Who’s this “we” you’re talking about? It doesn’t seem to be any actual humans I recognize. As far as I can tell, the basics of capitalism (call it “simple capitalism”) are just what happens when individuals make decisions about resource use. We call it “ownership”, but really any form of resolution of the underlying conflict of preferences would likely work out similarly. That conflict is that humans have unbounded desires, and resources are bounded.
The drive to make goods and services for each other, in pursuit of selfish wants, does incentivize labor, but it’s not because “society requires” it, except in a pretty blurry aggregation of individual “requires”. Price discovery is only half of what market transactions do. The other half is usage limits and resource distribution. These are sides of a coin, and can’t be separated—without limited amounts, there is no price, without prices there is no agent-driven exchange of different kinds of resource.
I’m with you that modern capitalism is pretty unpleasant due to optimization pressure, and due to the easy aggregation of far more people and resources than historically possible, and than human culture was evolved around. I don’t see how the underlying system has any alternative that doesn’t do away with individual desire and consumption. Especially the relative/comparative consumption that seems to drive a LOT of perceived-luxury requirements.
Who’s this “we” you’re talking about? It doesn’t seem to be any actual humans I recognize. As far as I can tell, the basics of capitalism (call it “simple capitalism”) are just what happens when individuals make decisions about resource use. We call it “ownership”, but really any form of resolution of the underlying conflict of preferences would likely work out similarly. That conflict is that humans have unbounded desires, and resources are bounded.
The drive to make goods and services for each other, in pursuit of selfish wants, does incentivize labor, but it’s not because “society requires” it, except in a pretty blurry aggregation of individual “requires”. Price discovery is only half of what market transactions do. The other half is usage limits and resource distribution. These are sides of a coin, and can’t be separated—without limited amounts, there is no price, without prices there is no agent-driven exchange of different kinds of resource.
I’m with you that modern capitalism is pretty unpleasant due to optimization pressure, and due to the easy aggregation of far more people and resources than historically possible, and than human culture was evolved around. I don’t see how the underlying system has any alternative that doesn’t do away with individual desire and consumption. Especially the relative/comparative consumption that seems to drive a LOT of perceived-luxury requirements.