683
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
683 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
44266 readers
826 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
I'd argue profit is essential to capitalism, which of course is probably what you meant, blaming capitalism I mean. I think charging interest on debt (some of which you are essentially forced to borrow) is what is truly scandalous. Sure it makes sense when it is oversimplified, and told from the point of view of the banks who need to make an honest living by risking money, but money is created from thin air from loans, so the whole thing makes no sense imo.
Profit is older than capitalism; capitalism is a particularly egregious form of it, but it is profit itself - intentional inefficiency in the conversion of resources to usable product, for the purpose of benefiting those creating the inefficiency that I refer to.
In theory, something very close to capitalism could exist without profit - with everyone getting back only a fair and appropriate compensation for their part in the process. It's the 'put in a little and get back infinite returns ' part that makes capitalism specifically a problem.