Both. It’s kind of like asking if monarchy is the problem or if the problem is just evil kings. Theoretically even a dictatorship can work out well for the people given a benevolent dictator. The issue is with the vulnerabilities inherent in the system. For capitalism, it’s that those with more money have more influence and thus it creates a feedback loop where those with more money have more power to get themselves more money and therefore more power and so on.
Some people are always looking for a free ride. Amassing power/influence/status/assets is usually a way to do that - basically get others to do the hard work and take 5/10/50% of the credit. This appllies under all systems due, most probably, to the natural diversity of humans.
The job of the “system” (legal, political, economic, even cultural and religious) is to mitigate excesses and especially abuses of power before it comes to extremes of bloodshed; but as those also sometimes concentrate power, they themselves need something to regulate the systemic abuses or the non-sytemic abuses of empowered officials.
Humans are the problem, some of them. But greed is also motivational (and sloth), so you can’t get rid of it entirely.
If you can keep your society smal enough that basically everyone knows what most other people are up to, it doesn’t take much regulation, beyond trust and reputation. But as if your society grows to where some people are effectively faceless and unknown, then it becomes more problematic.
There can be more than one problem.
But would a capitalist society that puts in safe guards against nepotism have better results for more people?
Technically yes. But there would be a strong incentive to undo any safeguards. Basically you’d have to ban or limit inheritance completely.
The problem with relying on accumulation of money as a measure of success is that money == power. Once you have a critical mass of wealthy people it would be easy to change any laws to allow for nepotism again.
I think people are being extraordinarily polite for something that was clearly debatelord bait.
Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production (there is a less marxist term about top level economic property I’m totally spacing on here so take some Marx and quit yer complaining, it’s the same thing) and has nothing to do with merit.
That has always been capitalist propaganda. The ability to participate in capital has nothing to do with merit.
It’s in the frame work of the capitalist idea. Like it or not. I’m trying to expose why it doesn’t manifest.
it’s a nice idea they use to sell capitalism, that’s why it doesn’t manifest, it’s false advertising.
Capitalism is a problem… along with a shitload of other problems.
Capitalism is designed to give power to the few at the top. Nothing about it is a meritocracy, its a funnel of money straight to whoever can exploit the system more than the rest. Has nothing to do with merit, but to “get yours” through whatever means necessary, including crushing those employees who actually do the hard labor that they then extract wealth from.
Capitalism is designed to give power to the few at the top
This rads like some communist propaganda.
Still not wrong though.
Say, the system was designed to prevent cheating. Could a meritocracy exist?
Define cheating. I doubt many CEOs would consider anything they’ve done to get to the position they are as “cheating”.
To “cheat”, one must break the rules. And the rules have been designed to not only allow for but encourage current behavior.
CEO’S are propped up by investors and guaranteed the money invested traces back to some sort of nepotism.
Which is the way it’s designed to work, so not cheating.
Also, the definition of nepotism involves favoring relatives. I get what you mean, but it’s not quite accurate. There’s certainly favoritism going on, just not between relatives generally.
Here’s a common definition of neoptism:
Undue attachment to relations; favoritism shown to members of one’s family; bestowal of patronage in consideration of relationship, rather than of merit or of legal claim.
Maybe I sprung the word “cheat” on you too soon, but ‘nepotism is cheating’ is a brief a summation of my argument.
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What’s going on with overpaid CEOs and underpaid workers is not nepotism
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cheating means breaking of rules, and they’re not
You can argue that we should change rules to disincentivize some of the behaviors we’re seeing and to make them “cheating”. And I would’t argue against you if we could somehow make those improvements. But if you’re framing “cheating” as against yours or my personal moral framework instead of law, that is not something you can expect everyone to agree with you on.
But if you’re framing “cheating” as against yours or my personal moral framework instead of law, that is not something you can expect everyone to agree with you on.
This is actually the supposition of my question.
But you’re not cracking the surface and it’s honestly really boring exchanging ideas with you. I don’t think I’ll carry on.
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It can’t.
It’s a logistical nightmare. In order to be rewarded for your efforts, you need some system of evaluating the worth of every effort. Any societal system that exists is made by at least one person, and every person had biases and ambitions.
There’s no way to prevent cheating, because any rule to prevent cheating will be ignored, because that’s what cheating is. Any rules to make cheating harder only make it harder, not impossible.
Oh look, it seems the act of deciding a person’s worth to society is 100 times the worth of a labourer. And the worth of a writer for Batman is 20 times the worth of a writer for Spider Man. Oh, my physicist girlfriend just broke up with me… Looks like that’s practically worthless now!
Wait, what’s a youtuber? Is that a new thing? I made my value system back in 2002, so this is all new to me! You’re not on the list, so I guess you’re not worth anything? I guess we could make the list again, and while we’re there, my opinions on Batman have changed, so we can tweak some other things too.
Ah, the problem is that a person’s worth is entirely subjective… But what if we press it down into clear and objective statistics? What if we limit it to a single statistic, and a person’s value is entirely related to raising that statistic? We can call the statistic… Capital!
So a person’s value in society is entirely tied to their ability to obtain as much capital as possible, no matter what they do. Ah, meritocracy.
You said a lot of words but only convinced me that you think very highly of your own judgment.
I’m not convinced you actually read my comment before responding.
I don’t even think you wanted a discussion. I think you just want to say your belief and have it treated as fact.
I did. It was a whole lot of assumptions backed up with anecdotes all designed to come to one single conclusion.
Okay, you definitely didn’t read my comment if that’s what you think it was. Let me sum it up for you:
- A person’s merit is subjective.
- Judging merit based on subjective values will bring in biases and corruption.
- Judging merit based on objective values is impossible, and will need to be a simplification.
- In either case, people will game the system to raise their value, regardless of whether they actually contribute anything of merit.
- Any system will become outdated VERY quickly, as society is always changing.
- Capitalism only judges the acquisition of capital, which is not a merit.
- A person can cheat literally any system if they try hard enough.
I explained all of that without a single anecdote.
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I earn more than most medical doctors in my home country. They save lives, while I write software that could disappear tomorrow and no chaos would ensue. But I do earn my employers more money than the doctor does.
The only world in which this is right is a world where you only care about yourself and being rich. Meritocracy is inherently subjective and depends largely of what you value to give people merit, and in a lot of cases that’s “we fucked over two dozen tiny companies with patent troll lawsuits and made millions”.
They save lives, while I write software that could disappear tomorrow and no chaos would ensue. But I do earn my employers more money than the doctor does.
The only world in which this is right is a world where you only care about yourself and being rich.
Just regular supply and demand thing. Too many doctors, and not enough software engineers.
There’s way too many software engineers and a constant shortage of doctors, at least in Canada.
Nepotism obviously existed before capitalism, and it will surely exist at some level in the next economic system, but it’s not an either/or. There are many, many problems with capitalism that would probably still exhibit if nepotism somehow immediately ceased.
The implementation of US capitalism wasn’t intended to fend off nepotism, so of course it continued on.
I don’t think that speaks to my point. Capitalism is flawed with or without nepotism.
The issue with pure capitalism is that it reduces people’s interactions to their economic value but some people do not have economic value, or have little economic value and no power to redress it. So capitalism can be efficient but can also be efficiently cold hearted.
Nepotism is only an issue where owners define it as an issue. Obviously the workforce at large stands to benefit from meritocracy but so do shareholders. In a free market, inadequate appointments due to nepotism should put a company at a disadvantage. But compare that with a family farm where the owners (shareholders) might prefer nepotism (appointment of a son/daughter to management) rather than opening the role to the job market. Few people object to this small scale nepotism, but should they object if shareholders of a large corporation wanted to do the same? Isn’t it their money after all? The chief issues with nepotism are when it’s done against the wishes of the owners of the company. But this is increasingly difficult with shareholder approval of board members and so on.
Obviously nepotism into monopolistic companies is a problem because of lack of competition but this only joins all the other problems already caused by monopolies.
In a healthy capitalism, competition is maintained. And if that’s done then the risks presented by nepotism are diminished because poor appointments ought to lead to poor results.
Ironically, it’s in extensive socialist state monopolies that nepotism is most dangerous primarily because of the decreased market competition.
You’re only thinking in terms of labor. Nepotism, inheritance, gives many a head start in terms of building capital. Removing these people from the market place would allow a more even playing field where actual ability would push people into higher levels of management and improve efficiencies for people who participate at lower levels of production.
Do you think family farms should not be passed to children? Or where would you draw the line?
I think inheritance should be allowed. I just think there should be restrictions on how they participate in the market.
I’m not talking about inheritance though. I’m talking about when a farm takes on a family member as the new management. Because that’s literally nepotism.
(Without getting too much into semantics, isn’t headhunting a new boss at a company a type of nepotism? As in, there wasn’t a competitive process, they were hand-picked by the board / CEO. Is “nepotism” only meant specifically where someone’s incompetence is overlooked because of family relationship? If they’re actually the best person for the job is that still nepotism?)
If you think capitalism and greed go hand in hand, as I do, then it’s capitalism. Netflix, for one, was a great service and it’s been profitable for decades but the price hikes, account sharing crackdowns, and increasing promotion of own content really turned it into shit, all in the name of more profits.
Capitalism = greed is a very simplified take.
It’s also correct.
If only nuance had any sort of value to the lay person.
Oh, nuance definitely has value, but only where it exists. You can look for nuance in capitalism all you like, but you won’t find anything. It’s just greed.
Capitalism isn’t the problem. Any economy run by human beings is going to have cronyism.
I guess look around the world and see what’s working? Unfettered capitalism wouldn’t work, and cronyism isn’t unique to capitalism.
Unfettered meritocracy doesn’t work either. Say I’m born smart and ambitious and become a captain of industry. Why do I “deserve” to make 100x or 10000x more than someone who is working hard but not smart or ambitious, or someone who is wildly creative in a not monetizatable way? And how do you even ensure all kids get the same starting line to actually have a meritocracy, if you are enforcing capitalism? 100% inheritance tax maybe, and the money allocated out to everyone?
Maybe all these systems are ideas - capitalism, socialism, fascism, meritocracy, and none could be achieved in real life, because we aren’t living in a controlled test environment.
On your specific question, I think cronyism and inheritance are problems that transcend capitalism, but if you could somehow magically disappear them, meritocracy would reveal its faults, there isn’t a perfect system. All we can do is try to think about what we want to achieve (environmental restoration, a healthy population, a vibrant marketplace that serves everyone not just a few) and try to incrementally get there.
