Some people will do that in any system, it's human nature.
Now, in a system that has the rule of law you cannot be prevented to do something that isn't illegal. This is actually the best (or least bad) system we've come up with.
It's childish to blame capitalism.
In a systme that has the rule of law, the lawmakers can choose to make certain behaviours legal if or when they harm the society. For example, private and corporate tax loopholes can be closed, and corrupt behavior can be outlawed or a liability instituted that the harmed party can claim.
It's childish not to blame capitalist governments for allowing certain kinds of corruption that are left to fester.
Jeff Bezos can amass $100 billion in wealth and donate it to philanthropic causes, but if he decided to open source AWS or pay his workers a living wage, or pay publishers a reasonable price for books, etc, he wouldn't have $100 billion in the first place.
I would argue that this is not strictly speaking true. There are successful companies which don't (seemingly) put profit first. Examples include Morning Star (tomatoes, not the newspaper)[1], Mondragon[2] and perhaps most co-operatives in general.
Capitalism very clearly and unapologetically forces this, while some people imagine that, somehow, that constraint does not apply in other systems.
no, that’s too strong a claim. capitalism’s innovation is that it redirects greed into productive uses and allows personal gain in the process. so it explicitly accounts for our greed but doesn’t depend on it. it allows more pro-social forms of trade and competition as well.
the reason it seems so heartless/exploitative is that highly competitive markets push the competitors to extremes and money is used to keep score. and people cheat easily; some not to lose, some to win at all costs. (even in non-highly competitive markets this happens if status is highly sought by owners/execs)
What national economic system can function without people exploiting the system for personal gain?
The top 5% of children in some measure of ideal traits for just ruling are whisked away to a bubble where they are educated for the purpose of governing, with no opportunity to ever rejoin the general populace. They have absolute power but no opportunity to benefit themselves or their families.
That or we could tax externalities globally.
So he's not subject to max SSN and Medicare taxes?
Could you sketch out your idea a bit more? At the moment, I'm not getting it.
There are tons of ways to force people that don't involve putting a gun on their head...
"forced" can happen in more ways than one. Workers in third world sweatshops aren't forced by law to work there, but they are forced by capitalism to work there to feed their families.
Also: Exploit (v)
2. To use selfishly for one's own ends.
I don't believe that Bezos or other employers are acting selfishly when them employ people, even when they make a margin on that labor. (In fact, if they don't make a margin on that labor, they would be better off to stop employing that person, meaning the situation where the employee and employer both make money on the deal is the most stable state.)
That's a baseless claim.
If anything, empirically it's true. It's the opposite idea that's fairy tale baseless...