The Amorality of Capitalism — English


The very best one can expect from capitalism is amorality. Very often, however, the system falls far short of that.

The capitalist system's sole purpose is to maximize profit and concentrate wealth and power. That's it. Any task that achieves those ends is to be undertaken. Any task that doesn't do so is ruthlessly quashed. This is both the theory and practice of capitalism. And we also know that this never leads to a moral outcome. Hell, the fact that people are willing to be absolute dicks about getting revenge on cheaters is the only reason the system even maintains neutral morality as a best practice.

But whenever there aren't strict standards in place that are constantly enforced by careful and neutral watchdogs, then the results are absolutely disgusting.

We knew that tobacco causes cancer in the 1890s. You heard that right; we knew about the link between tobacco and cancer before the invention of radio. That information was immediately covered up and the tobacco industry spent decades lying about it and spreading propaganda. Only a hard-fought campaign by underfunded humanitarians managed to curb their lies at all, and it took decades more to start punishing them.

Thomas Midgley developed the lead additive for gasoline in the 1920s, and production was immediately plagued by deaths and toxicity due to lead poisoning. And Midgley, DuPont, and General Motors immediately lied to the public about it, claiming that lead is perfectly safe. They spent decades poisoning people by spewing lead into the environment and then fought for years against the Clean Air Act, which mandated the use of catalytic converters and the elimination of leaded gasoline.

For an encore, Midgley went on to develop chlorofluorocarbons as a new, safe refrigerant. And they're remarkable chemicals! They're non-toxic, non-reactive, non-flammable, with properties that can be carefully tuned to suit your temperature needs. The only problem is that they're so non-reactive that, unlike other chemicals, they survive in the atmosphere long enough to reach the lower stratosphere, where ionizing radiation breaks off chlorine radicals that attack and destroy the ozone layer. The DuPont corporation swore on a stack of Bibles that they'd stop producing CFCs as soon as that was proven, then spent decades lying about it and fighting the legislation that would ban the use of CFCs. They still make CFCs and sell them where they're not banned, by the way.