Yes! Capitalism will solve addiction! Not to sound like a broken record, but in what hell world are we so desperate for profit that we seek something like this?
Can I ask that you read a large number of history books across any number of cultures on addictive behaviors throughout history, because you'll find that anytime a society had an excess of time and labor/production that people find addictive behaviors to enjoy. This is not recent. This is not capitalism. This is humanity.
What capitalism has done is given everybody enough free time from starvation to actually follow addictive pursuits.
Would we still have these new drugs without capitalism? There still needs to be incentive and capitalism is the best model we have for that. It's the government that needs to implement policies however to make them more available for everyone. Humans can't be relied upon to develop novel solutions for the good of everyone -- there has to be something in it for them. That's just how they operate unfortunately. Long-term solutions require the right incentives.
If "Capitalism" involved the conscious coordination of all industry to maximize consumption, perhaps not. But in the terms of, raise money to buy a factory, have factory produce goods, sell goods, there seems to be a huge market for these, quite expensive, goods.
edit: You could even argue, in a conspiratorial mind, that by getting people addicted to sugar ($0.0002 / mg) in order to then get them addicted to a drug that costs ($10/mg) is peak "Capitalism"
I think the point is capitalism gives people what they crave. Not necessarily what they need. But any alternative is unimaginable in individualized minds of modern people.
Capitalism can't solve this problem, it can't solve every problem. Any solution ends up being about money, which is the opposite goal, because people get greedy and will change anything to make it harder to get people to spend more money on their "solution".
We'll also get highly optimized algorithms that sell us things we don't need through the use of psychology and the exploitation of human nature.
We'll also get rampant misspending of scientific research funds, which will go to boner pills and hair replacement techniques, rather than curing malaria or exploring space.
We'll also have the end-game for all capitalist nations be leadership that is completely bought and paid for.
We'll also have workers treated as useless and interchangeable cogs, while public markets sway back and forth, removing jobs, pushing mergers, cutting pay.
We'll also get things like McDonald's and Coca-Cola, two of the largest companies in the world, both of which are literally, 100% dedicated to selling addictive foods that are diabolically unhealthy.
Capitalism ensures people get what they want most. The problem is, people are fucking horrible, and what they all want most is cheeseburgers, soda, angry Facebook rants, fake news, and bigger dicks.
Sure, society wants much more than this, but at the individual level, these are the second-to-second motivations, and capitalism's atavistic psychic mining project always ends up down on this dopamine level of reaction in all things.
Humans can be wonderful and do good things. The problem is capitalism is a race to exploit the worst in human nature, effectively heading off those better instincts with porn, fast cars, and lap band surgery.
Couldn't agree more but I don't think it has to do with capitalism, but economics. Regardless of the system in place, if there is a high enough demand for a product, as there is drugs, there will be a supply.
An interesting example is how drug use is actually rampant in US prisons, some of the most controlled environments in the country. No ones idea of a free market capitalism, but somehow drugs are still very accessible.
Capitalism will solve everything! Private business is efficient! Competitors will surely recognize this opportunity and swoop in to save the day! High demand and low supply == increased prices and everything still works great! /s
There are two kinds of capitalism: value creation capitalism (also known as industrial capitalism) and value extraction capitalism. The latter includes quite a lot of financial capitalism, profit-driven warfare, and casinos and other addiction-driven products.
The former creates value while the latter extracts and concentrates it while overall creating net negative value. Addicting people to Skinner boxes is destroying hours of what otherwise might be productive, rejuvenating, or enriching time. It's macroeconomically indistinguishable from killing people.
One of the central problems of modern Western capitalism is that we fail to distinguish between the two. A businessperson is successful an a genius if they make money; nobody bothers to distinguish between those that make money by creating value and those that make money by merely extracting it and leaving a path of destruction in their wake.
Maybe we can figure out a way to re-channel the impulses of "cancel culture" in this direction, cancelling those that promote addictive net value destroying products and services. Since the algorithmic timeline and other personalized recommendation engines are by far the largest pushers of fascist and neo-racist ideology, the original goals of "cancel culture" might still be indirectly achieved.
Capitalism has never been about making the world a better place. All systems deal with humans and humans inevitably prefer helping out themselves and people close to them over others, which leads to corruption regardless of the system. And capitalism seems the best method for controlling innate human corruption (see China's incredible economic growth once socialism was all but abandoned for capitalism in the 80's pulling a billion people out of abject poverty).
As for investors preferring Snapchat to curing cancer? The amount of money invested in cancer dwarfs Snapchat's investments by magnitudes. You don't just cure "cancer" you find cures for the hundreds of different diseases that fall under the umbrella of cancer. There's so much money invested in cancer there are often not enough candidates for a new clinical trials.
If we have a shortage of anything, it is medical research scientists. And the way to get more of those is to change the regulations so there is more room for profit medical research.
I sometimes think we deserve capitalism. Capitalism is the best solution when you assume people are selfish, immoral, and all-around kind of evil. It's a system to incentive people to work together despite our awful nature.
I certainly don't think it's the best system imaginable given different assumptions or conditions. I hope as the basic needs of more and more people are met, we will be able to come together. I think most evils in the world can be explained by desperation caused by scarcity but some certainly can't.
I'm not sure if we deserve a better system, at least not yet.
Have you ever stopped to consider for even one second that maybe capitalism is the problem? That maybe there should be an obligation? As I said in my other comment, you can't keep squeezing people for more and more and more and expect it to be sustainable. What good are fancy new drugs and treatments when nobody can afford them, even with insurance?
Why are smartphones capitalism and not drugs. If anything drugs prove the workings of makets better then smartphones. The drugs market shows that markets work even in a state of anarchy.
this is why capitalism has failed. It has enabled the propagation of negative human traits. Traits we all agree are detrimental to our survival. Greed is not good. We all know it. It promotes overconsumption and hoarding of resources.
We need a system that propagates benevolence and vision.
This is one argument against capitalism as a whole, and it's worth taking seriously. Capitalism is still the best tool we have, but it's not without downsides.
Example: open source is the communist model, and it works very well. To each according to their need, from each according to their ability. No one owns anything, and you're free to fork or vote with your feet.
Ditto for illegal drug markets. If you're unhappy as a merchant, you have a number of options. No one owns you. You can switch to a different market, or start your own (if you're suicidally ambitious).
The interesting part is that the drug markets end up combining the best of both capitalism and communism in that sense.
But only in that sense. Obviously, unregulated drugs are risky. Yet even without regulations, it's remarkable how rare it is to hear about unhappy customers.
I mean that any system that has money or power as it’s underlying motivation probably cannot reach the kind of level that is possible since there will be people who are gaming and manipulating it to take extra for themselves.
My actual point is that we (human beings) have the technology, the knowledge, and the capacity for compassion required to live beautifully vibrant lives free of most of the health problems that we see in our societies. And we can have all that when we get out of our own way.
You have to correct the pharmaceutical industry for that to be effective. Capitalism works but we need to discover the rules at scale, similar to Physics. Seems like everyone agrees that the rules we know tend to break at scale.
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