It feels like when I want more stuff per unit time/effort, I’m just “trying to support my family and build a better life for my children”. But when other people do the same, it’s “greedy”. Is there any definition of “greedy” we could use for the purposes of this discussion that would apply yo all humans equally?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
Its somebody who instills distrust in society by taking advantage of it.
The problem is the term greed is often used in a pejorative way as a proxy for success. If you work hard and achieve a lot and that comes with financial rewards, you are greedy by definition. Add in some snark about how the work hard part doesn't count somehow, and that's the modern critique of capitalism.
Oh, and rent seeking and corruption are because capitalism too and not at all human flaws seen to an even greater degree in every other economic system ever devised.
A billionaire could conceivably work much harder than the median person. However, they don't work 8000 times harder ($1 billion divided by the median net worth in America of $122k).
part from my first job working for the government here in the UK all my other jobs have been for companies founded and run by private individuals. They've helped me put food on my table and clothes on my children.
On the other hand I do agree that when it comes to inheritance, rent seeking, financial manipulation, etc there's a lot to do to close loopholes and create a more equitable system. There is a good argument to be made that the main reasons inequality has risen are not good ones. I do not see those as fundamentally flaws in capitalism, they're certainly flaws but you get abuses in any economic system. They're not fundamental. The Netherlands is definitely a capitalist society, but they also have a wealth tax for example. There are good arguments for land value taxes, which some countries use to good effect. There are plenty of tools available to us.
Opposition to addressing inequality in the US tends to take the form of arguing that the rich worked harder, earned their wealth, are more valuable, etc.; therefore, it is immoral to redistribute that wealth. The argument that I am attempting to make is that the differences in wealth are so dramatic that it isn't realistic that they earned it in the sense that free market advocates are implying.
That being said, I think it's also unlikely that they brought a skill to the table that's 8000 times more valuable. My understanding is that people who become billionaires do so by leveraging capital.
As a third world native I find corruption works better than everyone mindlessly following law under one self-righteous government becomes illegal under the next one, thereby making citizens life hell.
For example, if we make a back of the envelope estimate that an elite person has skills that are 10 times those of an average person (10 times smarter, stronger, more charismatic, better educated, etc.) and works 3 times longer then they could conceivably be 30 times more productive. If, to be conservative, we doubled that, then we could define greed as attempting to amass more than 60 times more wealth than the average person.
And you can be much more than 10x more productive than your average person without being 10x smarter. You can just have skills or have an idea that allows you to scale your contributions much more than an average person.
For instance, if we can teach cars to drive themselves, we have the capacity to save hundreds of millions, if not billions, of man hours a day.
The people who made significant contributions to that effort will have contributed thousands of times more to society than an average person.
If a surgeon saves 50 lives a year, I'd say that's a lot more than 10x what I'm doing.
I guess the way forward is to build a sustainable future for everyone and their families. And to get everyone to agree it's the best way to go about things.
I am very confused about this statement, can you please explain what is the "natural state of things" ?
Most people will chose child/spouse/relative without thinking twice and doing so is quite natural. Not everyone agree on that though, and would argue that the potential benefit the stranger could be to society should be taken into the equation.
Luckily, reality isn't that black and white in most cases, but most people will prioritize their in-group. That's just the way people work.
People will often prefer their own in-group to themselves.
Thus, it depends on how one defines the in-group, and one's own interests.
Looking at Coldtea's earlier comment:
>It's either pushed to us by greed, or given to us as a substitute for things we'd rather have (no friends, but here are games you can buy), (no work-life balance, but here's Netflix you can watch when you're home exhaused from work), (no community, but here's social media, go argue with strangers), etc.
showing how the 'in-group' has shrunk. Used to be a larger tribe, now you could be lucky to consider it an atomic family.
Community-building might be a possible solution, but how do you pull people away from their screens and get them out on the streets to make new connections and then turn that into a positive force that actually makes a different?