The fundamental problem with capitalism (as described by Bo Burnham

Author: secularmerlin

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#151
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@Greyparrot
How exactly would a die presser go about creating rapists?
Not sure this is pertinent to the topic. 

Your realize hundreds of thousands of businesses go bankrupt annually regardless of them wanting to break windows to create demand.

Buggy whip manufacturers for instance. There are only so many windows you can break before tort law catches up with you.
Not sure what point you are trying to make but I suppose.
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#152
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@Greyparrot
Is it a human rights violation to provide 300 million dollars worth of food to people?
Well if you want to talk about a completely seperate unrelated topic no it is not a human rights violation to provide 300 million dollars worth of food in and of itself but that is neither here nor there to the fact that it would still be a human rights violation to retain 300 million dollars afterwards unless there were no more hungry people. 
#153
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@secularmerlin

Pastor Kenneth Copeland is worth $760 million.
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#154
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@FLRW
Kenneth Copeland is a shuckster and con artist who takes advantage of the sick the desperate the gullible and the elderly. He doesn't produce anything and pays no taxes. He is the perfect capitalist. One must admire how brazen he is about it even.
#155
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@secularmerlin
Not sure this is pertinent to the topic. 

Read your OP.
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#156
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@Greyparrot
My OP says nothing about creating rapists only that if one's financial security relies on continued high rates of rape then it is hard to genuinely want rape rates to go down. 
#157
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@secularmerlin
It would still be a human rights violation to retain 300 million dollars afterwards unless there were no more hungry people. 

But the person needs to own the capital to provide 300 million dollars worth of food to people. How is that a human rights violation?

You say on one hand that it's a good thing that a person is providing 300 million dollars worth of meals, but isn't allowed to own the machinery to produce it for people? How is this violating anyone?

#158
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@secularmerlin
then it is hard to genuinely want rape rates to go down. 

Then if you cant make the case that the whistle maker has any influence on raising the rate of rape, then capitalism has no fundamental negative effect either. What he desires is irrelevant to the actual world effects. Therefore your OP is meaningless.
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@secularmerlin
Going into your 2nd argument further down, you claim there's no profit motive if the proliferation of rape whistles somehow reduces the rape rate to an insignificant amount. That completely ignores the vast amount of profit made from getting from point A to point B which no investor would choose to pass up willingly, under any scenario you can imagine. Capitalism fundamentally works in favor of society when you look at it this way.
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#160
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@Greyparrot
But the person needs to own the capital to provide 300 million dollars worth of food to people. 
It would not be a violation to give 300 million away but it would be to keep it. If you have more wealth than most people make over the course of their entire lives and others are starving to death then you are an actual monster.
Then if you cant make the case that he has any influence on the rate of rape, then capitalism has no fundamental effect either. What he desires is irrelevant to the actual world effects. Therefore your OP is meaningless.
Unless it caused one to give women bad advice or if it caused one to lobby the government for legislation more favorable to rape. That would be bad and you would be greatly incentivized to do so. Hopefully this imaginary whistle company does no such thing but corporate interests don't have the best track record of putting people before profits. Perhaps if we took profit out of the equation they would be more trustworthy.


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@Greyparrot
Capitalism fundamentally works in favor of society when you look at it this way.
I am under no obligation to squint and turn my head sideways while pretending capitalism makes a pretty picture. I am able to look it directly in its ugly face.
#162
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@secularmerlin
Unless it caused one to give women bad advice

Which is why we have a Tort lawyer for every 100 people in America. It's a thriving business.
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@Greyparrot
Which is why we have a Tort lawyer for every 100 people in America. It's a thriving business.
Which suffers from the same potential for being incentivized by profit before the wellbeing of others. Now we are just talking about buisness malpractice instead of rape.
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@secularmerlin
I am under no obligation to squint and turn my head sideways while pretending capitalism makes a pretty picture. I am able to look it directly in its ugly face.

I'm asking you to acknowledge the reality that profit drives people to reduce rape rates by producing rape whistles, because that's what people will willingly buy.

When the people stop buying whistles, the capital can be liquidated and repurposed. That's how it actually works in the real world.

It most certainly doesn't work like you suggest that investors won't make any whistles now because at some undetermined point in the future there will be no demand for them.
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@Greyparrot
I'm asking you to acknowledge the reality that profit drives people to reduce rape rates, because that's what people will willingly buy.
Profit is driven by whatever is profitable good or bad. That something is profitable to some party is no guarantee that it is a worthwhile endeavor. 
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#166
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@Greyparrot
Let's imagine a hypothetical company. Let's say it is a petroleum company and that they have known about global warming and the devastating impact on the environment it will have since before the Reagan administration. It would be far better for humanity if they were to acknowledge the problem and try to solve it making, as you say, vast amounts of profits going from point A to point B. Now let's realize that I'm not talking about a fictional company I'm talking about BP who repeatedly espouse in their literature their commitment to addressing global warming but has not actually done much more than they to shift blame to the consumer because they estimate they can make a more vast sum by staying at a very dangerous point A than they estimate they would make in the process of getting to a much safer point B.

They are not incentivized to save the world so they are not.
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@secularmerlin
Because the average consumer believes global warming isn't an existential crisis. That's not the fault of the investor.

History is rife with examples of various totalitarian centrally planned economies where the will of the lowly consumer is over-ruled, to great detriment, suffering and disaster, usually resulting in massive loss of human life and untold suffering.
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#168
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@Greyparrot
In the end it doesn't even matter if global warming is real (it is) if BP believes it is and prioritizes profits over what they believe will save the world. This just proves that profit incentives are disconnected entirely from what is good for humanity.

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#169
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@Greyparrot
History is rife with examples of various totalitarian centrally planned economies where the will of the lowly consumer is over-ruled, to great detriment, suffering and disaster, usually resulting in massive loss of human life and untold suffering.
I agree which is why I am opposed to totalitarianism in all its forms including being opposed to the dictator that is profitability. 
#170
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@secularmerlin

This is the data proving most consumers don't think global warming is an existential crisis.
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@secularmerlin
I agree which is why I am opposed to totalitarianism in all its forms including being opposed to the dictator that is profitability. 

Then you should accept the will of the consumer that wants to purchase petroleum. No matter how lowly or how stupid you think that consumer is.

Stop over-riding the decisions of the consumers. Stop asking investors to ignore the will of consumers because they might make a profit by supplying consumers with the products that they desire.
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@Greyparrot
This is the data proving most consumers don't think global warming is an existential crisis.
Global warming cannot be combated by common consumers. It is a production issue and it exists across a mind boggling number of production lines. Sure fossil fuels are a problem but so is factory farming cows and overproduction of food stuffs which produce methane. It is also not the only example of corporate interests doing everything in their power to continue harming society with their products in the name of profit.

Lead paint and pipes, pfoa chemicals, tobacco products, prescription opioids the list goes on and on and on. Corporations do not care about human beings they only care about profit. They also incentivize humans to behave with a similar cavalier disregard as you have illustrated.
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@secularmerlin
Global warming cannot be combated by common consumers.

So you don't believe in the power of a plurality. You believe in the authority of an oligarchy of elites. That's saddening to hear.

Lead paint and pipes, pfoa chemicals, tobacco products, prescription opioids the list goes on and on and on.

All which were addressed by a plurality of consumers ultimately, not a centrally planned beaurocracy as you seem to advocate for.

Class action lawsuits are the tool of the common consumer. There's simply zero interest in bringing petroleum to court right now because people clearly want cheap energy and clearly don't believe in the doomsday fiction stories.
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@Greyparrot
Then you should accept the will of the consumer that wants to purchase petroleum. No matter how lowly or how stupid you think that consumer is.

Stop over-riding the decisions of the consumers. Stop asking investors to ignore the will of consumers because they might make a profit by supplying consumers with the products that they desire.
In a world where the auto industry didn't sabotage public transportation and influence city planning to make cars a necessity and lobby for legislation that blamed the pedestrian for crossing the streets rather than the motorist for driving in a way that could hurt someone then the will of the consumer might be different and do not forget that the largest consumers of fossil fuels are the corporations themselves not the consumer.

The consumer has no power to effect change individually. Only in solidarity can we effect change but so long as some people are convinced that consumerism is the fault of the consumer rather than the production that necessitates consumerism we do not have solidarity. Corperations however have vast power,  organization and influence through their vast wealth. Corporations could solve world hunger, homelessness and global warming with or without our consent if they cared about human welfare. They choose not to. Corporations are clearly not the answer and so by extension the capitalist system that not only allows but necessitates corporate interests to control nearly every aspect of life is also not the answer.
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So you don't believe in the power of a plurality. You believe in the authority of an oligarchy of elites. That's saddening to hear.

It is sad that the elites do currently excercise oligarchical authority because we do not have a plurality owing in part to the victim blaming of consumers. 
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@secularmerlin
owing in part to the victim blaming of consumers. 

Do you blame consumers for not embracing the doomsday fiction? Do you wish to shame them?
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#177
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@Greyparrot
I do not blame the average consumer at all I put the blame on the elite oligarchs. I do not blame the average consumer for embracing the fictions that corporate interests sell them. Such fictions as that we can continue to burn fossil fuels indefinitely without appreciable consequences or the function that fewer than one in ten patients prescribed opiates will become addicted. 
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@secularmerlin
or the function that fewer than one in ten patients prescribed opiates will become addicted. 
Consumers already spoke out on this.

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#179
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@Greyparrot
Consumers already spoke out on this.
Yes that is what makes it a good example. Corporations behaved maliciously and were forced to make some restitution only when so many people's lives were adversely impacted that the outcry was impossible to ignore.

This illustrates that corporations do not care about human welfare and that the only thing we can do as consumers to create or change executive policy is to come together in solidarity. 

So long as we blame the average consumer for the state of affairs perpetrated by international corporate interests and elite oligarchs we cannot fight corporate interests effectively. Until the outcry against the corperations themselves becomes impossible to ignore it WILL BE IGNORED 
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@secularmerlin
 only when so many people's lives were adversely impacted that the outcry was impossible to ignore.

Which is as it should be. The alternative is to allow prophets to make these decisions.