Dr Gabor Maté - Why Capitalism Makes Us Sick

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When he says, "It's the system's fault". He's blaming the "capitalistic system".

However, the title of this thread says it explicitly.

The title of this thread is the title of the video.

My guess is that Gabor Mate has nothing to do with the video's title (it was posted 6 years after he gave it as a Youtube excerpt) and yeah, it's a bit trashy/click-baity like 'A destroys B!' or 'Those 7 times when A destroyed Political Group C!'.

The war on drugs as far as I can tell is more of an ugly contingency. It happened for a lot of reasons, many of them were economic, but I think he has a point in the degree to which the war on drugs in its execution has an ugly interaction with capitalism as we practice it. I don't think it has anything to directly do with capitalism unless we're talking about Big Pharma not wanting certain things available that would supersede their products or the old story of a paper mill owner having a lot to do with the anti-marijuana propaganda due to what disruption hemp could cause in his industry. I'm more than willing to say that's not 'capitalism', that's corporatism or crony-capitalism. I really think the public capital markets have a very distorting effect on the system and it's one of those problems that I think we need to find a way to solve.

Also if I were to throw my hat in on the title 'Why Capitalism Makes Us Sick', I'm getting to a place these days where I don't see it as necessarily evil (maybe the least of comparative evils) but I do see where in and of itself it's not an unabated good either. It depends how its practiced, how we're deploying it, and what we're allowing to take shape. I think it gets to be a problem if it's twisting our incentive structures more than answering to our core values. The whole technocratic 'just submit to technology' has been a close cousin to 'You can't do anything about markets - just let them do whatever they'll do'. Either way when we completely surrender ourselves to forces of nature and or human avarice we aren't going to have good outcomes and to that point it's critical that we be mindful of it and discuss problems when we see them.

I fear there won't be a turn on capitalism until we're abject to it's worst flaws, as if we aren't already is scary to think about.

From Wage insecurity to the destruction of common sense environmental policies in favor of big businesses, if you can't at least be skeptical of the system in place... Maybe we're in trouble

Bret Weinstein doing a Ted Talk back in 2012, before he was particularly well known much past his students at Evergreen (this one's shorter - about 16 min). He's pointing at similar structural problems but from the evolutionary psych perspective:

Read this amusing article today, and immediately thought of this thread. It's not very cogent and seems like a "eat billionaires" type of satire but it breaks down some big keys about neoliberalism/capitalism in very simple ways. Sort of 'capitalism for dummies.' The privatizing profits and socializing losses part is always dead on

https://eand.co/why-billionaires-need-s ... 88a9714fb3

We're actually a very strange blend of very expensive and free stuff. Free podcasts, free music, free apps, all kinds of free digital media really, and then we nail people to the wall for the things they need to be alive in any gainful manner. I'd at least like to think the free flow of ideas, music, and education will help launch future generations, we're still in a bit of a battle with older patterns of thought that don't seem to match the environment all that well anymore.

As for billionaires in specific, I ended up unwittingly in a debate on Facebook with someone several months back (friend of a friend I'd never met before) and that collapsed rather badly. I was accused of defending billionaires and the excuses for them but when I really reflect on this one I see them as more of a symptom of the problem. While its true that every few of them get to be billionaires without having created financial empires employing tens or even hundreds of thousands of people (though we'll see if that's still the case in another 20 years) there's also the the point that they're riding on top of a lot of capital - not just their particular business's capital but global capital, and quite often they themselves don't pull nearly as many strings as their largest shareholders. If they're doing the dance well I'd figure they're on relatively good terms with their shareholders, and frightening enough a lot of those shareholders are faceless bureaucrats. State pension systems, 401k's, all kinds of big funds that are projected out through investments.

I think we're getting to where a) we like the idea of having readily available capital for people with new ideas but b) we're not liking the incentive structures that come from money running all over the world in exchanges quite so much because that tends to precipitate the race to the bottom. Now, if you go with the UN reports and a lot that gets said about economic globalism - it's bringing the 3rd world out of poverty and if that can be done, if a lot of Bjorn Lomborg's points about nutrition and family planning being some of the most 'bang for buck' good that can be done around the world - ie. raising IQ for kids who aren't malnourished under age 2, helping women around the world get access to contraception, etc. it seems like that part of globalism is turning out to be quite successful. The other idea seems to be that lifting people out of poverty makes them want better things, better environment, that this also feeds into less pollution (plastic pollution is apparently apexed in Asia right now so that could be an 'on the way up' issue as well), less fodder for terrorist organizations, etc.. The only problem I see there - the west is going in reverse. I mean, it's fine if we end up in a position where we carry a bit more weight but not fine if we get to the point of all-out fascism and communism reemerging or to where things get bad enough for most people that they'd inaugurate a dictator who'd overthrow the constitution in favor of martial law and some drastic reordering of things. The most obvious issue for globalism here - if the home of the globalist project collapses then there's no globalist project anymore.

That last part is what worries me. I'm not sure anyone knows exactly what the percentage would be of unemployed and homeless before you had a revolution, I'm guessing that's far to complex to be a steady figure, but we could likely reach it if we keep playing our cards as badly as we have. This also gets worse for the people who still have jobs as the environment increasingly becomes like Hunger Games, survival of the most ruthless quite often, and I really don't know how long a society can hold up like that without indeed a major internal conflict and, yes, likely a stumble backward in progress of several decades or more to go along with the fallout.

It's a really tenuous dance we're playing and I really hope enough clear and credible thinkers are both simultaneously watching the stabilizing of the third and former-third world as well as the destabilizing of the west with equal amounts of attention.

it's interesting how this thread derailed quickly, purely because the video had "capitalism" in it's title.
It's also interesting how somehere define freedom as the freedom to become a drug addict - why then is there a war on drugs? that's a war on freedom, then no?

anyway: well, neoliberal capitalism is a race among individuals -any association with others is a liability, for a single individual. ... like a prisoner's dilemma.
Social market economy, like in parts of europe (although being dismantled), is less awful, and would be a good model, in theory.
The only thing that screws up everything is ecology.... since capitalism is a system to use investment as a tool to create future profits. The less time between investment and profit, the better. Even better: betting on future profits, now, and trading with bets. That's pulling the future into the present. And in the name of this, we're burning what has built up over eons, contracting geological history and future profits into this single instance: now.

Let's deal with the waste products later, ideally, someone else will do it, maybe someone else's children. the important bit is: not now.

this dynamic is problematic - the dynamics within any form of capitalist organisation can be changed and forced to be better for people who rely on work, at least theoretically.

I've Been Duly Cautioned And Warned Not to Go Too Long Or Deep on the "Wrong Planet"; Not to 'Break the Pages' as such In Respect of the other Folks Who are Different From me; And Now considering i Survived 25 Years of Conformity in Working For the Government Serving as a Valued Commodity; and Not a Valued Member of the 'Social Group'; Let me Make the Following Aphorism that is a Metaphor Not to be Taken Literal as Short and Deep Now as i can make it to comply with The Rules of this Community to Lend a Hand For What is Missing so Much on the 'Wrong Planet', and Etc., too.

"Spare The
Love
Go to Hell"

My Grandmother, on my Father's Side, a Busy Business Woman Running a Nursery for Children Told My Mother When She Picked up a Crying Child in Her 'Big Business' Nursery; if You Pick up that Child And Don't Let Him Cry out His Tears on His Own that Child Will Never Be Able to Stand on His Own Two Feet. My Mother in Turn Looked at Her like she was 'Crazy'.

My Father Left Our Family when i was 3 Years Old; because My Mother Wanted to Stay Home With Her Children; and His Mother Taught Him Making Money Was the Most Important Thing in the World; So, He Left and Found a Wife Who Would Work. After 4 Wives and Being Married to the Same one Twice; and Addicted to Cigarettes Most of His Life Dying at 81; Playing the Lottery, Spending 500 Dollars To Get Rich each Week, through 11 Years of Full Paid Retirement After 46 Years in Law Enforcement ; He Died Without Love the Same Way He Came into the Marriage; Really Good Looking Without a Soul as Raised to Actually Give Love, to even His Children.

This is no Woo; if A Child is not Nourished by not only Parents; but a Village in Face to Face Loving
Hugging Contact; the Child eventually Goes to Hell in Life; one way or the other Still Separated from Love.

I am Almost Always So Happy, Fulfilling So Much of my Human Potential, Wherever i go, and When Folks Ask me what i am on for they Want Some so Bad, i tell them Love; and they Often Look Like they have never even Felt the Word as Real.

Yes; We Do Live in a Very Sick Society; A Society Devoid of Love is Just Dead no Matter How Big a House it lives in.

I Was Hugged the First 3 Years of my Life; and now i still stand on my own Two Feet Leg Pressing 1520 LBS at age 58, Dancing and Writing Poetry Wherever i go; Financially Independent by age 47, Simply For i was Filled up With Love and Needed Nothing Else to Buy, Buy, Buy Saving 6 Times more Money than My Father and When he asked How; I told Him Love; and He had no clue; it wasn't His fault but my Mother Broke the Vicious Cycle with Love.

The 'New Testament' is Right in one way;
as Evolved, Humans are Nothing Without
Love
if 'They'
Even 'See' 'It'.

Spare The
Fear
Go To Heaven