Isn’t huge profits the definition of success in capitalism? As a capitalist society shouldn’t there be cheers instead of complaining? This part I don’t understand about American culture.
Now they’re learning first hand what happens when it escalates to outright greed and hoarding, and that life gets pretty shitty for the very vast majority when this happens to the basic needs of a decent life (groceries, education, healthcare, safety, roads, transit)
Not saying this is the later case, but when people are critical of large profits they usually are critical of the later, where they believe that the value being created has not really gone up, it’s just being funneled away to rent seekers now.
This is especially true for things that are seen as “essentials” where buying is fairly mandatory and so prices are inelastic, like housing, food and medical care. If these markets become uncompetitive consumers can’t just walk away from rising prices.
So rising profits + the same value being generated point to the market being uncompetitive and are not celebrated in the way rising profits + new value are.
Its a disconnect powered by propaganda of the definition of "success"
People who run businesses that extract wealth from the sick, the old, the dying, or people in other situations where they are not really able to make free choices, are vile and a cancer on our society.
That is right. But it doesn't mean something cannot be done, such as a general uprising with organized morals against the prevailing winds of profit above all else. Slavoj Žižek said it best when he said that we are conditioned to believe that anything is possible scientifically, but we are highly doubtful of any social change. We need to reverse that: to believe that we can change the world sociall rather than technologically, or perhaps despite the technological changes.