'Capitalism has to become more humane': a Stanford economist on big tech

I agree, but Capitalism is inherently an unequal system, one group of people own the capital and the rest doesn't. And nobody talks about where that initial capital came from (large-scale theft, wage theft, slavery, and so on).

That means this inherent inequality gives one group tremendous power over the other.

What we really need is a system that doesn't automatically promote psychopaths and sociopaths to the top, the more ruthless, the more money you make, despite the human cost. We need a system that doesn't value money/capital as much, but other outcomes.

And we especially don't need Billionaire Philanthropists. Pay the damn taxes. Yet, this is the site for the Temporary Embarrassed Billionaires, so I know how this will go over...

"Capitalism" can't become more humane, by its nature. Money is a great technology for coordinating people and work, but capitalism (being the system in which the capital class is allowed to allocate resources without oversight, and to reap the vast majority of the rewards of everyone's labor and invention) systematically optimizes away anything that is not monetizable. And humanity is neither monetizable nor optimizable.

"More poems, faster, cheaper!"

Drug dealing is profitable. Chattel slavery was exceptionally profitable.

To allow profitability to be our measure of permissibility is to sacrifice civil society at the altar of enterprising tyrants. Economics should never be a substitute for ethics.

does more humane mean more taxes?