[05] Capitalism
Title Card
YouTube Link
Status
Released
Transcription
Air Date
Oct 10, 2023
Target: 30-45 minutes
Script
Intro
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ZFi: GM and welcome to Moloch Traps, our new podcast here at From Aa to Zzz. I’m ZFi, this Zombie Shepherd, and we’re excited to be bringing you this new show in collaboration with BanklessDAO and its Audio/Visual team. To be clear, opinions in this series expressed by either of us are our own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of BanklessDAO at large.
This week, we will continue to study and discuss excerpts from the "Meditations on Moloch" essay, written by Scott Alexander. The essay provides examples of multi-polar traps and delves into various instances from history, biology, and economics to illustrate how competition often results in collective harm.
In today’s episode we’ll be discussing Capitalism. Let’s start with Alexander’s words on this model.
Segment 2 — Capitalism
ZFi:
(reading from Meditations)
5. Capitalism. Imagine a capitalist in a cutthroat industry. He employs workers in a sweatshop to sew garments, which he sells at minimal profit. Maybe he would like to pay his workers more, or give them nicer working conditions. But he can’t, because that would raise the price of his products and he would be outcompeted by his cheaper rivals and go bankrupt. Maybe many of his rivals are nice people who would like to pay their workers more, but unless they have some kind of ironclad guarantee that none of them are going to defect by undercutting their prices they can’t do it.
Like the rats, who gradually lose all values except sheer competition, so companies in an economic environment of sufficiently intense competition are forced to abandon all values except optimizing-for-profit or else be outcompeted by companies that optimized for profit better and so can sell the same service at a lower price.
(I’m not really sure how widely people appreciate the value of analogizing capitalism to evolution. Fit companies – defined as those that make the customer want to buy from them – survive, expand, and inspire future efforts, and unfit companies – defined as those no one wants to buy from – go bankrupt and die out along with their company DNA. The reasons Nature is red in tooth and claw are the same reasons the market is ruthless and exploitative)
From a god’s-eye-view, we can contrive a friendly industry where every company pays its workers a living wage. From within the system, there’s no way to enact it.
INSERT HOWL CLIP:
(Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose blood is running money!)
Segment 3 — Open Discussion
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functions, uses, and claims of capitalism
explaining how and where it has failed
noting that despite criticisms, it might be the best system we have so far; do better
Zombie Shepherd notes:
ZFi notes:
Conclusion
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Zombie Shepherd: (start and then hand off as appropriate)
Summary
What would YOU do? @listener?
Outro
Zombie Shepherd:
Thanks for watching today’s episode of Moloch Traps. We hope you enjoy this series. As always, none of what we say is legal or financial advice, and we encourage listeners to do their own research in these areas before making any related decisions.
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We’ll see you next time, frens!
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