To me, apathy and amorality when the consequences are harm towards others is evil. It’s sort of like if a driver was in a rush and ran over a protestor on his way to work.
Sure, he did not wish any harm on the protestor. He just simply needed to get past them and chose the most effective and efficient path.
It’s an amoral act but the act (and the driver) is still evil. Evil is not just a mustache twirling genocidal dictator or sadistic serial killers… In fact, the amoral does infinitely more harm than the malicious. The Nazis did not come to power because of malice. They did not kill millions of Jews because of malice. They got there through apathy and amorality.
They didn’t want to kill the Jews at first- they wanted to deport them. But once they got them in the camps… it was impractical to supply enough logistical power to actually move them all. So while they figure out a plan, let’s have them do slave labor.
And then after a while, since we can’t move them, we may as well just kill them. It’s the most effective path to where we want to be. The driver driving over the protestor.
If this isn’t “evil”, what is?
Healthy competition tends to make “evil” actions unprofitable
Competition helps. I agree that this negative aspect of capitalism is exponentially magnified when monopolies form.
The thing is, in capitalist the wealth tends to snowball. Wealth is power and wealth buys influence. Look at how Disney singlehandedly changed copyright law when Mickey Mouse was about to enter public domain. Once you reach a certain size, you can modify the rules of the game. So it creates a self-perpetuating cycle.
This position we are in is the natural consequence of free market capitalism. I agree that free market is better. But this is the grown up version of free market. There was never going to be any other scenario but the one we are in.
We’ve neglected the garden for decades and allowed some truly nasty weeds in, but that doesn’t make the weeds “evil,” that means we were poor gardeners.
We can debate on the ontology of the world evil. It really is an interesting debate. But for all practical purposes, if the weeds are killing the crops that feed your family… what is the difference? Whether they want to kill you indirectly through starvation or don’t want to kill you- you’re dead either way.
The issue with your driver analogy is that the driver has to make a conscious decision that their convenience is worth more than a human life. I don’t think anyone would disagree that the driver is evil.
Likewise for your Nazi example, the choice to arrest and deport people because of their religious, ethnic, or cultural affiliation is evil. That should absolutely go without saying, as should killing people for convenience or profit.
Corporations are rarely in that situation, and if they actively choose to kill people, the decision makers should join the driver and Nazis in prison.
wealth tends to snowball
As it should. And snowballs tend to burst on impact. Look at GE or Sears, they used to absolutely dominate, but they imploded because they couldn’t adapt to the competition.
That’s how it’s supposed to work, innovators profit massively from the value they create, and when they stop innovating, they fail.
The problem is that large businesses rarely fail and get bailed out. We should’ve had a ton of banks close in 2008, but instead their execs got golden parachutes and failing businesses just consolidated into even larger entities. The message that sends is that companies can get away with murder, as long as they are “too big to fail.” The problem there wasn’t the cheating (it was a problem, don’t get me wrong), but the lack of consequences. We should’ve seen execs being carted off to jail, having their assets confiscated to help make restitution for their crimes. But instead we rewarded them.
This isn’t a failure of capitalism, it’s corruption in government.
Once you reach a certain size, you can modify the rules of the game.
And that’s the problem. My point is: don’t hate the player, hate the game. Demand better representation, and real consequences for corruption.
I’m guessing if you looked into Google/Alphabet, you could find dozens if not hundreds of crimes committed that helped them get the market share they have, and most of those likely went unprosecuted or had ineffective penalties. Likewise for other large orgs like Microsoft and Amazon.
Yet everyone seems to blame the corporations and not the government. You blame Disney for our terrible copyright laws, yet Disney didn’t pass or sign that law, they merely lobbied for it. The problem isn’t Disney, the problem is Congress.
, if the weeds are killing the crops that feed your family… what is the difference?
Weeds killing your crops is a symptom of the problem, which is the lack of maintenance of the garden. The weeds didn’t kill your family, your lack of preventative action did.
Likewise, corporations taking advantage of an ineffective government isn’t the problem, the ineffective government is. Fix ththe gardener and the garden will prosper. But a bad gardener is worse than no gardener, because nature at least finds a way for crops to survive without anyone plucking the weeds.
You blame Disney for our terrible copyright laws, yet Disney didn’t pass or sign that law, they merely lobbied for it. The problem isn’t Disney, the problem is Congress.
I think one thing we need to get out of the way is that the political system and the economic system are intertwined. There is no way to have a democratic capitalist society without having one influence the other.
If we go back to Adam Smith- he’s seen as the father of economics. But he didn’t consider himself an economist. He considered a moral philosopher and a political economist. The political system and the economic system are one and the same.
You believe these large corporations gaining too much influence is because of poor maintenance. Because of a corrupt government. You believe it’s because we’re not enforcing our anti-trust laws and so on.
I disagree and say this was always inevitable. It is impossible to keep your garden free of weeds starting from a free market economy. Again- wealth snowballs and wealth buys influence.
It’s a simple cause and effect. As long as the profit incentive is the main motivator in our political economy, the political system will be shaped by those with the most money. And they have the incentive to remove those free-market systems in order to maximize their own profit.
It’s a deterministic cycle. Free market capitalism -> late stage capitalism -> fascism
the political system and the economic system are intertwined
Sure, but that overlap should be as small as possible while still ensuring a competitive market.
late stage capitalism
Socialists and other related academics have been throwing this term around since WW2, and every couple decades they move the goalposts. It’s little more than a scary story they tell to convince people to go along with their authoritarian ideas. It’s really not that different from Hitler blaming Jews for all of society’s problems, just with a socialist flavor instead of a fascist one.
The truth is that wealthy people need the working class to buy their stuff, and buying their stuff increases the workers’ standard of living. Standard of living has been rising pretty consistently in developed countries, especially those with relatively free markets.
Yes, wealth inequality is growing (which is a problem), but that doesn’t mean the poor are getting poorer. Quite the opposite in fact, if you look at the data, people of all economic classes are better off year over year.
A lot of the problem is self inflicted IMO. The process goes something like this:
People demand change
Politicians talk to big players in industry
Big players propose solutions that seem to fix the problem
Surprised pikachu when the changes largely entrench the big players and raise the barrier to entry for competitors
And then we have the corrupt two party system where most representatives don’t have much actual competition for their seat, as long as they have more funding (conveniently provided by helpful lobbies from 3). The longer a rep stays in office, the more they tend to listen to the big players.
It’s not impossible to fix the problems, we just need to stop trying to use government to solve everything. Government works best when it’s simple, special interests love complexity, so we should simplify the law so it’s easier for people to tell when they’re getting screwed.
For example, the IRA is an incredibly simple retirement program. You open an account at a brokerage or bank for free and then buy stuff, and taxes are either up front or upon withdrawal. Some brokerages are cheaper than others, so you can shop around for the features and costs you want. The 401k is incredibly complex, and because it’s negotiated by employers, a lot end up being expensive for customers (e.g. mine has a 0.10% asset fee on top of fund fees), all because financial institutions want a cut. The plan is selected by HR, and employees don’t get a choice other than participate or not. Taxes are complex because Turbo Tax wants to keep their customers. And so on.
Here’s a quote from the author of my favorite book:
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The problem isn’t with corporations, they’re largely a constant. The problem is with government getting bloated and losing the plot because everyone tries to use it to solve their pet problem and the net winners are the lobbies.
It’s little more than a scary story they tell to convince people to go along with their authoritarian ideas
This is where I think you may have misinterpreted me. I’m not trying to push socialism. I think we’re genuinely fucked and there is no way out.
Sure, but that overlap should be as small as possible while still ensuring a competitive market
This is a fantasy. We talk about “free market capitalism” as if it’s some pristine, untouched mechanism that would work perfectly fine if only the government followed the rules. But the moment big money arises, the entire political field is lured in. Wealth itself becomes a gravitational force that pulls legislators, laws, and lobbyists into its orbit.
This is not a bug, it’s a feature. It’s fundamental to the system. A free market can never remain a free market. For two very simple reasons.
a) economies of scale. It’s cheaper to a lot of something per thing compared to a little of something per thing. so there is a financial incentive to get bigger and that is a self-perpetuating cycle. Eventually at the end of the game of Monopoly, there’s only one landlord standing who bought everything else up.
b) wealth is power. if you have power, you will use it to ensure your position is improved. this is human nature. this works the same in any other political economic system.
It’s not that a pure free market is corrupted by government, or that a pure socialism is corrupted by incompetent central planners; both are myths in the sense that they never truly exist in the real world. We either get forms of crony capitalism or state-managed capitalism, but the “free” part is always an abstraction.
What we need to acknowledge is that the political and economic systems are not two separate worlds that only overlap by accident. They’re conjoined twins. Pretending one can neatly excise government from the economy is a fantasy—just as fantastical as imagining the perfect socialist utopia.
The trick is to recognize that the moment large-scale wealth accumulates, it necessarily accumulates political clout. And from there, the “free market” gradually becomes a marketplace that’s anything but free.
This is what people mean by late stage capitalism. It’s capitalism that has eroded all of the public institutions and in a short amount of time fascism will take root. We’re witnessing the transition right now as we speak.
It used to be reality. Copyright law was reasonable and largely unchanged for 180 years, it lasted 28 years, with an optional extension for another 28 years. Originally it was 14 years, with an optional extension for another 14 years. The same is true for a number of other stupid laws that large corporations exploit.
But the moment big money arises, the entire political field is lured in
Agreed, and maybe we should consider constitutional limits on what governments can do. You won’t bribe someone who is legally restricted from helping you…
But honestly, the root of the problem, I think, is the two-party system, which encourages corruption, especially when state governments get to redraw federal districts. We shouldn’t be pushing for individual changes to separate government from big money until we solve the problem with party politics.
Some suggestions:
proportional representation for House Reps - you vote in your party primary to rank candidates, and seats are awarded in the general based on percent of popular vote; eliminates gerrymandering, with the risk of candidates being geographically consolidated (totally worthwhile tradeoff, and IMO not something that actually matters)
term limits - not a solution in and of itself (creates a pipeline to industry, encouraging corruption), but could be useful in addition to the first
campaign finance reform - ban political ads, and only allow organized debates and town halls, with a central location for info about each candidate (w/ fact checking by other candidates)
end FPTP - preference for STAR or Approval voting, but the specific option isn’t important; needs to be paired w/ a solution to gerrymandering though, because on its own, this doesn’t do much
Wealth itself becomes a gravitational force that pulls legislators, laws, and lobbyists into its orbit.
That’s true of any economic system. You said you’re not pushing socialism, but you didn’t offer what you do support, so I’ll speak broadly.
Power attracts money, and money attracts power. These are constants in human nature, and they need to be watched very closely. My point is that increasing the ability of governments to make changes that benefit or hurt the market attracts big money, so we should be very careful of anything we ask our governments to do. Having a political system that encourages entrenched politicians just exacerbates the problem. And moving more and more powers to the executive branch reduces the amount of work companies need to put in to get a desired result (e.g. Trump can be bought).
My opinion is that, in general, rules should be crafted and enforced as locally as possible, which would then dramatically increase the work required for a large entity to get what they want. Federal policy should be simple and limited to only what’s needed for a functioning union, and likewise down the chain.
there is a financial incentive to get bigger and that is a self-perpetuating cycle. Eventually at the end of the game of Monopoly, there’s only one landlord standing who bought everything else up.
What you’re missing is that as companies get bigger, they lose sight of their competitive advantage. Look at big household names from 50 years ago (or sooner!) that don’t really exist today. Capitalism works by smaller upstarts finding a competitive advantage, exploiting it, and then the cycle repeats.
The way large orgs compete now is by buying small orgs. We could consider blocking corporations from buying other corporations, which should encourage more disruption vs larger orgs (i.e. erode wealth of the big players), since they can’t just buy their competitors.
It’s capitalism that has eroded all of the public institutions and in a short amount of time fascism will take root.
I really don’t think the two are related. Look at fascism before WW2, they didn’t need to erode capitalism first, they just ran on a populist platform, identified a common enemy, and used the platform and enemy as an excuse to eliminate democracy, at which point they could nationalize whatever industries they want. The transition to fascism throughout history has been through political means, not the market.
I suppose it’s possible for it to happen in the other order, but I don’t think it’s inevitable. We had a similar situation w/ Standard Oil taking over everything, and we ended up doing some trust busting to fix the issue. It’s not too late to change course, we just need the public to recognize the problem and demand change.
To me, apathy and amorality when the consequences are harm towards others is evil. It’s sort of like if a driver was in a rush and ran over a protestor on his way to work.
Sure, he did not wish any harm on the protestor. He just simply needed to get past them and chose the most effective and efficient path.
It’s an amoral act but the act (and the driver) is still evil. Evil is not just a mustache twirling genocidal dictator or sadistic serial killers… In fact, the amoral does infinitely more harm than the malicious. The Nazis did not come to power because of malice. They did not kill millions of Jews because of malice. They got there through apathy and amorality.
They didn’t want to kill the Jews at first- they wanted to deport them. But once they got them in the camps… it was impractical to supply enough logistical power to actually move them all. So while they figure out a plan, let’s have them do slave labor.
And then after a while, since we can’t move them, we may as well just kill them. It’s the most effective path to where we want to be. The driver driving over the protestor.
If this isn’t “evil”, what is?
Competition helps. I agree that this negative aspect of capitalism is exponentially magnified when monopolies form.
The thing is, in capitalist the wealth tends to snowball. Wealth is power and wealth buys influence. Look at how Disney singlehandedly changed copyright law when Mickey Mouse was about to enter public domain. Once you reach a certain size, you can modify the rules of the game. So it creates a self-perpetuating cycle.
This position we are in is the natural consequence of free market capitalism. I agree that free market is better. But this is the grown up version of free market. There was never going to be any other scenario but the one we are in.
We can debate on the ontology of the world evil. It really is an interesting debate. But for all practical purposes, if the weeds are killing the crops that feed your family… what is the difference? Whether they want to kill you indirectly through starvation or don’t want to kill you- you’re dead either way.
The issue with your driver analogy is that the driver has to make a conscious decision that their convenience is worth more than a human life. I don’t think anyone would disagree that the driver is evil.
Likewise for your Nazi example, the choice to arrest and deport people because of their religious, ethnic, or cultural affiliation is evil. That should absolutely go without saying, as should killing people for convenience or profit.
Corporations are rarely in that situation, and if they actively choose to kill people, the decision makers should join the driver and Nazis in prison.
As it should. And snowballs tend to burst on impact. Look at GE or Sears, they used to absolutely dominate, but they imploded because they couldn’t adapt to the competition.
That’s how it’s supposed to work, innovators profit massively from the value they create, and when they stop innovating, they fail.
The problem is that large businesses rarely fail and get bailed out. We should’ve had a ton of banks close in 2008, but instead their execs got golden parachutes and failing businesses just consolidated into even larger entities. The message that sends is that companies can get away with murder, as long as they are “too big to fail.” The problem there wasn’t the cheating (it was a problem, don’t get me wrong), but the lack of consequences. We should’ve seen execs being carted off to jail, having their assets confiscated to help make restitution for their crimes. But instead we rewarded them.
This isn’t a failure of capitalism, it’s corruption in government.
And that’s the problem. My point is: don’t hate the player, hate the game. Demand better representation, and real consequences for corruption.
I’m guessing if you looked into Google/Alphabet, you could find dozens if not hundreds of crimes committed that helped them get the market share they have, and most of those likely went unprosecuted or had ineffective penalties. Likewise for other large orgs like Microsoft and Amazon.
Yet everyone seems to blame the corporations and not the government. You blame Disney for our terrible copyright laws, yet Disney didn’t pass or sign that law, they merely lobbied for it. The problem isn’t Disney, the problem is Congress.
Weeds killing your crops is a symptom of the problem, which is the lack of maintenance of the garden. The weeds didn’t kill your family, your lack of preventative action did.
Likewise, corporations taking advantage of an ineffective government isn’t the problem, the ineffective government is. Fix ththe gardener and the garden will prosper. But a bad gardener is worse than no gardener, because nature at least finds a way for crops to survive without anyone plucking the weeds.
I think one thing we need to get out of the way is that the political system and the economic system are intertwined. There is no way to have a democratic capitalist society without having one influence the other.
If we go back to Adam Smith- he’s seen as the father of economics. But he didn’t consider himself an economist. He considered a moral philosopher and a political economist. The political system and the economic system are one and the same.
You believe these large corporations gaining too much influence is because of poor maintenance. Because of a corrupt government. You believe it’s because we’re not enforcing our anti-trust laws and so on.
I disagree and say this was always inevitable. It is impossible to keep your garden free of weeds starting from a free market economy. Again- wealth snowballs and wealth buys influence.
It’s a simple cause and effect. As long as the profit incentive is the main motivator in our political economy, the political system will be shaped by those with the most money. And they have the incentive to remove those free-market systems in order to maximize their own profit.
It’s a deterministic cycle. Free market capitalism -> late stage capitalism -> fascism
Sure, but that overlap should be as small as possible while still ensuring a competitive market.
Socialists and other related academics have been throwing this term around since WW2, and every couple decades they move the goalposts. It’s little more than a scary story they tell to convince people to go along with their authoritarian ideas. It’s really not that different from Hitler blaming Jews for all of society’s problems, just with a socialist flavor instead of a fascist one.
The truth is that wealthy people need the working class to buy their stuff, and buying their stuff increases the workers’ standard of living. Standard of living has been rising pretty consistently in developed countries, especially those with relatively free markets.
Yes, wealth inequality is growing (which is a problem), but that doesn’t mean the poor are getting poorer. Quite the opposite in fact, if you look at the data, people of all economic classes are better off year over year.
A lot of the problem is self inflicted IMO. The process goes something like this:
And then we have the corrupt two party system where most representatives don’t have much actual competition for their seat, as long as they have more funding (conveniently provided by helpful lobbies from 3). The longer a rep stays in office, the more they tend to listen to the big players.
It’s not impossible to fix the problems, we just need to stop trying to use government to solve everything. Government works best when it’s simple, special interests love complexity, so we should simplify the law so it’s easier for people to tell when they’re getting screwed.
For example, the IRA is an incredibly simple retirement program. You open an account at a brokerage or bank for free and then buy stuff, and taxes are either up front or upon withdrawal. Some brokerages are cheaper than others, so you can shop around for the features and costs you want. The 401k is incredibly complex, and because it’s negotiated by employers, a lot end up being expensive for customers (e.g. mine has a 0.10% asset fee on top of fund fees), all because financial institutions want a cut. The plan is selected by HR, and employees don’t get a choice other than participate or not. Taxes are complex because Turbo Tax wants to keep their customers. And so on.
Here’s a quote from the author of my favorite book:
The problem isn’t with corporations, they’re largely a constant. The problem is with government getting bloated and losing the plot because everyone tries to use it to solve their pet problem and the net winners are the lobbies.
This is where I think you may have misinterpreted me. I’m not trying to push socialism. I think we’re genuinely fucked and there is no way out.
This is a fantasy. We talk about “free market capitalism” as if it’s some pristine, untouched mechanism that would work perfectly fine if only the government followed the rules. But the moment big money arises, the entire political field is lured in. Wealth itself becomes a gravitational force that pulls legislators, laws, and lobbyists into its orbit.
This is not a bug, it’s a feature. It’s fundamental to the system. A free market can never remain a free market. For two very simple reasons.
a) economies of scale. It’s cheaper to a lot of something per thing compared to a little of something per thing. so there is a financial incentive to get bigger and that is a self-perpetuating cycle. Eventually at the end of the game of Monopoly, there’s only one landlord standing who bought everything else up.
b) wealth is power. if you have power, you will use it to ensure your position is improved. this is human nature. this works the same in any other political economic system.
It’s not that a pure free market is corrupted by government, or that a pure socialism is corrupted by incompetent central planners; both are myths in the sense that they never truly exist in the real world. We either get forms of crony capitalism or state-managed capitalism, but the “free” part is always an abstraction.
What we need to acknowledge is that the political and economic systems are not two separate worlds that only overlap by accident. They’re conjoined twins. Pretending one can neatly excise government from the economy is a fantasy—just as fantastical as imagining the perfect socialist utopia.
The trick is to recognize that the moment large-scale wealth accumulates, it necessarily accumulates political clout. And from there, the “free market” gradually becomes a marketplace that’s anything but free.
This is what people mean by late stage capitalism. It’s capitalism that has eroded all of the public institutions and in a short amount of time fascism will take root. We’re witnessing the transition right now as we speak.
It used to be reality. Copyright law was reasonable and largely unchanged for 180 years, it lasted 28 years, with an optional extension for another 28 years. Originally it was 14 years, with an optional extension for another 14 years. The same is true for a number of other stupid laws that large corporations exploit.
Agreed, and maybe we should consider constitutional limits on what governments can do. You won’t bribe someone who is legally restricted from helping you…
But honestly, the root of the problem, I think, is the two-party system, which encourages corruption, especially when state governments get to redraw federal districts. We shouldn’t be pushing for individual changes to separate government from big money until we solve the problem with party politics.
Some suggestions:
That’s true of any economic system. You said you’re not pushing socialism, but you didn’t offer what you do support, so I’ll speak broadly.
Power attracts money, and money attracts power. These are constants in human nature, and they need to be watched very closely. My point is that increasing the ability of governments to make changes that benefit or hurt the market attracts big money, so we should be very careful of anything we ask our governments to do. Having a political system that encourages entrenched politicians just exacerbates the problem. And moving more and more powers to the executive branch reduces the amount of work companies need to put in to get a desired result (e.g. Trump can be bought).
My opinion is that, in general, rules should be crafted and enforced as locally as possible, which would then dramatically increase the work required for a large entity to get what they want. Federal policy should be simple and limited to only what’s needed for a functioning union, and likewise down the chain.
What you’re missing is that as companies get bigger, they lose sight of their competitive advantage. Look at big household names from 50 years ago (or sooner!) that don’t really exist today. Capitalism works by smaller upstarts finding a competitive advantage, exploiting it, and then the cycle repeats.
The way large orgs compete now is by buying small orgs. We could consider blocking corporations from buying other corporations, which should encourage more disruption vs larger orgs (i.e. erode wealth of the big players), since they can’t just buy their competitors.
I really don’t think the two are related. Look at fascism before WW2, they didn’t need to erode capitalism first, they just ran on a populist platform, identified a common enemy, and used the platform and enemy as an excuse to eliminate democracy, at which point they could nationalize whatever industries they want. The transition to fascism throughout history has been through political means, not the market.
I suppose it’s possible for it to happen in the other order, but I don’t think it’s inevitable. We had a similar situation w/ Standard Oil taking over everything, and we ended up doing some trust busting to fix the issue. It’s not too late to change course, we just need the public to recognize the problem and demand change.