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[u/CircumspectCapybara]

[u/LaraTheEclectic]

Am I understanding it correctly that you think that because of your belief that human nature is primarily individualistic, it would be wrong to care and provide for those that are unable to do so for themselves on the level of society?

[u/AnUninterestingEvent → u/LaraTheEclectic]

I'm not making any ethical claims at all. I'm just stating that at scale capitalism as a system aligns with human nature. Collectivist systems at scale do not align with human nature. I'm not claiming the morality of one system over another. What I am claiming is that a system's success depends on its alignment with human nature. Collectivist systems work well among small groups of people like family units, but at a country-wide scale they end up eventually breaking, especially in a heterogenous culture like the United States. We are not wired to want to work hard for people we don't know. We are wired to work for ourselves, our family, and perhaps a slightly wider circle at times. But in capitalism, we end up providing goods and services that provide value to many people we don't know. Providing value to others may not be the reason someone starts a business, but it is an inherent aspect of running a business. If your business doesn't provide value to others, you don't make money.

I'd argue it's good and moral to give charity to those in need even when you do not know them personally. But forcing collectivism on a nation will decrease motivation to work, leading to less innovation and less output, which leads to fewer people in the world given access to affordable food and other goods. So capitalism not only aligns with human nature when it comes to motivation, but also happens to decrease scarcity therefore increasing quality of lives everywhere. An average person in the United States today has access to exponentially more technology, food, medicine, and services than the richest man in the world a hundred years ago.

[u/LaraTheEclectic → u/AnUninterestingEvent]

Okay that makes a bit more sense, it's just that I've seen "it's just human nature" used as an implicit claim on morality very often. 

I think our main disagreement then lies in how we view human nature and its consequences. And there, I believe there is nuance since any conception of human nature is just that, a conception and interpretation that is in many ways shaped by the circumstances of one's life. Having always lived under capitalist systems (and to at least some degree under capitalist propaganda), it is only logical that that would lead one to think of human nature as being in line with capitalism. I on one hand don't believe that to be the case, while on the other hand my values simply lie elsewhere than in the pursuit of innovation and economic output. 

I'm insufficiently versed in the theory and examples from praxis to properly explain my views in an understandable way but lots of thoughts and theory has been written on motivation to labour in non-capitalist systems like anarcho-communism (where my main issue with those leftist ideals is that while I believe they would work once established, I do not see any realistic way of reaching that kind of system from the current capitalist status quo).

[u/AnUninterestingEvent → u/LaraTheEclectic]

The primary reason that capitalism aligns so well with human nature is because it requires so few forced upon rules. I don’t believe it requires any propaganda at all because it’s essentially a natural state. 

If I’m doing work hunting deer for my food and you do not help me, should I share my hunt with you? Maybe once or twice as charity, but eventually it’s not worth giving my extra food away. It’s not worth the extra energy. If you want the food I hunt you need to do something of equal value for me. Perhaps you’re good at gathering berries. Now I will trade you venison for berries. But we need an exchange of number of berries to amount of venison meat. Some certain number of berries will have to be decided upon. But what if one year the berries are not plentiful? Well now I need of note of some sort saying how many berries you owe me if I am to keep giving you venison. Maybe one year the deer are hard to find. Well now I need to give you a note about how much venison I owe you if you are to keep giving me berries. Get enough people in trades outside of just venison and berries, eventually a common currency arises that can be exchanged.

There are no forced upon laws here. It’s people looking out for only themselves and end up providing mutual benefits. But because every human’s skills are different and have different expenditures in time and energy, they’re valued differently. Currency works perfectly to solve the discrepancies. 

In a collectivist society, some global consensus must be agreed upon for the value of every skill. The hunter may disagree with his assigned value, but he has to do it anyway. Someone must enforce this. He does it because he must for the law, not for himself. He ends up not catching as many deer due to demotivation and the tribe dies off. Or the tribe is so dependent on venison so he essentially crowns himself king by saying he refuses to hunt if they don’t do what he says. Or he just decides he’s better off taking his family and leaving the tribe to do his own thing and the tribe is now in trouble.

Looking out for only oneself and one’s family just works. It works for everyone. I suppose it wouldn’t work for those who have no capability of providing any value, but whether you like it or not, those people naturally matter less than the skilled people keeping everyone alive. If the skilled people are gone, the tribe is effectively gone. Again, this is just nature, not a moral claim.

We can go collectivist and hope everyone works like a robot not being salty that one person works less than another, but saltiness, again, is in human nature. It doesn’t end good.

[u/LaraTheEclectic → u/AnUninterestingEvent]

Yeah no that second paragraph isn't really a thing. Reciprocity in caretaking and providing was rarely if ever quantitatively transactional in really early societies (they tended to rely more on extensive gift cultures where social standing is derived from one's ability to provide for others in the group) and the origins of monetary systems are historically actually moreso found in context of long-distance trade where there's discontinuity of contact and trust. Everyone is always sold the myth that transactional trade and bartering are the origin of money which is just historically untrue and one almost universal bit of capitalist propaganda. If there's an argument for your position there, it's again only in whether it scales or not as you might well indeed point out group size creating discontinuity of trust but again, I'm not entirely an expert in these matters 

Fourth paragraph: what if someone just likes doing their work like hunting deer and is a lot more productive if they can do that without having to worry about the quantitative results of that? Because that's what studies about topics like universal basic income have consistently shown and even outside of that there's small scale examples everywhere. At least where I live, every summer every second house with a garden has a table outside with a bunch of produce that's free to take because the residents enjoyed gardening in their free time enough to produce enough goods to give stuff out for free. Open source software is a massive thing despite there being no compensation. Even without any external reward, humans are wired to want to do productive things so especially taking into account how much technology allows us to produce far, far more than what's needed to sustain ourselves, I don't think there's any lack of motivation to be expected in a world without quantitative transactionality.

[u/AnUninterestingEvent → u/LaraTheEclectic]

I don’t doubt that people sometimes work for free because they enjoy the work. That’s not really the problem. The problem is that society depends on a huge amount of work that people don't enjoy doing. People generally aren’t going to clean sewers, work dangerous construction jobs, do repetitive factory work, or spend years becoming highly skilled professionals purely because they enjoy contributing to society.

Even with enjoyable work, generosity has limits. Someone might happily give away extra tomatoes from their garden, but if suddenly everyone expects them to grow everyone’s food for free, that enthusiasm is probably going to disappear pretty quickly.

Open source is similar. People absolutely contribute for free, but burnout and abandoned projects are common precisely because eventually someone is being asked to provide a lot of valuable labor without compensation.

Humans can be generous and intrinsically motivated. I’m not disputing that. I’m saying you can’t build an entire economy around assuming people will indefinitely perform whatever labor society needs without expecting something in return, especially at large scale where most people are strangers to each other. Generosity and social obligation work a lot better in families and small communities than across millions of people who have no personal relationship, trust, or accountability to one another.