The course of capitalism. Incentives are not aligned with human prosperity
this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2025
285 points (91.8% liked)
Actually Infuriating
544 readers
5 users here now
Community Rules:
Be Civil
Please treat others with decency. No bigotry (disparaging comments about any race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, nationality, ability, age, etc). Personal attacks and bad-faith argumentation are not allowed.
Content should be actually infuriating
Politics and news are allowed, as well as everyday life. However, please consider posting in partner communities below if it is a better fit.
Mark NSFW/NSFL posts
Please mark anything distressing (death, gore, etc.) as NSFW and clearly label it in the title.
Keep it Legal and Moral
No promoting violence, DOXXing, brigading, harassment, misinformation, spam, etc.
Partner Communities
- Mildly Infuriating
- Furiously Infuriating
- Memes
- Political Memes
- Lemmy Shitpost
- Not The Onion
- You Should Know
- Lemmy Be Wholesome
founded 2 months ago
MODERATORS
Right, but the incentives are aligned with the prosperity of individuals who figure out how to use them, so they do. It may look like one group vs another, but it's really each capitalist against everybody else in the world, with a few alliances that are abandoned when they stop working.
Exactly!
Oh, come off it! Pharma is keeping us sick, really? Listen to yourself!
Have you heard of Perdue Pharmaceuticals, by chance?
Make more profit if you're ill.
Sponsor Macdonald's
You make the most profit by coming up with life-saving medicine, making a boatload off it, and putting your competitors out of business. The company that cures cancer will literally destroy their competitors. From that point on they print money. And think of the good will and brand value from a move like that.
They don't need to keep us sick. There will always be new diseases and new ways to get hurt. Evolution and stupidity see to that. And if they did solve for that somehow, then their focus would be on keeping us alive and healthy in old age.
Thank you. Pharma has other issues that aren't good for society but believing this is for the absolute tinfoil hat crew.
Is this /s or not I can't tell. Well they definitely benefit from drugs that you have to constantly take. For years. Until you die. That's their business model. If there could be a drug that cures you instantly, there is no effort to develop it by this company who sells you this constant supply of drug. So yes. Pharma has an interest in you staying sick enough to need treatment and not die.
load more comments
(20 replies)
Banks and pharma comments are for sure trash. Weapons... Also trash. The idea is to dominate and that's what you pay extra for. These are all industries I have personally worked for or my wife has.
The media is going to tell you the truthiest thing that gets clicks for engagement so that's basically true.
This is mostly tin foil hat except the government bit at the bottom that is legit trying to fuck us all (I worked for them too).
Edit: Your word of the day is "verisimilitude". Or alternatively "specious".
No..
Banks make a ton of money from debt.
Pharma makes a ton of money treating symptoms.
Weapons cannot be sold if there are no wars to use them in.
If you actually take a minute to think about it logically you'll see where the profits come from
Edit: it's not that they're doing it intentionally to ruin our lives. But they are doing it intentionally, for profit. And the intentionality to follow the profit is what's making the standard of living worse for everyone
Yes, because you have to use logic that goes deeper than surface level.
Banks make a ton of money from people making interest payments on debt they (the borrowers) can support. Depending on the diversification of the bank they also make a ton on investing the money they hold for you. Comparatively little money is made from collections for defaulting on debt, overdraft fees, account fees, and so on. So "bankers will keep you in debt" doesn't make a lot of sense. The banks don't set the price of the stuff you want, they only compete with other banks to give you a better rate on things you've already decided to buy. There's no small room of people trying to up your payments or interest rates and hoping you won't notice. It would be bank suicide.
Pharma is the same. Sure they treat side effects, but the main point (besides introducing new drugs that pass non inferiority studies to get new patients, which is predatory for sure) is to sell drugs that have good outcomes. It makes a lot more sense to sell the cure for cancer and charge a ton for it than it does to make a cure, make sure it has side effects, and magically keep it secret through FDA trials. This is like "the moon landing was faked" kind of bad logic. It sounds to me like "Oh, UPS needs to deliver packages to make money, so I bet they intentionally lose one in every 5 to generate more traffic!". Just... No. Thats how you put your non-monopoly company right out of business.
Weapons also ABSOLUTELY can be and are sold when there is no war. You don't need war at all. You need fear. If you needed war to sell weapons, nuclear weapons and the cold war are the perfect counter example.
Now maybe you've got your head on straight because for sure these sectors all want to maximize profit and there is certainly room for that, but "bankers keep you in debt, pharma keeps you sick, and weapon companies (prime contractors mostly) keep us at war" is nothing short of conspiratorial ignorance. The actual original post is stupid and sanewashing it still doesn't make it remotely true.
Most all of this system of control was predicted by Orwell, Ministry of Plenty concerned with rationing, Ministry of Peace concerned with war, Ministry of Truth concerned with disinformation and the Ministry of Love concerned with torture and interrogation.
Not quite. Yes... But not quite. This isn't the edgy realization you think it is. But, it's a start.
“Just look at us. Everything is backwards, everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, psychiatrists destroy minds, scientists destroy truth, major media destroys information, religions destroy spirituality and governments destroy freedom.”
― Michael Ellner
I have genuinely written that on the wall of an isolation cell in my own blood. I was denied my prescription medication.
And the stupids are going to reduce everything to one-liners
Mutually Assured Dominance!
Taken together it really does look like a conspiracy of elites vs commoners, but it's really just elites individually and in small alliances doing what they think will benefit them individually. No elite will support a system they can't personally control. they only take advantage of parts of it that benefit them, and try to create more of those parts. Collectively this makes it look like they're all working together, until some issue comes up that benefits one and hurts another. Then they throw each other under the bus, which sometimes benefits the rest of us.
Yep
Not sure, here.
- bothSides
- anarchy but yet clean water and hospitals
- emo
Pick the right theme, and help me out?
What theme? A government can't provide for its citizens without kowtowing to corporate interests? That seems like a narrow view, and maybe these days much more difficult in some countries due to the corporate influence but that just points to corporate interests having too much say in matters, not that the preference is a anarchy.
view more: next ›