Oh no I 100% believe most humans are innately selfish and/or greedy, but that doesn’t stop me from believing change is possible and that we as a species can develop ourselves beyond it
If humans re selfish and greedy by nature however, it is an argument for creating systems that inhibit such negative qualities while promoting positive ones. We need systems where individual self interest aligns with the common interest. Unfortunately, capitalism is the opposite of that being a system of individual competition that pits everyone against each other. Setting up a capitalist society is akin to taking an alcoholic to an open bar.
Yes I agree. I think competition in business is important for innovation, but it should be regulated to some degree to prevent megacorps from owning everything. Heck, it may seem like there’s a lot of smartphones to choose from, but Samsung makes the screens for iPhones. They live off of each other and competition isn’t really even a priority anymore.
It’s worth noting that private business isn’t even necessary to have competition. For example, USSR had different design bureaus that would compete with each other. When a new technology was developed, each would put out a proposal and the best one would be selected. The advantage of that model however was that everyone shared the learnings from a project. So overall knowledge and expertise would increase. With private competition this doesn’t happen and companies end up relearning lessons from other companies.
Even if the leadership of a company is focused on making money, a lot of the organization below that leadership might very well be focused on providing a good service. Which for a food producing company would mean feeding people. A lot of time there’s a synergy between making money and providing a good service.
You could also say that the leadership of a communist country doesn’t care about feeding people, they care about the people not revolting out of hunger. There’s a kind of positive synergy there too.
The reality is that the selection pressure for companies is to make profit. Providing a good service tends to be more expensive than using shady business practices, hence why we see companies use shady business practices. And once a company gets large enough to become an effective monopoly then it doesn’t even have to provide a semblance of a good service because there are no viable alternatives customers can use. Telecom industry in North America is a perfect example of that.
The leadership of a communist country caring about people not revolting is a much more direct incentive to provide better lives for people than the indirect incentive of a profit motive.
lemmy.ml
Active