Myth: Capitalism is the only system that provides a motivation for productive activity.

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Note: This video is part of a series which debunks myths pertinent to laissez-faire capitalism. Many points not addressed in this video can be found at the above link.

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Although the value of productive work can be overstated, it is indeed true that it is often useful and necessary, and it is also true that people usually do need to be motivated to work for reasons other than the sheer pleasure of the activity. One might ask, however, whether these facts really justify the income disparity between someone who makes $17 thousand dollars a year and someone who makes $17 million, or even the difference between someone who earns $20 thousand and someone who earns $200 thousand. More generally, it seems highly unlikely that people will stop working without the ever-present threat of losing (for instance) their homes or their ability to provide food. Similarly, it is doubtful that people need to feel as though they have the capacity to earn millions of dollars more than they need to buy exorbitant luxuries in order to motivate them to continue to be productive.

It is also worth noting that although motivating productivity may be one important thing that we do with our wealth as a society, it is far from the only valid use for it. Just a few examples of alternative useful places to invest wealth which have nothing to do with motivating work include preventing domestic violence, educating people who can't afford to pay for private schools, or curing lethal diseases which are ignored by the free market because there is minimal profit in healing poor people.

Category:

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Tags:

• capitalism
• charity
• compassion
• conservative
• economics
• empathy
• happiness
• libertarian
• reason
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• republican
• socialism

[Beingism]

@ghiisga Fair enough. The connection could be more explicitly drawn here in such a way that would make the argument clearer.

[ghiisga]

@Beingism Nonetheless, you ARE talking about how some people have more money than others, rather than making an argument to support your point.

[Beingism]

@ghiisga It's an interesting fact that when someone disagrees strongly with another person, a cognitive bias literally prevents them from understanding the relevance of their criticism, and can in fact cause them to describe criticisms as "whining" when they would not feel this way were the criticism consistent with their own beliefs.

[ghiisga]

Pretty bad. You proceed to change the subject of your own post within 30 seconds. I thought you were going to enlighten us as to how capitalism isn't the only way to motivate productivity. Instead you just start whining again about how some people make more money than others.

[Beingism]

@GoingGoingGalt We agree that any effective system motivates people to produce things that are useful to people, and that markets are part of good solution for doing this.

[GoingGoingGalt]

People don't need to feel they should be earning millions, just that in order to get what they want and need, they have to create goods and services others want to buy. In other words, in order to consume, they must first produce