Individualism Is Stupid ( Or Why Libertarianism And Objectivism Is Stupid)

[shadow]

Definitely - capitalism is a system supported by a host of regulations that enable it. I'd say from a capitalist perspective, though, the ability to incentivize those workers to work for you is the individual aspect. Other people and governments are seen as... almost tools, not an entity that helps one out of the goodness of their hearts. I'd say a capitalist wouldn't expect these things to work in his favor if he hadn't duly coerced (through whatever means) the collective to support him.

I think capitalism's greatest strength is that it is "self-correcting"... think of Smith's invisible hand. If a firm is not producing things efficiently, it will be put out of business by a firm that is. If we put the means of production into public hands, how will a public entity "go out of business" if it is inefficient? The right/libertarians have a valid point here.

The "incentives" argument you made was something that is a weak point in capitalism. Namely, capitalism treats people like commodities. It doesn't matter how hard they work or how valuable their work is to society-- they are paid the going rate for their labor in the marketplace. We're not talking about STEM fields or anything; we're talking about unskilled labor, something that every single society needs more than anything else (like Plato's City of Pigs). The problem is that most members of society need to do manual labor or the society will collapse, but each of these members is replaceable by any other person, thus making their market value low. Left to its own devices, capitalism will enslave 90% of the society (seeing no value in these people except to produce more and more goods).

I agree it is a weak point of capitalism - but also a very very powerful one. My concern is even more that with automation the unskilled labour sector can be removed almost altogether and replaced by machines. The machines are simply factors of production owned by the wealthy, so there is literally no natural redistribution of wealth at that point. It's why I strongly advocate for something like a universal basic income right now. I've always hated the idea of not using machines to do work when we could: manual labour isn't fun and efficient systems are a beautiful application of science. That being said, if the benefit from those machines and technological advances goes solely to the wealthy... the gains are made from locking unskilled labour out of the system entirely.

Hmm... structurally it's a damn good business decision and it only fails, and it fails utterly, an ethical level. But sort of makes sense why we're in some of the mess we are today politically; people are desperate and I don't know if I can blame them. Only they thought that crony capitalism would be their savoir, when what they really need is a government with some sort of spine that isn't entirely bought and paid for by corporations.