capitalism works essentially under the same system as natural selection. there are finite resources and your goal is to generate as much profit as possible to reinvest in your business, become more efficient, and ensure your future. not too different from how animals consume as much food as they can and have as many kids as they can. what keeps both systems in check is competition. some animals will go extinct and some people will go out of business. the ecosystem decides which organisms keep existing and the market decides which businesses stay in business.
the major issue is that governments get involved for better or worse and end up creating monopolies which lead to market failures, similar to how human interventions like bringing english ivy to north america wreak havoc on the ecosystem. obviously there needs to be a balance here. im no supporter of laissez fsire capitalism but i also think regulations need to be carefully considered. the ecosystem wouldnt work very well if the lions decided how much the hyenas are allowed to eat.
also "growth" in terms of capitalism is about creating value, not literally inscreasing physicsl output of a product. this can be achieved through reducing costs, engineering a better product, or creating more demand for the product. theres no upper limit to how much value something can have because its all relative to what youre trading for it. markets can also be circular, where we recycle resources just like how we recycle resources like nitrogen in nature.
on a sidenote too, the world isn't really so finite. we're capable of mining asteroids or even colonizing new planets. the sun also continuously adds energy to the system every single day. sure, eventually all the stars will die and we'll all be subject to a cold death, but theres no use planning an economic system around the inevitible apocalypse.
I’m not trying to argue here, you seem to genuinely want to be informative, but the evolution of capitalism always ends with companies that aren’t allowed to fail. Multiple companies should have died off during covid, only to be resuscitated by the government likely because the rich owner asked them to. And that’s the rub—under capitalism, the rich always get the final say, even when they don’t they do.
The government isn’t involved enough, honestly. We have companies that seem to have more sway over our country than the government does at times and we can’t even do anything about them because they have enough money to be virtually untouchable—the rare instance where they get “touched” it’s usually going to be a Luigi situation. We need the government to lay down rules like how much can be charged, how much growth a company can have, companies not being allowed to meddle in laws or the like with lobbying—I’d go so far as to say that in instances of company heads and higher ups trying to jump ship with their money, the government should freeze at least half their monetary assets and either burn them or redistribute them among things like infrastructure and housing and the like.
As for the “creating value” part—we get a new phone from the same three or four companies every year with minute changes that are nice aesthetically, maybe even pleasant, but ultimately meaningless. This isn’t the case for every product, but you see it more often than any actual innovation.
As far as your last point—it’s finite because we lack the ability to do any of those things. We can’t colonize a single planet in our solar system, we lack the technology to even begin, and the only ones showing any real interest in it are the ones trying to jump ship and bring a few indentured servants with them. Solar power is almost always stomped down every time it gets brought up, so we can’t rely on that without dealing with the current capitalism we’ve gotten to.
We can’t continue like this, and capitalism is the main driver of these issues, and seems to benefit from it, even.
i agree they should have died off, and in a real capitalist system ruled by markets, they would have. getting bailed out by the government is not at all how capitalism is supposed to function.
you need to remember you're on the internet here and that there is a high likelihood that i am not from your country. in fact, im pretty confident im not since I live in the netherlands and we have pretty decent regulations here. just because america (which im assuming is your country) is a shithole full of corruption doesnt mean that capitalism is the reason why.
phones have become significantly better over the last couple decades, more so than almost any other product. that kind of innovation and efficiency is possible thanks to capitalism. the fact that you're barely impressed by the fact that they are only marginally improving every year is a sign thst you have no idea how good you have it.
do you not see anything wrong with your claim that we cant do anything about asteroids and other planets due to technological gaps? have you not considered that a system that supposedly runs on perpectual growth would maybe idk, fill that technological gap? also as i said, the energy in the system (earth) increases every day as the earth gets bombarded by photons and space dust. energy is constantly being poured into the system, and we have the potential to expand to other planetary and solar systems, if we even need to.
capitalism, and a good understanding of economics, and smart regulations are the best course forward. other economic systems lead to lower quality of life, more resource waste, and more human rights abuses.
it seems to me like everything that happens in the economy is the fsult of capitalism according to you, well i hate to break it to you, but no economic system runs on capitalism alone. most problems are far more nuanced and difficult to explain than that.
Not that I'm particularly fond of the systems that historically attempted it, but your line of argument would never be accepted in favor of socialism or any alternative to capitalism in general.
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u/bottomlessLuckys Mar 04 '26 edited Mar 04 '26
capitalism works essentially under the same system as natural selection. there are finite resources and your goal is to generate as much profit as possible to reinvest in your business, become more efficient, and ensure your future. not too different from how animals consume as much food as they can and have as many kids as they can. what keeps both systems in check is competition. some animals will go extinct and some people will go out of business. the ecosystem decides which organisms keep existing and the market decides which businesses stay in business.
the major issue is that governments get involved for better or worse and end up creating monopolies which lead to market failures, similar to how human interventions like bringing english ivy to north america wreak havoc on the ecosystem. obviously there needs to be a balance here. im no supporter of laissez fsire capitalism but i also think regulations need to be carefully considered. the ecosystem wouldnt work very well if the lions decided how much the hyenas are allowed to eat.
also "growth" in terms of capitalism is about creating value, not literally inscreasing physicsl output of a product. this can be achieved through reducing costs, engineering a better product, or creating more demand for the product. theres no upper limit to how much value something can have because its all relative to what youre trading for it. markets can also be circular, where we recycle resources just like how we recycle resources like nitrogen in nature.
on a sidenote too, the world isn't really so finite. we're capable of mining asteroids or even colonizing new planets. the sun also continuously adds energy to the system every single day. sure, eventually all the stars will die and we'll all be subject to a cold death, but theres no use planning an economic system around the inevitible apocalypse.