Comment on I'm not asking to be rich.

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TWeaK@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

Sure, but if we’re constantly shuffling the deck, then won’t more people get opportunity to be successful?

People blame a lot of problems on capitalism (or communism, or whatever), but really these are just neutral systems. The problem is people.

People are irrational and selfish. Once their core needs are met, their desire to want things becomes overriding - but they treat it like a need. We need to win, otherwise we feel bad and feel worthless, even if we’re doing pretty ok objectively. Capitalism allows people to pursue these wins, but it doesn’t do enough to curtail people after they win what they need, and then make them work harder for the things they want.

With capitalism, the big con is value exchange. You want to pay as little as possible, or at its core put in as little effort as possible, but at the same time you want to sell your output for as much as possible. So, in order to game the system, people lie about value. An employer pays their workers a pittance, but then sells their output as a luxury. A trader haggles down the sale price of what they buy, then inflates the price of what they sell. The price is never actually truly representative of work (which can ultimately be defined in time, ie 'man hours) but instead is controlled by what the buyer is willing to pay.

These systems aren’t inherently wrong, they just assume that people will always play by certain rules. They don’t account for people figuring out the rules and trying to beat them.

If the system resets every so often then this can help mitigate people gaming the system. It won’t stop people from playing the game, but it will give new players a chance, while incumbants have to stop dragging their feet.

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