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Originally Posted by smooth
I find it strange that capitalists can hold incompatible assumptions about economies, human interaction, and human nature.
For example, capitalists often mix the ideological standpoing that capitalism is good, human behavior is innately bad (or at least slothful). Capitalism is good seems to stem from the belief that it allows people to excel on their own merits, presumably leaving the slothful in the dust where they belong (although, according to alansmith's perspective if I understand it correctly, everyone is innately lazy and freeloading).
I guess the mechanism to spur people into action is the invisible market. This market functions to encourage innately lazy people into working. The detritus sifts to the bottom, while the more deserving overcome their personal stumbling blocks (I'm supposing).
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No, you misunderstand capitalism. What capitalism allows is for everyone to be able to strive for what's in their best interest, without relying upon goodwill to make things right. Capitalism is not a fair system, and doesn't allow for people to excel. It doesn't care who excels, only that the total pie of wealth is the largest. It's also why unfettered capitalism breaks down and is largely internally inconsistent-when someone gets too much wealth, they start creating inefficiencies in the system to maintain their own wealth, without thinking of the overall system. But the opposite (communism) will have situations where people, by acting in their best interest, will sabotage the whole system. Why work as hard as possible, when the results will be the same regardless? It's not about being lazy, it's about doing what's in your own best interest.
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Then we have the innate quality of greed. I'm not sure how capitalism keeps greed in check, in fact it seems to encourage it. Yet, greed is a "valid" critique of marxism (or communism, or whatever left of capitalism comes into being). And there is no data I'm aware of that has cemented the fact that greed is innate. It appears at least no small part is due to nurture. Since all of us have been nurtured in a capitalist society, I see no way one can adequately seperate the society we developed within and our notions of what we might be like without it. That is, would people be "innately" greedy in a socialist or Marxist world?
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Capitalism not only doesn't keep greed in check, it relies upon it to be a driving force. Greed is the desire for people to maximize their utility. If you deny greed, you deny that people will work to put themselves (and their families) in the best situation possible, which is ridiculous. I don't see how you would think this is nurture. It is just because people have more advanced thoughts that they can see "utility" as being more than the next meal. Therefore they strive to accumulate the most they can, and to protect that wealth.
Now, utility is a funny concept, and it doesn't always translate directly into greed. For instance, donating large sums of money might give more psychological satisfaction than having that wealth, so the utility would be higher to give (up to a certain point). But the fact remains that for any economic or governmental system to function properly, it needs to account for greed.
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Clearly the idea that we are necessarily individuals and perhaps greed is somehow long ago critical to the survival of the species (if we go with the genetic transference theories) resonates with US citizens. Yet, that would seem to be counter to the historical evidence that humans coalesced into small and then increasingly larger societies. At least in the distant past, our ancestors saw fit to be less individualistic than we proclaim is our innate desire and trait today.
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This is true, but it was more a matter of survival. For people to survive, it was more necessary to pool resources, because there were less resources as a whole. But now, we might be more interdependant, but also more able to mass large accumulation of resources because there is so much more of everything.
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anyway, I can only suspect that people espousing the virtues of capitalism while denouncing human nature as greedy and lazy are operating in some odd sleight of mind movement that allows them to grasp the upper shelf. That is, perhaps they are the most crafty or wily. It wouldn't make much sense to believe in fairness and equality if one believed the rest of humanity were acting on the basis of greed and laziness--because then of course the others would take advantage of one's kindness and mistake it for weakness.
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And here you are correct-capitalism has nothing to do with fairness. It is merely the system which is supposed to achieve the highest total wealth. For instance, if you have a billionaire and someone with nothing, living on the street, in capitalism it makes no difference if the billionaire or the man with nothing were to somehow come upon $50,000 even though the billionaire would hardly care about that sum, and it would make a large difference to the destitude person.
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Once one starts to unravel all these assumptions loaded into capitalism, individualis, US-specific flavors of clusters of beliefs surrounding these notions, one actually begins to taste just how violently they collide. I don't comprehend how people can hold such incompatible assumptions in their head all at once. Well, I can, but the implications make me sad and weary. And there isn't any real way one can claim to adhere to an invisible market without reifying the dang thing, since it is after all only human interaction...
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The market works fine, when there's not a market breakdown. But because people aren't perfect, it's rare to find a perfect market situation. So you need an outside body (in my view, usually this should be a strong, central government) to try to eliminate as many of the market failures as possible. Now, I admit to there being some inconsistancies, but I think those usually arise more from people who attribute too much to capitalism and don't really understand what it's designed to do. It's not a cure-all, but it's the best thing to deal with the innate negatives in human personality.
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well, that should be expansive enough. certainly plenty of meat for one to pick through and quote a teensy bit and drill that into the ground. should open up some kind of commentary at some point in time I imagine. good to see you around roachboy, btw. and cool thread, city of angels, haven't seen you in here for like a year but I may be mistaken as I don't as a general rule stalk forum members  but nice to see yah again all the same.
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