• nymnympseudonym@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Imagine if it was people’s happiness and freedom instead of quarterly profits

    1. Whose happiness and freedom?
    2. How is it to be measured?
    3. Capitalists honestly believe that free trade is the best albeit flawed way to do both of the above

    It’s definitely valid to disagree about point #3, but then you need to give a better model for #1 and #2

    • kazerniel@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago
      1. Optimise for maximum happiness and freedom and minimum suffering on a societal level, while making sure that a certain threshold of freedom-from-suffering is met for every single individual. (So that happiness for the majority is not reached via the suffering of minorities.) Obviously there can be arguments about where we draw the lines for the specifics of these.
      2. Quite a few ways have been developed to measure happiness, wellbeing, flourishing, quality of life, whatever nuance you want to pick.
      3. We have ample proof that it’s a system that fundamentally undermines societal happiness by incentivising the accumulation of wealth at the expense of the wellbeing of people and ecosystems. It’s decades overdue to radically change the way the world’s economy works. (Which is of course not something those with the most power want, so unlikely to happen any time soon.)