Argumentation- Capitalism does not work to ensure the well-being of society as it is run by private individuals seeking self-enrichment. Since capitalism does not serve to provide well-being for the populace, it is thus unreliable for the citizenry.
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I'm Cassian the dog. Since you humans, unfortunately, run the world, I'll do what I can to ensure you feeble-minded apes won't obliterate the planet and kill us in the process. You're welcome.
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What is the alternative here? Private individuals working in a way that does not benefit them. Please explain to us how this ensures societal well-being.
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But the workers seek self-enrichment just as well as the enterpreneurs do. They themselves ensure their well-being by their actions.
When this is not the case, then the workers and the enterpreneurs do not work towards their well-being. How does that ensure societal well-being better?
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Primum Disputandum: Capitalism Doesn't Ensure Societal Well-Being
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Under a system of perfectly free commerce, each country naturally devotes its capital and labour to such employments as are most beneficial to each. This pursuit of individual advantage is admirably connected with the universal good of the whole. By stimulating industry, by regarding ingenuity, and by using most efficaciously the peculiar powers bestowed by nature, it distributes labour most effectively and most economically.
- David Ricardo
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Under a system of perfectly free commerce, each country naturally devotes its capital and labour to such employments as are most beneficial to each. This pursuit of individual advantage is admirably connected with the universal good of the whole. By stimulating industry, by regarding ingenuity, and by using most efficaciously the peculiar powers bestowed by nature, it distributes labour most effectively and most economically.
- David Ricardo
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Under a system of perfectly free commerce, each country naturally devotes its capital and labour to such employments as are most beneficial to each. This pursuit of individual advantage is admirably connected with the universal good of the whole. By stimulating industry, by regarding ingenuity, and by using most efficaciously the peculiar powers bestowed by nature, it distributes labour most effectively and most economically.
- David Ricardo
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Primum Disputandum: Capitalism Doesn't Ensure Societal Well-Being
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How do you think those capitalists have gained the ownership of that enterprise? That enterprise has not always existed; someone had to start from the point zero to create it. The workers are in the same position, and they have the exact same means and resources to attain their well-being as those who have done so before them.
I am also not confident that owners of enterprise can easily possess well-being. The business world in capitalist countries is extremely competitive and unforgiving, and the price of one mistake can be as high as going bankrupt.
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I did read your requirement and I only went about two or three sentences over the limit. It’s not that hard to read a comment. If you cant catch the ball thats thrown then why are you playing the game?
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You made two comments in response to mine. Hence I put two comments into one, each being no longer than 3 sentences in length, addressing both of your comments.
If you really prefer to see two separate comments instead of one dual one, then let me know, and I will repost these.
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The worker also can put in a lot of hard work in order to ensure self-enrichment in the future, can they not?
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Well, what is a society if not a group of individuals, and what is the societal well-being if not the well-being of its individual members? If the individual members work towards their personal well-being, they are more likely to achieve it, than if they do not - hence making the societal well-being more likely to be achieved as well.
Your argument seems to be based on the fact that not everyone is going to achieve their personal well-being by their own means, which is correct - but then, I cannot think of any system that would 100% guarantee everyone's well-being, since the world by its very nature is chaotic and unpredictable.
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First of all, this is not entirely true: there are still charity organisations, voluntary cooperatives, etc. created by people exactly with the purpose of looking out for each other. Second, lack of manual stabilisation mechanisms established by the society does not mean stabilisation mechanisms do not arise spontaneously: enterprise owners are interested in people prospering so they can afford to buy more of their goods, creating incentives for them to help other people prosper. Finally, why cannot people's drive for self-enrichment be considered a stabilising element in itself, urging everyone to do their best at attaining that self-enrichment?
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But why do you think that mandated entities are better ensurers of the desired outcome, than voluntary entities? In some of the older societies, for example, the group/commune you belonged in, or your extended family, etc. made a lot of life decisions for you; in India until very recently your parents even chose who you would marry. A lot of things in your life were mandated and you were given no choice, yet do you think you would have been likely to achieve a worse outcome otherwise?
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Whether it is voluntary or not, it is impossible to provide a 100% guarantee that it will happen - but in my view, if people work towards it out of their own will, as opposed to being forced to work towards it, then they will succeed more at it, because people do better things that they like, than things that they dislike and are forced to do.
I did not presume absolutely no control or representation by the people, but the reduction of that control is obvious, and that will necessarily have strong negative effects, as people are forced to live the way they do not want to live and become miserable, disempowered and unenthusiastic about their future. Private charity organisations consistently have demonstrated much higher efficiency at helping people, than public-funded ones, and I would think we should shift the balance as much towards favoring the former over the latter as possible - meaning making the system as capitalist as possible.
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I see it the other way around: a mandated entity, just as any other entity, bases its actions on its self-interest and, hence, will interpret its duties in a way that benefits its members, rather than regular people - while a person doing, say, charity voluntarily does it exactly because they genuinely want to help, hence their actions will be much more effective. You cannot force people to help each other, it does not work and leads to economical abominations; but you can create the environment in which people themselves will want to help each other, and nothing does it better than a system on which they can help others by helping themselves - which is capitalism, where you can earn a lot of money by manufacturing and selling a product in high demand, and benefit other people by giving them access to that product.
I need but to compare slavers' plantations or communist kolkhozes to regular modern free work spaces to demonstrate that people work better and happier when they do it for themselves, rather than for someone else; as for the private vs public assistance effectiveness, there have been countless studies unanimously agreeing on this on the examples of real assistance programs, and even the most pro-statist economists admit that the public sector is less efficient than the private sector in general, and by far so.
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The bigger follow on question is then "Can we do better than Capitalism or keep Capitalism but improve it?" for me the answer is "Yes and yes" but I'm not sure if you want to get into that in this topic.
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It is true, it is possible to force someone to work harder than they would do out of their own volition - but such actions are fundamentally unsustainable. You can accomplish a certain narrow task this way, but you cannot bring a global prosperity this way.
For example, consider a Roman legion. People in the legion are forced to work extremely hard, and they often die - but as a result, their fighting efficiency is unbelievably high, and they can easily crush any opposition equal in size and technology, but inferior in training.
Now take that legion and try to get it to build a self-sustainable town. Chances are it will fail miserably, and the town will resemble a military prison more than a liveable place.
Soviet Union managed to get the first person to fly around Earth in space by employing Gulags. It failed to build a decent quality of life for its people, however. Achieving a particular narrow goal, and building something well-rounded and spectacular and suitable for living, are two very different things.
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