Capitalism is destroying institutions. Any new technology must be employed in service of "number go up". In this system externalities have to be priced in with taxes, but it's cheaper to buy off legislators than to actually consider the externalities.

This is how we get food that has fewer nutrients but ships better, free next-day delivery of plastic trash from across the world that doesn't work, schools that exist to extract money rather than teach, social media that exists primarily to shove ads in your face and trick you into spending more time on it.

In the next 4 years we will see the end of the American experiment, as shareholder capitalism completely consumes itself and produces an economy that can only extort and exploit but not make anything of value.

▲

syawaworht 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think the wrong lesson to draw for this is that it's just a systems problem. Somehow if we do a different song and dance, the outcome will be different. I've been thinking that the end state of capitalism and communism are not that different - what is the difference between wealth that you can't spend in a million lifetimes and "no" wealth at all? The endpoint is the same, the game becomes about relative power over others, in service of an unending hunger.

Capitalism is the manifestation of the aggregate human psyche. We've agreed that this part of our selves that desires to possess things and the part that feels better when having even more, is essential. This is the root we need to question, but have not yet dared to question. Because if we follow this path of questioning, and continue to shed each of our grasping neuroticisms, the final notion we may need to shed is that we are people, individual agents, instead of nonseparate natural phenomena.

We will have to confront that question eventually because we will always have to face the truth.

▲

vixen99 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'll focus just on food here: people do have a choice. I don't live in the US but is it impossible to buy basic ingredients, fruit, vegetables, grains, meat whatever etc., and actually cook something? Eating this kind of food you can even stack your life chances more in your favor. Huge amounts of information abound as to the how you can do that. Consumers, if they are free to choose, determine value and entrepreneurs will respond. It can be profoundly distorted, that's true but at base, capitalism is doing something that someone else finds of value or not.

	▲	trollbridge 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The basic ingredients are also lower quality and less nutritious. For example, vegetables and fruits these days (at least for the U.S. market) are grown almost entirely for size and appearance, not for the amount of trace nutrients they contain or other quality measures.
	▲	psadauskas 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Sibling comment is correct, also in the US we have "Food Deserts"[1]: lower income areas that lack typical grocery stores, and might only have convenience stores that only stock prepackaged or processed foods. Any raw ingredients available are expensive and/or low-quality. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

▲

jongjong 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's not capitalism, it's the monetary system that's the problem. It's not a level playing field. Capitalism requires a fair monetary system as a precondition. Though I can agree that communism would be better than whatever perverse system we have now.

	▲	throwway120385 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think you're both right. Capitalism is an important part of a liberal society. But when we let private institutions become all-powerful then they can erode our freedom too. The problem isn't government or enterprise, it's the idea that only one of these things should be paramount. We need government to do unprofitable but necessary things and we need enterprise to pursue risky things. And we need government to regulate enterprise and enterprise to hold government accountable. You can name a lot of symptoms of the problem but at its heart there's a lack of accountability in any of our power structures whether they be corporate or government.
	▲	dostick 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		One of biggest obstacles we will have to overcome is for people stop thinking that communism is the only alternative and cling to capitalism. Capitalism was tried by 120 countries in past 120 years. Not a single country can report harmonious society free of corruption and unnecessary suffering. Every country employ 50% of workforce on pointless jobs only because capitalism requires artificial scarcity.

▲

PlatoIsADisease 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>Capitalism is destroying institutions.

What year do you think was the first year of capitalism? Depending on your starting point, it caused the American Revolution and French Revolution.

It caused destruction of monarchy.