🇳🇱
@avlcharlie How is it a oxymoron. All capitalism is is any system which includes free market trade, that is, trade in which natural supply-demand pressures dominate the markets pricing.
Nothing about that implies greed or altruism, it only implies everyone is trying to maximize their own fitness function (get the most utility for their resources). Its about effiency not greed.
@freemo @avlcharlie well, unless people attempt to develop some level of sophistication, efficiency turns into greed, because thoughtless accumulation is the easiest thing to do. This is reinforced by a social environment where chronic accumulators are considered successful by chronically accumulating media.
Bow ya figure that makes no sense. Accumulating resources in a vault untouched is the least effecient form, you literally have negative effiency as inflation devalues assets. A person would achieve effiency by investing thrir mo ey wisely and ensuring other people are using those resources to effectively increase the total resources in the market.
You are getting stuck in the fallacy that someone havibg authority (ownership) over those resources means that other people cant use it for their own gains as well which is entierly contrary to the reality. Those resources will be in others hands and used by them in some agreement to use them for mutual gain (investment in others).
@freemo @avlcharlie maximisers would invest for profitability and not for sustainability. Clearly this conversation is way too abstract and way too generalising, but rich people investing in cheap resources is a real problem in times of pressing change.
Optimising is by definition deprived of vision, ask effective altruists ;)
Who said anything about sustainability. We said utility, that may or may not line up with sustainability. They will pick sustai able when it has the most utility.
Similarly thry dont buy cheap if cheap is less utility. Somethi g at half the price that breaks in 1/10th the time is a bad investment, so no thry dont just go with what is cheapest. Rich people dont invest in cheap resource they invest in what gets them the most utility, which is what prfitability is.
Optimising has vision, for the thing you are optimising for.
@freemo @avlcharlie the problem is that environmental cost are not part of the final price. Instead they are internalised by those with weaker negotiation power.
Examples:
- miners from poor countries pay with their lives to extract resources that unaccountable mine owners then can sell at competitive prices
- wildlife gets pushed away from investment-grade land
I can go on with Amazonian rainforest, Russian taiga, Australian Coral reefs, African rhinos, l Mediterranean fish, orangutans, polar bears,...
They are part of thr final cost when they are part of the utility of the investment. If they are part of the utility or not depends largely on the laws.
For example if there is a huge fine for enviromental damage then causing such damage has significantly decreased utility and as such the market will price itself to avoid enviromental damage.
