[ExI] Capitalism, anti capitalism, emotional arousal

Stefano Vaj stefano.vaj at gmail.com
Sun Nov 13 17:49:50 UTC 2011


On 12 November 2011 21:23, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Stefano Vaj posts:
> > ii) Should one's money itself be determined on the exclusive basis of
> > features which often have little "natural" or social utility and
> > mostly perpetuate themselves through vicious circles and probably
> > outdated civilisational paradigms?
>
> I don't think this is the case, at least most of the time. Can you
> give more examples of what you're thinking here? The most important
> feature of a person who gains riches in our system is the willingness
> to take risk. Risk is central to our capitalistic system.
>

I suspect this to be a fantasy, at least in statistical terms, if we are
not speaking of King Arthur or of Hernán Cortés but of XXI century Europe.
Yes, you may make some money by selling copyright on a video where you are
engaged in some extreme sport, but this is roughly the extent of it.
*Existing wealth* is central to our capitalistic system, meaning that it
exactly allows you to limit considerably personal, and to some extent
financial, risks affecting others. Upward social mobility is very rarely
connected with one's risk propensity, even though downward mobility may
admittedly be a little more.


> > i) Capitalism does not set moral/ethical standards in a society.
> Yes, that's correct.
>

I am much less concerned with ethical standards than with political ones.
And political standards have to do with the ability of societies to
survive, thrive and evolve.

"Ideological capitalism" posits, at least as far as I understand it, that
this should not be any community's (ie, government's) business, since
market mechanisms are going to deliver all that automagically. In other
POVs, on the contrary, capitalism may be just a possible mean, amongst
others and subject to disproval, to an end, in particular in order to spare
the micromanagement efforts involved in total planning; ad in other POVs
again, it has shown by now its inability to deliver all that in the long
term.

Last post for today, I do not want to incur Spike's wrath... :-)

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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