this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2025
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[–] TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world 81 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (10 children)

Capitalism is a system that rewards people for antisocial behavior. 20,000 years ago, people engaging in antisocial behavior would have been thrown out of the tribe (or executed) for their selfishness and greed, but today they rule.

We can try to use the power of the state to reign them in and keep them under control, but it's a never-ending struggle. They will try to seize state control, to remove any systems that seek to moderate them. They believe that they are superior human beings, super human even. In their minds, their wealth proves their superiority. They have even convinced large numbers of us that they must be unrestricted, free to pursue maximum profits, otherwise modern civilization will collapse.

Maybe they're right. Maybe capitalism can't survive without sociopaths pursuing profits with relatively few restrictions. All the more reason to abolish capitalism, in my opinion, even if that means returning to a more communal existence.

[–] couldhavebeenyou@lemmy.zip 17 points 5 days ago (9 children)

I think you have a pretty romanticized idea about how society was run 20.000 years ago

[–] TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago (5 children)

How am I romanticizing the stone ages? By pointing out that members of the tribe who acted selfishly were often executed (and sometimes tortured)? Is that idea a romantic one, in your mind?

Selfishness wasn't so harshly punished back then because stone age people were noble savages, who were just more righteous than we are today. No, selfishness was so harshly and violently punished (even if the sentence was banishment, that was often a death sentence) because selfish people were a threat to the survival of the tribe, and thus a threat to the survival of every member of the tribe.

[–] troglodyke@lemmy.federate.cc 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

7000 years ago 95% of the male population died off. Based on our discovery of mass graves showing violent deaths from this time, the most likely explanation is that there was a globe spanning slaughter of people - prehistoric people were people too, they had the same flaws that we do now

[–] TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

the most likely explanation is that there was a globe spanning slaughter of people

Last I read, they think it was due to waring between patrilineal tribes. I never argued that there wasn't waring between tribes, only that too much selfishness and greed was not tolerated within the tribe.

prehistoric people were people too, they had the same flaws that we do now

Where did I say otherwise? I would like to point out that wars and mass slaughter did not stop with either the agricultural or industrial revolutions. I am not necessarily offering a solution to war and violence, I am simply pointing out that we evolved to live in tribes. We are tribal, and highly social by our nature. Capitalism is a very antisocial, individualist system. It rewards greed and selfishness and leads to inequality, which breaks down social cohesion. For that, and many other reasons, I think it is unsustainable.

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