Thank you for taking the time to think this through and write this out, Tomm.
The capitalism I'm referring to, as there are a number of definitions, is the ideology that capital is the most important thing in life. It's one thing to approach the market with unbridled selfishness, but the market isn't the entirety of the world. It's just a playground we've created.
However, in order to create that market, we have to take the natural resources from the Earth. There are those who consider those "shared" resources, but under capitalism, communism, and socialism, the owners of the property they are on, the owners of the "real estate", have dibs on whatever is under or on the ground they have come to own. As our version of consumerist capitalism has evolved over the last century, we have been driven to turn as many of those natural resources into cheaply made products, packaging for those cheaply made products, or products that are designed to become garbage after only one use.
Nevertheless, since it satisfies the gods of capitalism, and people are making profits by turning all of these resources into numbers on a computer, the market is operating and all things are hunky dory. Unfortunately, we're decimating the natural world, depleting the rain forests, overfishing the oceans, etc. And you think we should have not limits whatsoever?
It doesn't seem selfish to you that to serve the short-sighted selfishness of today, future generations will have to do get by with less?
I'm fascinated by what countries like Finland are doing, realizing that capital is important, but that society is important as well. So while they can still play the game of capitalism and make profits, they don't do it in the same competitive "winner take all" way that we've come to embrace in America. https://civicskunk.works/the-high-cost-of-american-freedom-a73dc9c558e4
This is how the article ends... "In Partanen’s book, she claims that the economies in Nordic nations like Finland are “intentionally designed to take into account the specific challenges of modern life and give citizens as much logistical and financial independence as possible.” Through universal healthcare, affordable childcare that’s capped at $300 per month, free college, and copious paid vacations, the authors have enjoyed the freedom to live their lives unencumbered by worries about a sudden large expense destroying their lives.
"The only question that matters is this: Which kind of freedom is most important to you? The freedom for corporations to avoid taxes by lobbying to change the tax code, or the freedom for you to start a new career in your 40s? The freedom to deregulate pollution or the freedom to take a paid vacation? When you decide that the goal of your economy is to create more happiness for everyone rather than to optimize shareholder value, it’s amazing to see how your definition of freedom can change for the better."
