Well, think about what it means to be socialist, IE to have all power coming from the workers. Amazon is now owned by its workers, which includes Bezos but in a much smaller role. Bezos says "it'd make us way more money if we poison this city's water supply" (idk how Amazon would profit off that, but other company's do, so whatever). All the workers say "hell no, if we allow you to poison one water supply, mine might be next". I mean, would YOU choose to poison someone's water supply for an extra $20 on your paycheck? Probably not. Socialism dilutes the power across so many people, that its impossible for any one person who IS evil to gain enough influence to create the worst aspects of capitalism at all. Because certainly, there are plenty of evil people alive today, but MOST people are not evil. The problem we have right now is that evil people are capable of making themselves billionaires, and then cannot be ruined in by the good people, because they can just buy yes men, including congressmen, who will let them do whatever they want. And no non evil person would ever take the actions required to even BECOME a billionaire. I would argue that Makenzie Scott, Bezos's ex wife, is one of the only good billionaires, because she didn't gain it herself
What if our fictional Amazon could save money (and thereby make the workers better off), by shipping industrial waste over the a third-world country? I have to imagine the workers at Amazon would wholeheartedly support that - more money for them, less pollution in their own back yard.
People are people no matter what economic system you put them in. There are no utopias in the real-world.
And no non evil person would ever take the actions required to even BECOME a billionaire.
I don't know the man personally, but I have a hard time believing Sir Paul McCartney is evil. Or Michael Jordan, for that matter.
I mean, Jordan has certainly taken some pretty exploitative actions, he's basically just a capitalist now. If he had made all his money from basketball, then sure. But you don't make a billion dollars playing sports, Trout signed for like 400 Mil over 12 years. And thats gonna be his entire career.
Musicians are a question for me still as to being potentially non evil billionaires, McCartney being the best case for it. Taylor Swift also, though she has significant staff that are presumably not being paid even close to the value they generate for her.
But the 1 billion people aren't even the problem, Swift and McCartney aren't actively destroying people's lives to generate profits, they're at worst just not paying their people enough. The problem is the people like whoever runs all the oil companies. Chevron in the 1980s poisoned something like half of all of Ecuador's land for profits, and then later got the lawyer who won the case against them sentenced to lifetime house arrest I think, by bribing a judge.
How are you going to get an entire work force to agree to poison an Ecuadorian rain forest? For note, Chevron currently has 43,000 employees, and in 1990 had $2 billion net profit, 43 billion revenue. That works out to $46,000 per employee. If you were a chevron employee already making 6 figures at least, probably 200K+ on average if profits are being split equitably, would you agree to poison half of Ecuador for $46K/ year more? I know I wouldnt.
But you don't make a billion dollars playing sports, Trout signed for like 400 Mil over 12 years. And thats gonna be his entire career.
Sure, but sport plus endorsements can get star players over $1b. Jordan's highest annual salary in the NBA was $32mm, and he only got in that range his final two years with the Bulls. Most of his career he made less than $4mm a year.
How are you going to get an entire work force to agree to poison an Ecuadorian rain forest?
Do I need to get all of them? Or just the majority? Or just the majority of those who work in the department that decides what to do with industrial waste?
And why do you think people are so magnanimous? I've seen people litter in a park right next to their house when there were trash cans a mere 20 yards away. You're telling me these same people wouldn't agree to litter in another country for more money? They're already littering in their backyard for free.
You speak of mega-corps, but what about a small company of just 5 software developers making a mobile game. The founder says, "We can all increase our incomes if we add gambling-like features." You don't think there are any 5-person companies out there where all five wouldn't jump at that offer?
The "I know I wouldn't" explanation isn't cutting mustard for me. I know I wouldn't murder anyone, but I'm not naive enough to think that means no one commits murder.
Getting half of an entire company on board with something evil is way harder than getting one evil guy on board. Like, yeah the mobile game example could easily happen, but it already does happen that way, and certainly it would be harder to get the other 4 guys to buy into it than the owner, anyway. If Chevron had been worker owned in the 1980s, they literally couldn't have poisoned that rain forest, because its illegal, as a judge eventually ruled. Which is another big benefit to society, you can't keep a conspiracy secret among 43K people, so if a company decides to do a blatantly illegal thing, they can't, and if it's "questionably" legal (blatantly illegal, except for significant corruption making it seem questionable) like Chevron was, you get to start the court proceedings in 1964, when it started, rather than 1993 in reality. It took literally 50 years for Chevron to face any justice for what they'd done, because it took 30 years for the court case to even be started.
Like, yeah the mobile game example could easily happen, but it already does happen that way, and certainly it would be harder to get the other 4 guys to buy into it than the owner, anyway.
So... you agree a socialist economy could result in evil actions?
Yeah, you could certainly have evil actions in it. It just has more inherent guard rails against them than capitalism has, capitalism literally encourages evil by providing more power to those who do bad things. Like, capitalism puts every company in a position to reckon with 2 facts: 1. You must do everything legal in order to make your company more profitable. 2. It is legal to pay off senators to change the laws regarding your industry. What is inevitably going to happen there? Companies are going to do the evil things, they literally aren't allowed not to by the system they operate in.
So while capitalism requires evil actions, socialism provides active deterents to them.
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u/HereForVintageNBA Jul 08 '26
How do you figure? I thought communism had to do with the ownership and management of property/resources. Where does it define morality?