alt Hacker NewsCan you explain what it means for capitalism to "serve money"? That sounds exactly backwards to me; money serves capitalism, that is, it is the breath expelled when people speak the language of prices to understand each others' values.
I think it's also worth dilating on this notion of "unrestrained capitalism". Capitalism is after all a product of restraints, namely the enforcement of property, contracts, and the validity of money.
> Can you explain what it means for capitalism to "serve money"? That sounds exactly backwards to me; money serves capitalism, that is, it is the breath expelled when people speak the language of prices to understand each others' values.
Capitalism doesn't work to satisfy the wants and needs of the people in a society, generally. It works to satisfy the wants and needs of the people who have money, in proportion to the amount of money they have. If you don't have money but need something, Capitalism says "kindly FOAD." If you desperately need something, but a rich guy kinda-sorta wants it, rich guy gets it if he's willing to pay more.
So as inequality increases and wealth gets concentrated, a capitalist ceremony (without more restraints that we have) will increasingly neglect the needs of a large fraction of the people in society.
A lot of capitalism apologists assert capitalism is there to meet people's needs, generally (usually just lazily generalizing from US vs. USSR circa 1980), but that's only true under certain conditions which are not guaranteed. That goal is not part of its programming.