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Aquileo | cake
Cake day: August 23rd, 2025

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  • HumanOnEarth@lemmy.catoFlippanarchy@lemmy.dbzer0.comMondays
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    7 days ago

    So you’re both wrong…

    Capitalism is just fine. The definition you gave of “capital above all else” is just not true. That’s how corporations are trying to get away with their current use of the capitalist system.

    Capitalism is meant to operate in a free market. The actual problem is the lack of pricing externalities properly.

    So when you pump a gallon of gasoline, there is nothing in there priced to account for the environmental damage. Impossible to quantify obviously, but we don’t even try. It’s economics 101: if you don’t account for externalities, you don’t have a truly efficient market.

    Trees provide the service of cleaning the air and providing oxygen. That value should be accounted for before clearcutting a forest. Likewise the value of the biodiversity within the forest.

    So what is actually happening is those with capital are creating the rules, and any attempt to account for the very real value of these things is squashed… with the capital. That’s why it’ll never work. If we accounted for all externalities somehow, capitalism would be a perfect system.

    But since people literally could give a shit if an 8 year old orphan with cerebral palsy made their shirt, as long as their shirt costs 5 bucks… this is what you get.

    And all that excess value stolen from nature, and from citizens (clean air for example)? That’s what you find in the bank accounts of the CEOs and oligarchs.