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Well it’s capitalism. End goal of all actors in this economic system is not public good, it’s profit.



Profit should be aligned with public good. That's where the system is currently failing majorly. Most people in all economic systems will strive for self-gain. The great thing about capitalism is that it realizes that this will always be the case and tries to co-opt this basic human desire into something good.


If it was all just Capitalism, we'd still be working six-day weeks without health insurance alongside our kids. There has to be a trade-off between satisfying some people's hunger for profit and, well - civilization itself.


Well. There's capitalism, and then there's whatever the fuck the US is doing.


Super duper capitalism?

Honestly we have a fair bit more regulation than we had in the past, and other capitalist nations don't have the problems we do. It's a lot more than just economic policy.

Mostly I think the problem is our death cult of individualism and exceptionalism. Half the country thinks everyone should either pull themselves up by their bootstraps or die.


I think it's the giganticness of the country and how that leads to a low degree of education for the average person (among other things, like safety nets). In a developing New World nation, you need individualism because that's how you settle a frontier, even if the individuals eventually become towns and states. The problem is that it's difficult to eventually coalesce that into a system that supports people the way Western European or Asian nations have. It takes loads of resources and hence loads of political will. If the Swiss single-handedly colonized North America, they wouldn't be able to replicate their system across the continent either. It takes a long time. Things are improving, though, I think! It's just a slow-moving process.




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