> The individual pursuit of wealth is not increasing common well-being anymore.
That’s how it’s always been and that’s how we got to where we are today. Because person A wants to make millions or billions of dollars for himself, he creates a company and a product that improves life or solves a problem for people in a community of his choosing, be it everyone or parents or mothers or children, or anything like that. This is how we got to where we are today and that hasn’t changed, the only thing that’s changed is the government influenced trying to control and micromanage the entire system.
> Compounded by rising inequalities
Yeah sure, the rich get richer for sure, the poor do too. The rich get richer faster as well, but why does that matter as long as everyone else is also getting richer and better living conditions and qualities? This is flawed because it works under the assumption that our economy is a zero sum system when it certainly is not, as while money cannot be created from nothing, wealth absolutely can be. When Apple was evaluated to be 2 trillion dollars, they didn’t steal that money from other companies or people, that wealth was created by them, their investors, and the people who bought their products
>>The individual pursuit of wealth is not increasing common well-being anymore.
>That’s how it’s always been and that’s how we got to where we are today
We are stuck in a planetary size inequality, damaging all, event the rich.
>When Apple was evaluated to be 2 trillion dollars, they didn’t steal that money from other companies or people, that wealth was created by them, their investors, and the people who bought their products
True, assured the have payed all the required taxes. And big-company actually pay (much) less than average citizen.
Missing a true progressive taxation, we distort all economy and wellfare, and end with inequality like no more in recent history.
In the first phase of Capitalism, it has lifted millions of people out of poverty. But we are reaching its limits now.
Inequality is a problem, but this problem is transcended when there is a correlation between individual wealth and common well-being, like Ethical Capitalism proposes.
"Governments have repeatedly proven themselves unable to react efficiently to contemporary problems"
I really hate when people blame the government for things. We are the government. If you don't like the asshole that represents you work to get rid of them.
People need to start holding politicians to be less corrupt. for instance, terms limits well stop voting the person back into office.
Agreed we need to take things into our own hands and feel responsible. I do not believe the solution is to vote for slightly different people. The problem is that a central authority is always doomed to fail. The world is too complex now. We need to decentralize decisions, and vote in a much more granular fashion.
Central Authority is always doomed to fail if that Authority is charged with acting on behalf of a divided population with conflicting objectives. In order to make change, you actually need to change minds and hearts of individuals. This can't be done from the top down.
In practical terms, the public focus on US federal policy is that best of distraction and at worst counterproductive for change. People need to focus more on opt-in local policy. Be and. demonstrate the change that you want to see in the world. If it is good, others will take notice overtime and come on board.
> Our ruling elites have ignored the issue for decades. Not because they did not care, but because they had no idea how to solve it.
Mostly, it is because they don’t care—it is a problem for other people, not them, except to the extent that those other people get upset and destabilize the system that enriches the elites.
Secondarily, because they understand how to solve it, but it is contrary to their own interests. I mean, to the extent it can be solved with only fairly minor impairment of their own interests, they’ve been dragged into going along with it (that’s how the modern mixed economy has replaced gilded age capitalism throughout pretty much the whole of the industrialized world), but that tooks decades of activism, violence, and economic collapse to drag them into despite the fact that it leaves the bulk of the power of their position intact.
I am willing to be a bit more generous in my interpretation, and assume it comes more from the difficulty of solving problems as a central authority, rather than cynical egotism. But I can see how one can arrives to your viewpoint, and in any case I think we both arrive to the same conclusion: expecting the current forms of governments to solve modern problems is doomed to fail.
> "Our ruling elites have ignored the issue for decades. Not because they did not care, but because they had no idea how to solve it."
Being elites, they did not care, because they had no idea how to solve it, and remain elites.
Capitalism is not bad -per se-, as socialism, public, or private, etc, but how we put this in pratice, and balance pros with cons, and adapt to changing situations.
Actually economy and finance have fixed rules disconnected from reality, builded by those elites called maybe to upgrade them, (?) A nightmare.
Something is missing, and an ethical updating of the capitalism only, seems not enough.
Some people indeed want a much more radical change than an upgrade on Capitalism. I do not see any concrete proposal though, and I feel it would be more difficult to implement than an upgrade.
An alternative proposal, (not only about capitalism) can be:
1st step, people vote programs, the things to do.
2nd step, people vote who will actuate programs.
Quite abstract, i know
That’s how it’s always been and that’s how we got to where we are today. Because person A wants to make millions or billions of dollars for himself, he creates a company and a product that improves life or solves a problem for people in a community of his choosing, be it everyone or parents or mothers or children, or anything like that. This is how we got to where we are today and that hasn’t changed, the only thing that’s changed is the government influenced trying to control and micromanage the entire system.
> Compounded by rising inequalities
Yeah sure, the rich get richer for sure, the poor do too. The rich get richer faster as well, but why does that matter as long as everyone else is also getting richer and better living conditions and qualities? This is flawed because it works under the assumption that our economy is a zero sum system when it certainly is not, as while money cannot be created from nothing, wealth absolutely can be. When Apple was evaluated to be 2 trillion dollars, they didn’t steal that money from other companies or people, that wealth was created by them, their investors, and the people who bought their products