain or another, from BDSM amateur to extreme sport to people who recreate religious scene (iirc there's a few place in the world that genuinely have people get crucified, minus the dying, to celebrate Jesus).

A system can only succeed if it as safeguard against any individual gaining too much power, because if even if it means that good people will be hambered, it's far more important to prevent bad people from becoming all powerful, especially when there's no universal definition of bad (ie, killing is bad, but I think we can all agree it's a pretty good thing that Zelnesky and the Ukranian aren't all absolute pacifist who refuse to kill). Capitalism does a bad job of this, but it's still far better at it than literally any other political/economical system that have ever been tried.

 

[Worgen]

So... when capitalists aren't allowed to use capitalist frameworks as much?

Sounds like the capitalist system incentivises the problems (of greed and grift), and then regulations exist to try to prevent them succeeding. Which they will inevitably not be fully successful in doing-- with the capitalist system also incentivising the circumvention or destruction of those regulations.

See, the incentives of greed are there with any system. You see it in communist systems where those at the top still take all they can for themselves. Human greed is a a human bug, not an inherent feature of capitalism.

 

[Drathnoxis]

But the rest of the Mane 6 get angry with you every other episode. 0_0

And it's not ok. Don't you see what they pushed me to? Friendship is tragic.

 

[Elijin]

No it's not. If one doesn't have good reason to be angry one is just being a dick. The idea that it's okay to be angry at anything even if it doesn't deserve it is the source of a lot of problems today.

Nope, still the same answer as before. Being angry is fine, how people choose to express that anger is where problems can arise.

 

[Kwak]

Anger is an energy.
Can be wasted or channeled.

 

[Seanchaidh]

No, I mean under capitalism you will tend to get more efficient markets as people identify segments that can be better served and create goods/move resources to serve those segments.

Capitalism isn't the same thing as markets. markets predate capitalism by thousands of years. markets existed in ancient and classical societies. markets existed in feudal societies. markets existed in economies dominated by slavery-- whether in the bronze age or the antebellum south. indeed, slaves were(/are) sold in..? Slave markets. Whether Roman or Virginian or somewhere else. Markets for the purchase and sale of slaves.

Markets have mixed results. They have their upsides and downsides. They tend to be most useful to those who have wealth. They can and often have facilitated the exploitation of those who don't. And they'll deliver luxuries to the rich before they'll deliver food to the poor. They will let those without money starve. They are also not what capitalism is.

Capitalism is the mode of production in which smaller numbers of owner-employers pay wages or salaries to larger numbers of employees to do the work which in its aggregate results in profits for the employers. Or to put it another way:

In slavery, there are masters and slaves.
In serfdom, there are lords and serfs.
In capitalism, there are employers and employees.

All three are enforced against their laboring classes ultimately by violence; slavery the most directly. The ruling class in all of them are very concerned with their 'property rights', as the enforcement of their 'property rights' are what give them the power to dominate their slaves, serfs, and employees respectively. And as a matter of history, each of these systems has in various circumstances coexisted with the others peacefully. Indeed, your capitalist firms are often bringing you products made, mined, gathered, or otherwise produced by slaves. And then there are company towns which look suspiciously alike in their organization to a feudal manor, though in a darkly humorous way with fewer obligations for the (land)lord or protections and guarantees for the tenant-- capitalism in all its glory has freed workers to 'voluntarily agree' to ever worse contracts.

Anyway, there is nothing about the maintenance of this employer/employee dichotomy that helps "identify segments [of a market] that can be better served and create goods/move resources to serve those segments". The enrichment of that employer class is indeed just a particular way in which resources are wasted.