Comment by codydh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by codydh | Hacker News Reader

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> you may say that "capitalistic self-interest" is actually rooted in our biology.

I hold such deep issue with this. Sure, there's an aspect to all living beings that they "self-preserve." But you seem to be implying here that it's part of human nature to be primarily self-interested, and if that's a correct assumption, it's one I believe to be deeply incorrect.

We can look around and see people acting in self-interested ways all of the time, but we can also see people doing lots of benevolent, good, supportive things for other people. In addition, it's no surprise many people go around day-to-day acting this way, given that they live in a system which encourages (née requires) them to do so.

Just because people can conform and act within a system, does not mean it is part of their nature. A system that actively encouraged and promoted the common good and communal caring among individuals would likely produce more of that behavior as well. Just because we see one type of behavior or another is not enough to decide that it's human nature.

The way I see it: in general, people seem to form groups and care more about people in those groups than about those outside. What groups people form in their mind seems to be a pretty individual thing, depedent on the way one sees themselves in the world, but there are always groups and they always seem to be ordered.

That doesn't mean people don't give a shit about anything outside their closest clique! It only means that groups have different relative importance to an individual; for instance, when your family member is sick, you might temporarily stop attending the soup kitchen and spend that time helping the sick kin.

My point is that such "ordering of care" is part of our firmware, and because capitalism is compatible with that, it's easy to implement by humans - in the same way the basic concept of private property seems to be also a part of our firmware, and more extreme parts of communism being incompatible with that meant people started to work against the system.

Basically, if your system aligns well with natural tendencies of humans, it's easier to make it work. Corollary to that is that you should design your systems to work with natural tendencies of humans, instead of trying to change those tendencies directly.

Points taken. And I agree that we should design systems to work with the natural tendencies of humans. But we can do better than (and I'm being reductive here) capitalism's current "eventually everything will optimize out even if poor people starve to death because they weren't born with money." In fact, I'd argue that 'modern' capitalism really is only activating a small portion of human nature (that is, the self-interested part), and shielding us from those aspects of us that are caring for others and concerned for other human beings. When we put everything from the value of private jets to food, water, and healthcare on the same value metric (money), and then tell people that whatever amount of money they have is indicative of what they are worth, it's no wonder we as a society wind up treating people as objects instead of human beings.

Anecdotally, the US is a nation with more than enough food and shelter for all its inhabitants. Yet many people live on the streets, often because they were born into poverty. This goes against most people's "firmware." Yet capitalism takes no account of that part of human nature (I'd argue those parts that make us 'better than animals.').

I agree with your points here, and I'm not endorsing more capitalism as a solution to problems of current capitalism. I was only answering the question "why such roundabout way" by pointing out that, when viewed through the lens of human nature, it's actually a pretty direct way.

Though honestly, it's also easy to forget all the benefits capitalism brought us when criticizing it, and IMO it's worth to have them in mind when discussing alternatives.

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