It’s a temporary short term solution that is repeatable. If my time working under capitalism has taught me anything it’s that a temporary short term solution works perfectly well as a long term solution if you accept it as maintenance. Just gotta clear out the cunts every once in a while.
This is sorta why I think capitalism is both a useful pragmatic system and a terrible idea.
It’s the whole greed is good thing. It’s this clever little hack of “well let’s let the greedy sociopaths be that way, and we will just arrange the game so it benefits everyone.”
It sorta work in the beginning stages of capitalism. They realize that they can make profits exploiting workers and go to town and consumers reap the benefits of there being lots of stuff to buy to meet their needs.
Sure your boss is an amoral exploiter, but it means the widgets get made.
But capitalism is not static, it’s a game played over time where those least bound by morals and ethics trap greater and greater rewards. Leading to where much of western civilization finds itself today, beholden to a handful of the worst human beings.
The only mechanism to keep them in check is competition, and it’s a system that devolves over time to have little to no competition, so we shouldn’t be surprised.
I often wonder what the world could be if we took seriously the job of restraining the impulses of that 5% of the population. We teach young children to share and be kind and the golden rule. Then you reach adulthood and realize that all of that is still true but unrewarded, and the way to get ahead is to exploit people. The wealthiest and most “successful” amongst us in this society are those most willing to exploit their fellow man for their own benefit. You get a billion dollars by being willing to steal a billion dollars from your workers. No one can earn a billion dollars you have to have thousands of people working for you everyday, and for each one of those people you have to be willing to extract value out of them, what in any other context we would call theft.
I think we underestimated the harm that capitalism would do in terms of normalizing greedy sociopaths. It’s turned into a giant propaganda machine that serves to gaslight the masses into believing that the sociopaths are good and right and deserve what they’ve stolen.
And we’ve built a world that silos people away from other normal people so it’s even harder to use your community to fight back.
It’s going to be incredibly hard to do any sort of reset now. Most people refuse to even see any sort of problem with it.
Adam Smith agreed with you in the 1600s when he thought up the system. He specifically said that capitalism couldn’t be the end goal, but he wasn’t aware of what the end goal would be, just that it would necessarily benefit the people, not the rich.
Individualism is a dead end, the forces you describe are powerful because society is organized for their benefit. The cruel and psychopathic have avenues to make themselves useful to the ruling class. This is a social construct not an individual virtue or vice.
We can only make changes together. I def think people need to be more individually courageous, but the most common source for courage is social support, not some inherent trait. Some people are oppositional defiant in a way that can make them practical for a time, but without something larger steering circumstances then these individuals end up becoming tyrants all the same.
Well it would be nice if we ever return to normalcy to overturn CU and clamp down HARD on the issues that enable the rampant abuse of the system. Like I’m talking union busting levels of “No you’re complicit in this more than X% you are out, forever”
I mean there are some options for dealing with that.
A. Early monitoring in childhood followed by extensive therapy
B. Eugenics if a genetic link is identified (least savory option and likely not possible)
C. Rebuild our social circles and communities
To expand on C, I think a lot of what you’re identifying as narcissistic behavior or sociopathy is actually caused by the destruction of our communities. The way our society is built it rewards anti-social action with money and it’s cold and depersonalized. It’s easy as a upper executive to fire 500 people you’ve never once met and you will never meet. You don’t have to know them beyond a few spreadsheets of data. People will absolve themselves of personal responsibility and refer to the financial aspects. Additionally, our communities have been destroyed. The addition of the nuclear family structure encourages you to provide as much as possible to as few individuals instead of valuing extended family and community. Plus in some places in the world it is possible to go days or weeks without ever interacting with members of your community.
Yeah these days it’s just altering in vitro. We have the tech, but we are rightfully frightened by it. It’s hard to deploy in a way that it does good and is not abused
The sad thing is we do have the potential to shape a healthier human race. The potential to cure all genetic diseases and have a better future. We have the technology today.
Unfortunately we cannot be trusted to use it. It will 100% be used to target minorities and harm people to create something racists ideal. It’s kinda sad
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Luigi.gif
I don’t think this is a long term sustainable solution.
It’s a temporary short term solution that is repeatable. If my time working under capitalism has taught me anything it’s that a temporary short term solution works perfectly well as a long term solution if you accept it as maintenance. Just gotta clear out the cunts every once in a while.
Hard to see such a thing. At least we can take some satisfaction from Luigi events.
That’s what many think about punitive systems. And you are correct. But we are at the magical point where a large number are just fine with that.
This is sorta why I think capitalism is both a useful pragmatic system and a terrible idea.
It’s the whole greed is good thing. It’s this clever little hack of “well let’s let the greedy sociopaths be that way, and we will just arrange the game so it benefits everyone.”
It sorta work in the beginning stages of capitalism. They realize that they can make profits exploiting workers and go to town and consumers reap the benefits of there being lots of stuff to buy to meet their needs.
Sure your boss is an amoral exploiter, but it means the widgets get made.
But capitalism is not static, it’s a game played over time where those least bound by morals and ethics trap greater and greater rewards. Leading to where much of western civilization finds itself today, beholden to a handful of the worst human beings.
The only mechanism to keep them in check is competition, and it’s a system that devolves over time to have little to no competition, so we shouldn’t be surprised.
I often wonder what the world could be if we took seriously the job of restraining the impulses of that 5% of the population. We teach young children to share and be kind and the golden rule. Then you reach adulthood and realize that all of that is still true but unrewarded, and the way to get ahead is to exploit people. The wealthiest and most “successful” amongst us in this society are those most willing to exploit their fellow man for their own benefit. You get a billion dollars by being willing to steal a billion dollars from your workers. No one can earn a billion dollars you have to have thousands of people working for you everyday, and for each one of those people you have to be willing to extract value out of them, what in any other context we would call theft.
I think we underestimated the harm that capitalism would do in terms of normalizing greedy sociopaths. It’s turned into a giant propaganda machine that serves to gaslight the masses into believing that the sociopaths are good and right and deserve what they’ve stolen.
And we’ve built a world that silos people away from other normal people so it’s even harder to use your community to fight back.
It’s going to be incredibly hard to do any sort of reset now. Most people refuse to even see any sort of problem with it.
Adam Smith agreed with you in the 1600s when he thought up the system. He specifically said that capitalism couldn’t be the end goal, but he wasn’t aware of what the end goal would be, just that it would necessarily benefit the people, not the rich.
just got to reset it every 100 years or so. we may be overdue
Capitalism might be the mechanism, but it’s not the root cause. Any system will eventually be corrupted in the same way without constant vigilance.
The worship of capitalism certainly contributed. Capitalism needs heavy controls.
Individualism is a dead end, the forces you describe are powerful because society is organized for their benefit. The cruel and psychopathic have avenues to make themselves useful to the ruling class. This is a social construct not an individual virtue or vice.
We can only make changes together. I def think people need to be more individually courageous, but the most common source for courage is social support, not some inherent trait. Some people are oppositional defiant in a way that can make them practical for a time, but without something larger steering circumstances then these individuals end up becoming tyrants all the same.
Well it would be nice if we ever return to normalcy to overturn CU and clamp down HARD on the issues that enable the rampant abuse of the system. Like I’m talking union busting levels of “No you’re complicit in this more than X% you are out, forever”
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I mean there are some options for dealing with that.
A. Early monitoring in childhood followed by extensive therapy
B. Eugenics if a genetic link is identified (least savory option and likely not possible)
C. Rebuild our social circles and communities
To expand on C, I think a lot of what you’re identifying as narcissistic behavior or sociopathy is actually caused by the destruction of our communities. The way our society is built it rewards anti-social action with money and it’s cold and depersonalized. It’s easy as a upper executive to fire 500 people you’ve never once met and you will never meet. You don’t have to know them beyond a few spreadsheets of data. People will absolve themselves of personal responsibility and refer to the financial aspects. Additionally, our communities have been destroyed. The addition of the nuclear family structure encourages you to provide as much as possible to as few individuals instead of valuing extended family and community. Plus in some places in the world it is possible to go days or weeks without ever interacting with members of your community.
hitler approves
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Yeah these days it’s just altering in vitro. We have the tech, but we are rightfully frightened by it. It’s hard to deploy in a way that it does good and is not abused
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The sad thing is we do have the potential to shape a healthier human race. The potential to cure all genetic diseases and have a better future. We have the technology today.
Unfortunately we cannot be trusted to use it. It will 100% be used to target minorities and harm people to create something racists ideal. It’s kinda sad
Another pseudoscientific theory about how a small minority of society are naturally bad in a way that causes all social ills?
Has anyone made a tarpit for these types? Some sort of scoring system to trap them in.
Fascist uprisings are the closest we’ve come.
Fucking YES. Thank you, extremely well said