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Carol S.'s avatar

I wonder if the main issue is weak brains, or a defective moral compass.

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R Mercer's avatar

A combination. Free market capitalism is corrosive to good character and public community.

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Carol S.'s avatar

There's a plausible argument that free market capitalism depends on good character-- on being able to trust your neighbors and make mutually beneficial exchanges of goods and services.

A command economy doesn't require good character of citizens. It rests on the assumption that the powerful will have good character and will orchestrate things in the public interest. The historical record demonstrates that such confidence is not warranted.

Fusing economic power with political power is not the way to solve the perennial problem of human self-interest and greed.

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R Mercer's avatar

It is a plausible argument in theory but it doesn't really seem to work out in practice. Just like a lot of theoretical stuff.

The historical record indicates that counting on people (in large or small groups) to have and keep character is usually a losing proposition. So you have to assume that people will exhibit bad character and work from there, not assume that they will have or get good character and base things on that possibility.

The Founders tended to assume the worst, which is why the built the system the way they did. Since they could not foresee the future, it ended up failing (as all things do). Trying to conserve a structure put in place to regulate a society far different than ours is asking for trouble.

Both systems (command and free) end up failing, just for different proximate causes (although the deeper cause is, I think, the same).

And, as you note, fusing economics and political power is fraught... which is why you should avoid doing it at all costs to the degree that you can. At some point those with money will co-opt those with power, especially in societies that worship money. Then it becomes a question of how do you deal with that--unfortunately we haven't seemed to come up with an answer yet.

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Carol S.'s avatar

The question is: How do you prevent people from exploiting power in their own interest? The best way is to build a system where the amount of power in any one person's hands is limited -- one where the people who monopolize force don't also have authority to distribute wealth or control enterprise as they please.

And, a system where people get personal benefit from doing things that are beneficial to other people.

That sort of system has been more successful in bringing widespread prosperity than any other, to date.

It's true that people who are able to amass great economic power can often buy favors from those with political power. That's crony capitalism -- which isn't synonymous with free market capitalism.

The political structure should provide a way for the public to hold politicians accountable for such betrayals of the public trust -- and a way for the public to mitigate gross economic disparities -- without consolidating economic and political power in the same hands, which has tended to result in more oppression than free market capitalism does.

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R Mercer's avatar

Government (despite high sounding words to the contrary) rests on a foundation of naked force. Well, not naked in our culture, but nonetheless real for all that.

Without force there is no government. This may well work in a smaller more homogenous society but won't work in one the size of most modern nation states. Sooner or later, the people with the force are the people distributing wealth and controlling enterprises. At least until they get co-opted.

Free market capitalism is a philosophy not at thing. It has never really been an actual thing and will never be an actual thing. It always end up mixed and controlled and /or becomes crony capitalism when those with sufficient wealth (again) so-opt the system. It is merely a question of how corrupt, not if it is corrupt. Free market capitalism is only a tad less impossible than communism, though for different reasons.

Our political structure DOES provide a way for the public to hold politicians accountable for betrayals of public trust. They are called elections. Doesn't seem to be fulfilling the intended purpose.

Capitalism in its various iterations has tended to do better by the mass of people than, say, a command economy (mostly for providing for wants moreso than needs--it tends to not do as well with needs). It seems to be the lesser of the evils when you maintain some control/oversight. In the larger scheme, how much is that actually saying?

I don't have a solution, only lots of questions--and a good understanding of how people will corrupt any mechanism that is put into place to regulate things.

Maybe when our AI masters come into being things will improve... but they probably more likely yo be just as bad, if not worse, since we made and programmed them.

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