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@aral
1. what are the alternatives?
2. Is it the issue here capitalism or american form of capitalism?

@aral succinct and undeniable

@aral And assholes breed even more capitalism.

@aral If I could choose between an asshole or a dictator the choice would not be very hard.

Looking at the "grean left socialists" we are now headed towards communism at an alarming rate.

I would rather have someone in charge who does not care about people than someone who cares about one kind of people and wants to do horrible stuff to the rest...

@mark @aral Birds of a feather.

@aral also breeds askholes...

@aral

Feudalism breeds assholes. State capitalism (Leninism, Maoism, etc) breeds assholes.

We'll get there some day.

@aral given a consequence free environment, many people will become assholes. In capitalism, the more wealthy you are, the fewer consequences. Plenty of non-capitalist assholes, just the thing that allows them to be assholes isn't money, look at any authoritarian government.

@aral I disagree. Power breeds assholes, and power is not dependent on any particular economic system. The means to power differs, but the end result is the same.

@aral could be, or it could be that humanity is fundamentally broken. Since throughout most of history, in many different systems, creeps have tended to rise to the top.

@aral The issue is that some want us to believe (and many of us are more than willing to agree) that those are the most successful people when they're just very rich.

There is many other people we could admire and promote as models of success, imho. But we don't put them forward, and those people certainly aren't the kind to push themselves in front of the others.

@aral What's so bad about Bezos and Schmidt, they don't seem any worse than most people would be if they were suddenly gifted fuck-off money

@aral It’s definitely a broken system when the top 1% owns 50% of the entire wealth of the world.

@aral we all know that the system favors narcissistic traits over empathy....so yes its fugded from the ground up

@aral: This is a natural outcome of loose marginal tax rates at the high end of income. Levying high taxes on the rich is prosocial, in part, because it gives the zillionaires a motive to re-invest that income, and to spend it in ways that zillionaires are known to like but aren't taxable, such as naming museums after themselves. By taking that motivation out of the equation, the sort of people primarily motivated by hoarding money get a strong advantage at the money-hoarding game.

@aral That's because your definition of "successful" means "wealthone" which is not correct. IMHO successful people are those who pushed/helped humankind most. E.g. scientists, doctors, nurses, social services workers, etc. Not a single person you list belongs to any of those categories.

@aral this is the most concise, well-said thing I have seen concerning the bird app

@aral
Yup.
It does.

@aral what metric are you using to determine success? The accumulation of money selects for a certain personality type, one motivated by greed.

@aral American oligarchs.

@aral True that...

@aral #TrueStory

@aral Yep

@aral I assure you there are plenty of a**holes in socialist societies around the world, too. And the more powerful these socialists are the worse. Rich assholes in capitalist societies are not necessarily the most powerful on the other hand.

@aral don't forget the often overlooked #ReinholdWuerth.

@aral it's not that they are the worst of humanity. It is that a handful of people gain so much leverage over the rest of us, it corrupts them. If the system was equitable and did not let them corner an ungodly amount of our common capital, humanity could still gain from their vision and creativity, without empowering their worst impulses.

@aral what is the right system?