The capitalist world is based on scarcity, and only a few can get limited goods. But to an extent I don't yet understand it produces scarcity as well, since for example the discovery of a certain amount of diamonds per day is what maximizes earnings, and the excedent is burned. I think it has something to do with monopoly. Can someone explain me to which rule does it respond? This scarcity produces private property, which in turn needs money to function, which leads to loans and banks.
At the other hand we have societies based on abundance like the eskimos, australian and north-american natives... Their way of life is based on small societies where everybody knows everybody else, and in which no sense of private property exists. For them, Mother Nature provides sufficiently so that they gain more in sharing food, for example, than keeping it for themselves. The individuals in these societies are characterized by being in peace with themselves and live a more 'spiritual' life, whatever that means. Anyway, they appear to be happier.
So my point is that, in the present capitalism, if we are be able to produce abundance, private property and money should cese to exist. I am not sure anymore that technology is something good to our lifes because it makes us want more and more things, so abundance is never attained. Will we someday get to a point where we achieve a steady state? Can we actually achieve this point when there is such a difference between rich and poor? What do you think?
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Hi mate. World economics is a complex system. It will generally float around an attractor, but it is transient and therefore always changing - somewhat akin to variance on a function plot.
Also however, happiness is relative. People will be happy if they will be happy no matter what their wealth status. On the other hand people in rich societies - yours and mine - can grow somewhat attached to material possessions ultimately forgetting what it is to be happy. This is a product of capitalism and greed (imo) and is so deeply rooted in us that it is often difficult to escape from. You could argue that we could get rid of capitalism to try and attain some of the Eskimos' happiness but we wouldn't function just because capitalism and materialism is part of us. This cultural evolution has happened over hundreds of years so we won't suddenly attain happiness overnight by simply removing it. Just like in biological evolution, the adaptation process would be slow and often painful -- many would die out, since they wouldn't survive without materialism and banks and private property etc. In an analagous sense this is similar to a western country (e.g. America) trying to instil democracy in a country (e.g. Iraq) that is culturally and politically used to having an autocratic dictatorship for hundreds of years.
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