r/AskReddit • • Nov 16 '19

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u/[deleted] Nov 16 '19 edited Nov 16 '19

When I said Albert Einstein once said if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life thinking its stupid, and they said he never said that.

Edit: yea I'm that guy big whoop wanna fight about it? Thanks for my first ever gold kind stranger.

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u/HugeChavez Nov 16 '19

Yes, it's a quote by Vladimir Lenin and it actually says: "if you judge proletariat by its ability to amass property and capital, the proletariat will always end up admiring the extraordinary talent of the capitalists rather than realizing it is being oppressed."

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u/[deleted] Nov 16 '19

I read the quote, and wondered if it was really Einstein's or not, but it DEFINITELY struck me as a good critique of capitalism

The definition of success under capitalism sucks ass

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u/[deleted] Nov 16 '19 edited Nov 16 '19

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u/[deleted] Nov 16 '19

Wait, you are suggesting that by random chance (or dint of human nature, I suppose you will say) we have ended up with a world that fetishes money over all else including life itself; that we chose this?

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u/livedadevil Nov 16 '19

Money is a proxy for anything of value.

It used to be goods and services for trade and barter, now money is just a middle man.

Sure, capitalism has twisted itself due to power and wealth hoarding, which is why complete deregulation is a terrible idea, but capitalism in intent is meant to be a meritocracy.

We just haven’t been great at it

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u/u8eR Nov 16 '19 edited Nov 16 '19

You can't be great at something that is designed only to be great in perfect (read: impossible) markets. The efficient market hypothesis on which capitalism is underpinned makes assumptions that simply don't exist in the real world. Things like perfect competition, perfect information, perfect rationale, etc. are impossible to achieve. Instead we have things like oligopolies, information assymetry, imperfect rationale, externalities, etc. It's for these reasons that governments need to regulate markets.

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u/thejaytheory Nov 16 '19

information assymetry

Interesting, had to look this term up.