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Comment by tobbyb | Hacker News Reader

This really feels like another world. Here is a confession, I have stopped believing people need to be informed, to be made aware.

I think most of us, adults know exactly what is happening, the consequences of capitalism, the reality of our societies, the reality of poverty, the reality of a large number of people struggling, suffering, sad, desperate, unhappy.

We have a sophisticated mental model to deal with it, we pretend it doesn't exist, untill you are absolutely forced to confront it, at which point you may signal, posture, be shocked, but life goes on. Our systems fundamentally and deeply reward unethical behavior and greed, and humans are survivors, we survive.

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People have a profound disagreement over the meaning of 'capitalism' so I don't think it's a useful term.

The fact is that poverty has been dropping markedly over the years due to the free market and 'capitalism'.

We tend to see crises because they're short term and fail to see the benefits because they happen over generations.

I suspect what is really happening here is that the USA (and similar countries) are getting closer in gdp/capita to other rising countries.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-in-extre...

'during' not necessarily 'due to'

There not much the individual can do about it. It's not feasible for me as a consumer to do proper research into the backgrounds behind my products and companies that I use. It's barely feasible for me to even be confident I'm buying quality goods at all.

And if I do, I will be paying higher prices for the same lifestyle as my neighbors. At the consumer level this is fine, but at the business level my company will fail. My competition has saved enough money by using cheaper services that they can hire a PR firm to establish them as a 'humans first' company by brand, regardless of what is actually happening behind the scenes.

So I lose on both fronts for being responsible.

It's a problem that can only be fixed with regulation.

> I will be paying higher prices for the same lifestyle as my neighbors. At the consumer level this is fine, but at the business level my company will fail.

I don't follow. If a portion of consumers like yourself are willing to pay higher prices to uphold their values, who are they paying higher prices to if not businesses that are conforming to those values?

To a customer there's no visible difference between a company that claims to uphold those values selling the product for $20, and a company actually upholding those values that sells the same thing for $30.

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