Recently published was evidence to show that the inegalitarian culture traces its origins to the onset of the agrarian age; other research shows that many prior cultures were not competitive, others were atheistic.
The profit motive is a focus on the advantage of the individual. An individual human, in the wild, without the massive infrastructural support afforded by our society, will die 99% of the time. That is the reality of the Hobbsian view of humanity: without society, human life is indeed "solitary, poor, nasty brutish and short". He believed, pessimistically, that humans need a sovereign or governor. We know much better, now as then, that it is our capacity for empathy that makes us human; those without it - sociopaths and psychopaths - are universally despised for the lack they show. Empathy drives cooperation.
Don't conflate capitalism with trade. Similarly, corporate capitalism with trade. Nor "ma-and-pa corner shop" with capitalism. That would also be "sole traders". Capitalism is investing capital (ie, liquid assets) into companies, which returns profit in the form of dividends or capital gains in stock and share values. Starting your own business is not capitalism; investing in someone else's company is.
I would say Capitalism is more than just investing in a company. Ownership is implied in Capitalism. To be a real capitalist, you have to own something (land, a business that produces something). Profits that you extract via rent or sale of the commodity you produce are then used to accumulate more profit-creating property (expand the business, buy more rent-taking land). That is capitalism - accumulation of more power to get control of more income producing stuff via re-investing profits you have extracted from unequal exchanges.
Just investing in stocks and getting dividends isn't capitalism. That is potentially letting somebody else use your excess money to let THEM expand in a Capitalist way. That you may be getting a small cut of their expansion doesn't make you a capitalist (unless you are a BIG investor who actually has enough shares to have an ownership stake and control of a company's decision making and ability to loot the company's profits). Stock investing may in some cases be you just getting fleeced by participating in a ponzi scheme. Unless you are using the profits you have extracted from the stock market to accumulate more income producing property (rather than just using it to live as retirement money), you aren't really a capitalist by just having a 401k (in my opinion).
A) I get really annoyed when someone repeats the academic myth that "human nature" encompasses all of the worst characteristics only, and conveniently ignores the better aspects of "human nature" like altruism, empathy, and compassion. Interestingly, for years biologists couldn't find any examples of these behaviors in nature, mostly because they didn't believe they existed. If you're not looking for something, you won't find it. Starting in the 1980s, scientists started studying altruism in nature, and - guess what! - they found it.
B) Read The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen for an analysis of exactly how those primitive societies could have worked, and how the change to a more brutal, competitive model developed.
It seems to me that you have steeped in the competitive model for so long that it seems to be the only way life can be. Too bad!
Human nature absolutely does not only encompass all of the worst characteristics. But equally as annoying are the people that think there is a group or sect of humans whose nature only encompasses the good. When you are dealing with a group and it grows past, I dunno 30+ people?, you are gonna into some impure actors, that's simply a statistical reality. I'm not saying these people are evil, but that they are simply subject to the ups and downs of their human nature.
Given that, a particular government framework (which is an enforceable restraint, by definition), you will have to deal with human nature, dissent, conflict, and the seven deadly sins.
The question that one is left with is, what is the most efficient way to manage all that? In practice, Communism has failed, perhaps Capitalism, now too, has failed. Primitive or other utopia has clearly failed.
Veblen is easily skewered as I showed you in another reference you made to him.
You're putting words in my mouth that I didn't say. I don't believe that there is a group of people who are only good.
Viktor Frankl, in Man's Search for Meaning, said that the line between good and bad didn't exist between one group of people and another, but down the middle of each person's heart, and that I DO believe.
THAT'S what I was trying to say: that "human nature" is not just the worst, but also the better.
If I read Hayek and then I read Keynes, what am I to believe? Who can I quote with authority? Garbage in, garbage out is what a computer does. You can find a book that will argue for just about any economic, social, political stance imaginable, doesn't make them or you valid. 'Appeal to authority' and all that, right? That being said, reading is a great thing, but like all things it is simply a tool. You still have to be equipped to use the tool. For instance, I think your understanding of Veblen is off in that you do not see his attempt at balancing of the individual and the collective, nor his waffling between theology and post-modernism, but that is my opinion.
I do not agree that all men have half good and half evil (surely that is a gross understatement of his thesis), I believe that there are plenty of people that are effectively evil, socio/psychopaths for instance, and that there are plenty of people that desire and practice as much discipline and sacrifice for their selves, their families, and their communities as they can.
Good and evil do exist and the fact that someone is a sociopath and has a different definition of that does not make it as or more valid than someone's that is working to enhance themselves, their family, and their community.
The important point is that people are compassionate and they will be, they do not need to be told to. Socialism is a system that does not trust people to be compassionate. However, if you remove the profit incentive from society, you will remove a substantial amount of the incentive to innovate and advance the world. It is no coincidence that the period of massive charitable giving in the US was during the period of rampant capitalism.
Communism can last a long time and there may be examples eventually that show that it is sustainable but what is certain is that it will underperform capitalism in nearly every respect.
"There is no evidence that primitive societies were even egalitarian in groups, to say nothing of completely sharing resources. "
There's actually quite a bit of evidence. When Europeans came into conflict with native peoples across the globe, there are examples all over the place of living cultures, and evidence in the archeological/anthropological record. I'd recommend a couple of David Graeber's books on it: "Debt: the First 5,000 Years" and "The Dawn of Everything". Absolutely fascinating. There are more scholarly books out there too I'm sure.
""Human beings" have not been a species for even half a million years,"
Granted 'anatomically modern' humans have been around for maybe 400,000 years.
But something approximating humans has been around for at least a million years. Recent evidence shows camp fire use a million years ago, and we've been using stone tools for over 2 million years.
Recently published was evidence to show that the inegalitarian culture traces its origins to the onset of the agrarian age; other research shows that many prior cultures were not competitive, others were atheistic.
The profit motive is a focus on the advantage of the individual. An individual human, in the wild, without the massive infrastructural support afforded by our society, will die 99% of the time. That is the reality of the Hobbsian view of humanity: without society, human life is indeed "solitary, poor, nasty brutish and short". He believed, pessimistically, that humans need a sovereign or governor. We know much better, now as then, that it is our capacity for empathy that makes us human; those without it - sociopaths and psychopaths - are universally despised for the lack they show. Empathy drives cooperation.
Don't conflate capitalism with trade. Similarly, corporate capitalism with trade. Nor "ma-and-pa corner shop" with capitalism. That would also be "sole traders". Capitalism is investing capital (ie, liquid assets) into companies, which returns profit in the form of dividends or capital gains in stock and share values. Starting your own business is not capitalism; investing in someone else's company is.
If you haven't already, you might like to read The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen.
I would say Capitalism is more than just investing in a company. Ownership is implied in Capitalism. To be a real capitalist, you have to own something (land, a business that produces something). Profits that you extract via rent or sale of the commodity you produce are then used to accumulate more profit-creating property (expand the business, buy more rent-taking land). That is capitalism - accumulation of more power to get control of more income producing stuff via re-investing profits you have extracted from unequal exchanges.
Just investing in stocks and getting dividends isn't capitalism. That is potentially letting somebody else use your excess money to let THEM expand in a Capitalist way. That you may be getting a small cut of their expansion doesn't make you a capitalist (unless you are a BIG investor who actually has enough shares to have an ownership stake and control of a company's decision making and ability to loot the company's profits). Stock investing may in some cases be you just getting fleeced by participating in a ponzi scheme. Unless you are using the profits you have extracted from the stock market to accumulate more income producing property (rather than just using it to live as retirement money), you aren't really a capitalist by just having a 401k (in my opinion).
A) I get really annoyed when someone repeats the academic myth that "human nature" encompasses all of the worst characteristics only, and conveniently ignores the better aspects of "human nature" like altruism, empathy, and compassion. Interestingly, for years biologists couldn't find any examples of these behaviors in nature, mostly because they didn't believe they existed. If you're not looking for something, you won't find it. Starting in the 1980s, scientists started studying altruism in nature, and - guess what! - they found it.
B) Read The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen for an analysis of exactly how those primitive societies could have worked, and how the change to a more brutal, competitive model developed.
It seems to me that you have steeped in the competitive model for so long that it seems to be the only way life can be. Too bad!
Human nature absolutely does not only encompass all of the worst characteristics. But equally as annoying are the people that think there is a group or sect of humans whose nature only encompasses the good. When you are dealing with a group and it grows past, I dunno 30+ people?, you are gonna into some impure actors, that's simply a statistical reality. I'm not saying these people are evil, but that they are simply subject to the ups and downs of their human nature.
Given that, a particular government framework (which is an enforceable restraint, by definition), you will have to deal with human nature, dissent, conflict, and the seven deadly sins.
The question that one is left with is, what is the most efficient way to manage all that? In practice, Communism has failed, perhaps Capitalism, now too, has failed. Primitive or other utopia has clearly failed.
Veblen is easily skewered as I showed you in another reference you made to him.
You're putting words in my mouth that I didn't say. I don't believe that there is a group of people who are only good.
Viktor Frankl, in Man's Search for Meaning, said that the line between good and bad didn't exist between one group of people and another, but down the middle of each person's heart, and that I DO believe.
THAT'S what I was trying to say: that "human nature" is not just the worst, but also the better.
Maybe you should read as many books as I have.
If I read Hayek and then I read Keynes, what am I to believe? Who can I quote with authority? Garbage in, garbage out is what a computer does. You can find a book that will argue for just about any economic, social, political stance imaginable, doesn't make them or you valid. 'Appeal to authority' and all that, right? That being said, reading is a great thing, but like all things it is simply a tool. You still have to be equipped to use the tool. For instance, I think your understanding of Veblen is off in that you do not see his attempt at balancing of the individual and the collective, nor his waffling between theology and post-modernism, but that is my opinion.
I do not agree that all men have half good and half evil (surely that is a gross understatement of his thesis), I believe that there are plenty of people that are effectively evil, socio/psychopaths for instance, and that there are plenty of people that desire and practice as much discipline and sacrifice for their selves, their families, and their communities as they can.
Good and evil do exist and the fact that someone is a sociopath and has a different definition of that does not make it as or more valid than someone's that is working to enhance themselves, their family, and their community.
The important point is that people are compassionate and they will be, they do not need to be told to. Socialism is a system that does not trust people to be compassionate. However, if you remove the profit incentive from society, you will remove a substantial amount of the incentive to innovate and advance the world. It is no coincidence that the period of massive charitable giving in the US was during the period of rampant capitalism.
Communism can last a long time and there may be examples eventually that show that it is sustainable but what is certain is that it will underperform capitalism in nearly every respect.
"There is no evidence that primitive societies were even egalitarian in groups, to say nothing of completely sharing resources. "
There's actually quite a bit of evidence. When Europeans came into conflict with native peoples across the globe, there are examples all over the place of living cultures, and evidence in the archeological/anthropological record. I'd recommend a couple of David Graeber's books on it: "Debt: the First 5,000 Years" and "The Dawn of Everything". Absolutely fascinating. There are more scholarly books out there too I'm sure.
""Human beings" have not been a species for even half a million years,"
Granted 'anatomically modern' humans have been around for maybe 400,000 years.
But something approximating humans has been around for at least a million years. Recent evidence shows camp fire use a million years ago, and we've been using stone tools for over 2 million years.