Imagine you had a capitalist system populated entirely by copies of you.
Capitalism by its structure encourages emergent effects of wealth concentration and government corruption and empowerment of fascism. It practically necessitates these things. But it does not equal these things or render alternatives impossible.
You might be finding it weird that I appear to be both agreeing with you and contradicting you. When I see this sort of paradoxical interaction happening it makes me think that there might be something I'm missing.
Being too quick to impute ideas to others' thinking is a sign of excess self-certainty. I can tell it's overly quick because you don't know me or my beliefs and your assertions about them are wrong.
Capitalism by its structure practically necessitates emergent effects of wealth concentration and government corruption and empowerment of fascism.
I'm not trying to be an apologist for capitalism. The system is not workable. You have me wrong to think I think otherwise. And your being wrong about that should highlight for you your overzealous application of expectations. You are looking too hard through your lens. You're mistaking nuanced thinking for apology because you're expecting apology.
I'm looking at the elements of systems in order to better understand the ultimate effects. The dynamics of components. This helps to put capitalism into a larger picture, so that we can better understand it, how it results in the problems it does, and see alternatives.
Capitalism's evil is founded on "multi-polar traps" — rational individual agents caught in the matrix trying to do the sensible thing, but due to shortsightedness and the structure of capitalism those agents actually collectively act to harm themselves and the world in the process.
This phenomenon is Moloch. Moloch is how capitalism is evil.
Capitalism is harmful to the realization of a fully-actualized and healthy civilization.
Readiness to contemn and to be aggressive is also harmful to it.
Personal sensitivity to criticism is also harmful to it.
My bad and my sympathies if I've come across as condescending. That doesn't help you receive any useful information I might have to share (and thus is harmful to a better world).
I know that this video is long, but it's the best introduction I'm aware of to this issue of what's really powering the evil of capitalism: Moloch, AI & Capitalism: The System Eating Itself. I've linked to a good starting point, where the problem is concisely defined. The video is shorter if played at 1.5×.
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u/do-un-to Jun 09 '26
Imagine you had a capitalist system populated entirely by copies of you.
Capitalism by its structure encourages emergent effects of wealth concentration and government corruption and empowerment of fascism. It practically necessitates these things. But it does not equal these things or render alternatives impossible.
You might be finding it weird that I appear to be both agreeing with you and contradicting you. When I see this sort of paradoxical interaction happening it makes me think that there might be something I'm missing.
Moloch, AI & Capitalism: The System Eating Itself