Comment on Roblox is a problem — but it’s a symptom of something worse
Glide@lemmy.ca 3 weeks agoIt’s even worse than that.
At it’s root, capitalism, as shown via Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” theory, infers that wealth equals virtue. To receive wealth is to have provided a benefit to society, and to be bereft of wealth is to contribute little while taking much. This system inadvertedly places a dollar value on the abuse of minors in Roblox: any suffering caused is of no consequence to the great good being provided to society, otherwise Roblox would go bankrupt.
CEOs and corporations take the moral high ground because they live within a system that tells them that wealth is virtue, and they are overflowing in wealth. Until we accept that the core principals of capitalism are flawed, we will never begin holding bad actor’s appropriately accountable.
I would like to point out that Adam Smith “did not” suggest wealth = virtue. Wealth of Nations even have a whole book devoted to morality.
The current trend of equaling wealth to virtue came from Puritanism, Calvinism, which evolved into neo-liberalism now.
For more information about Puritanism and Calvinism and their relationship with capitalism, please refer to The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber.
He did not explicity state this, no. But the entire premise of the invisible hand metaphor is to show that a core function of the capitalist system is that it moves wealth to those that bring good to their society. The natural inference from this is that wealth is representative of virtue, ie, if Roblox was doing net bad things, it wouldn’t be worth millions.
Don’t get me wrong, fuck the various Catholic attempts to justify wealth as a virtue too, but the issue is as prevalent in the secular world as it is in the non-secular.
More “capitalists” need to read Adam Smith.
obsoleteacct@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
It’s even worse than that.
We are somewhere between 5 and 7 years into the problems with Roblox being well documented by everything from major media outlets to national governments. It’s well past the point of blaming nievete or ignorance.
Parents are doing a cost benefit analysis and speculating that their kid won’t be one of the victims. They are paying to put their kids in harms way because they see the high liklihood of social isolation or temper tantrums to be a greater problem than risk posed by Nazis, and groomers.
implosive_sprig@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
It’s even worse than that.
I don’t know how, I just wanted to say it, too.
samwise_gamgee@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
In fact I’d argue you’re not even going far enough: it’s even worse than that.