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shiftystylin t1_j376uqv wrote

From my understanding economic growth has it's roots in capitalism (technically neoliberal capitalism). Neoliberalism's singular objective is to maximise profit whilst cutting costs. In order to make more money, you require more things to be sold at a high price and low cost. Things that need to be built require resources, be that physical and/or natural resources, or human driven and/or manufactured resources, but you cut the costs of those resources, manufacturing and cost of delivery wherever possible.

You really need to take away that ideology from the people at the top because they ultimately own the narrative and spread it throughout the media in order to maintain the status quo, and thus drive economic growth for the sole reason for more profit.

I often wondered if you built a business where you were transparent with your earnings, and transparent with the pay of others, and have the sole ambition of providing stable work for people rather than use them to drive a profit, whether that business would survive and how many applicants you'd have for a job there...

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AftyOfTheUK t1_j37ajs7 wrote

>From my understanding economic growth has it's roots in capitalism

No, economic growth is simply what happens when we do more for each other, or do existing things for each other better. It can happen under capitalism, communism, anarchism etc.

>Neoliberalism's singular objective is to maximise profit whilst cutting costs.

That's not a singular objective, that's two objectives. Your sentence would be more accurate if you just left it at "Neoliberalism's singular objective is to maximise profit" - however, that's not the objective. Profit is simply an incentive within the neoliberal system, used to promote it's actual objective - to create as much wealth as possible.

The problem is that neoliberalism (for the most part) is concerned primarily with creating wealth, and doesn't really get involved with how fair the distribution of that wealth is. That's why we need progressive taxes on that wealth creation, to redistribute some of it.

>I often wondered if you built a business where you... have the sole ambition of providing stable work for people

Command economies have been attempted many times, and they generally result in terrible conditions for the workers and people within the system, except perhaps a small number of people at the upper echelons of "the party"

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shiftystylin t1_j37jpt9 wrote

Thanks. You often don't learn anything without exposing your ignorance and having someone come and slap you with the truth.

I guess I'm trying to say it feels like Neoliberals focus on economic growth is solely to ensure they're gaining more profit. There doesn't seem to be any other benefit to economic growth if all the additional 'money' (for lack of the educated term) is just being funnelled away in untouchable dragon hoard's and not put back into the economic system us normy's share?

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AftyOfTheUK t1_j37kt3q wrote

>I guess I'm trying to say it feels like Neoliberals focus on economic growth is solely to ensure they're gaining more profit.

I think that's a fair statement about some neoliberals - though it's worth pointing out that only a tiny percentage of people make big profits, and there are a lot more neoliberals than that.

It's worth pointing out that many people push whatever scheme or system would make them the most money - capitalists voting for capitalism to make more profit is (in my opinion) no more or less evil than communists voting for communism because they are incapable of exchanging their time/skills for the money they want, so they desire a system that takes it from others by force.

>There doesn't seem to be any other benefit to economic growth if all the additional 'money' (for lack of the educated term) is just being funnelled away in untouchable dragon hoard's and not put back into the economic system

It is put back into the system though. These people don't keep 20 billion in cash. They invest it in new companies/ventures all the time. Those new companies (and the services/goods they offer) are economic growth. And their employees and customers are gaining from that growth.

Now, whether or not those people should CONTROL such a huge amount of the system is another discussion. But the profits they make don't go away.

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