Capitalism is designed to give power to the few at the top. Nothing about it is a meritocracy, its a funnel of money straight to whoever can exploit the system more than the rest. Has nothing to do with merit, but to “get yours” through whatever means necessary, including crushing those employees who actually do the hard labor that they then extract wealth from.
Say, the system was designed to prevent cheating. Could a meritocracy exist?
Define cheating. I doubt many CEOs would consider anything they’ve done to get to the position they are as “cheating”.
To “cheat”, one must break the rules. And the rules have been designed to not only allow for but encourage current behavior.
CEO’S are propped up by investors and guaranteed the money invested traces back to some sort of nepotism.
It can’t.
It’s a logistical nightmare. In order to be rewarded for your efforts, you need some system of evaluating the worth of every effort. Any societal system that exists is made by at least one person, and every person had biases and ambitions.
There’s no way to prevent cheating, because any rule to prevent cheating will be ignored, because that’s what cheating is. Any rules to make cheating harder only make it harder, not impossible.
Oh look, it seems the act of deciding a person’s worth to society is 100 times the worth of a labourer. And the worth of a writer for Batman is 20 times the worth of a writer for Spider Man. Oh, my physicist girlfriend just broke up with me… Looks like that’s practically worthless now!
Wait, what’s a youtuber? Is that a new thing? I made my value system back in 2002, so this is all new to me! You’re not on the list, so I guess you’re not worth anything? I guess we could make the list again, and while we’re there, my opinions on Batman have changed, so we can tweak some other things too.
Ah, the problem is that a person’s worth is entirely subjective… But what if we press it down into clear and objective statistics? What if we limit it to a single statistic, and a person’s value is entirely related to raising that statistic? We can call the statistic… Capital!
So a person’s value in society is entirely tied to their ability to obtain as much capital as possible, no matter what they do. Ah, meritocracy.
You said a lot of words but only convinced me that you think very highly of your own judgment.
Capitalism is designed to give power to the few at the top
This rads like some communist propaganda.
Both. It’s kind of like asking if monarchy is the problem or if the problem is just evil kings. Theoretically even a dictatorship can work out well for the people given a benevolent dictator. The issue is with the vulnerabilities inherent in the system. For capitalism, it’s that those with more money have more influence and thus it creates a feedback loop where those with more money have more power to get themselves more money and therefore more power and so on.
Is it the same though? Monarchy are built around the idea that there will be kings. Is nepotism enshrined in the capitalist idea?
Is nepotism enshrined in the capitalist idea?
Unofficially. People start business for their benefit. Hiring family members is a good way to keep most of the money in the family. Similar with making deals with close freinds; like hiring your plumber buddy at the apartment you own and trying to pass the bill to the tenants or something. The thing is that nepotism just makes sense in a lot of places.
Right, only in the same way meritocracy manifests itself in a capitalist system. In this way a 1 to 1 comparison to a monarchy can’t be made.
Nepotism obviously existed before capitalism, and it will surely exist at some level in the next economic system, but it’s not an either/or. There are many, many problems with capitalism that would probably still exhibit if nepotism somehow immediately ceased.
The implementation of US capitalism wasn’t intended to fend off nepotism, so of course it continued on.
Bracing for downvotes here…
Capitalism is good when properly regulated. Capitalism is an incredible tool for raising living standards, which should be the ultimate goal of any aociety. Disfunctional capitalism produces inequity.
Now I know someone is going to say that capitalists tend to accrue power, to which I say that is EVERY system. They ALL need to be kept in check. Socialism, feudalism, anarchy, oligarchy, it doesn’t matter. Someone will try to accrue power. The economic system MUST be subordinate to the government, and ideally that government should represent the will (or at least the best interests) of the people.
I am FIRMLY in the “the system is broken and needs to be fixed” camp. Regulatory capture is a result of disfunctional capitalism. Monopolies are a result of disfunctional capitalism. Cronyism is a result of disfunctional capitalism. Capitalism as a system is not inherently bad except in the way that any system when allowed to run unchecked is bad.
A strong government hand, when wielded by empathetic and civic-minded people, is a requirement for any economic system. Given that, capitalism is the best economic model the world has ever seen.
Edit: pleasantly surprised. Shitlibs assemble?
Well said. I agree with you, but with one caveat. A big caveat.
Capitalism does not seem to be compatible with our ecological substrate. By now everyone should be familiar with the basic facts of what humans are doing to the natural world. All of those negative indicators are strongly correlated with economic growth. The only times the warning lights flicker off - momentarily - is in the aftermath of economic crashes. Then the graphs resume their downward trajectories.
Unlike doctrinaire leftists, I am ready to accept that capitalism has been generally good for humans as a species. But the evidence is clear: it’s been an absolute disaster for the environment. The very nature of capitalism is that it’s unsustainable. We’re running up a bill and one day soon it’s going to have to be paid.
The very nature of capitalism is that it’s unsustainable
Again, this is a feature of (almost) all economic systems. With appropriate regulation and government incentives, it’s not a problem.
We have probably hit peak fossil fuels this year. Every year henceforth, fossil fuel use will go down. Why? Capitalism. Competition in solar panel and wind turbine manufacture and installation, prompted by government incentives and private charitable action, has made renewable energy cheaper than fossil fuels.
Capitalism is a tool that we can use, and when it’s under control it works.
Also, credit where credit is due, China’s autocratic version of capitalism has done better than America’s laissez faire or Europe’s social democratic capitalism in this regard. But it’s still capitalism.
I will add. Saying a system is flawed because it can’t prevent any number of unintended outcomes only proves all systems are inherently flawed. Like it or not a robust system isn’t just one simplified into anarchy but has measures in place to minimize unintended results and maximize desired outcomes. This all happens in practice. A robust system accounts for the need to make measured adjustments that won’t eliminate the bad but reduce it to more acceptable levels.
Trying to achieve the perfect system will only drive you straight into the hands of a flawed one.
Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production (there is a less marxist term about top level economic property I’m totally spacing on here so take some Marx and quit yer complaining, it’s the same thing) and has nothing to do with merit.
That has always been capitalist propaganda. The ability to participate in capital has nothing to do with merit.
It’s in the frame work of the capitalist idea. Like it or not. I’m trying to expose why it doesn’t manifest.
