Jan 22, 2021

Death to capitalism

Yesterday, I wrote about how the majority of people think in terms of win-lose instead of win-win. I think that’s why it seems popular to hate capitalism these days. In order for some people to be wealthy, many people assume that they have to take away from others. Therefore, capitalism is evil.

Now, I’m not going to make the case that there aren’t people who do highly benefit in our capitalistic system by taking more than they deserve. They definitely do exist.

However, capitalism can take most of the credit for the abundance we have created in certain pockets in the world and I think it will be essential for expanding that abundance to everyone.

Profit is not a perfect measure of value created but it is pretty effective. I’m not sure why some subset of people think it’s more admirable to create a non-profit business. Non-profit businesses are not well-incentivized to invent the change necessary for a better future.

While it is hard to create a non-profit, it is many times harder to create a profitable business. Profit, simply put, is just the difference between the cost of the inputs of a business and what people are willing to trade for its outputs.

In order to generate profit, you have to add value. You have to do something better than what already exists without losing money. Coming up with a way to do this requires ingenuity.