Anti-Capitalist Sentiment (with some morality)

[rong]

Giving freedom to thrive or rot as opportunity and chance allow does not equate to empathy.

[wufwugy]

Giving freedom to thrive or rot as opportunity and chance allow does not equate to empathy.

I'm not the biggest fan of claiming that capitalism is empathic. I think that kind of statement is wrought with holes. But if we're using this frame, there are two points to make here

(1) What's more selfish: allowing people the freedom to choose or coercing conformity? Capitalism is the former and socialism is the latter. Even if socialism has a heart of gold and means only the best, it is still the latter. And even if capitalism is hard and brutal, it is still the former.

(2) Let's pull a logical tactic out of the hat the left often wears: Just like "institutional racism" is somehow a thing, "institutional empathy" can now be a thing. The way the left finds "institutional racism" is data-mining any statistics that show ethnic disparity in outcomes and laying the blame on some form of racism. Likewise, we can examine what capitalism does for societies compared to socialism and determine which creates more "institutional empathy".

Historically, there is no competition. Capitalism beats the piss out of socialism. Its streets are safer, people are more prosperous. By a ton. Theoretically, capitalism is the mechanism by which products and services are made better for cheaper costs. Over time, this creates a more prosperous, safer, advanced society with people who find it much easier to engage empathy.

One of the economics professors who blogs at econlog (I forget who, but I think it was David Henderson), has briefly commented on some long-term friends he's had who grew up in Soviet bloc countries under strict socialism. He claims they are weirdly selfish. One of his examples comes from playing beach volleyball with them over the years. They consistently would make any questionable calls in their own favor (like if the ball hits right next to the line but nobody could tell if it was in or out). It wasn't that they would sometimes call it in their favor, but that without question they would call it in their favor. He thinks that this anecdote could be representative of the type of mentality that socialism fosters. The rationale is that because socialism cares fuckall about merits and everybody is granted what they are determined to "need" based on some abstract disassociated ideal, maybe the people have to take every tiny win they possibly can. They have no freedom to be better (and none to be worse), and the society this creates may be one of ultra entitled selfishness. This is just one guy's anecdote, not any known social or economic theory.