this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
507 points (97.7% liked)
Political Memes
9162 readers
2947 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
There is also an entire mountain range of innovation thrown out because private business didn’t want it because it might negatively affect their bottom line. It’s staggering how many good ideas and smart people were thrown to the side because the company that owns them decided that it would cost too much, or how many times a company locked down IP that they never planned to use because they didn’t want to spend the money but also didn’t want anyone who did use the idea to compete with them.
What you have is a misunderstanding. Of course a lot of stuff that is “successful” is supported by corporations, that’s the system we live in no matter how good or bad it is. And you’d be shocked to realize how many government organizations or projects that only survived through government funding were major developments, if you looked. You’d be even more surprised just how many people can innovate without fancy machines and the only reason they need them is for mass production, not for the design and prototyping phase.
Seriously, we do not need to live with unpredictable, dangerous billionaire middlemen in order to make the world a better place.
You're right! I do not believe the concentration of wealth into so few hands is necessary or even a good thing. What I am saying is that the profit motive is necessary in order to mobilize people who do not care about your great new idea, no matter how great it is. Do you really think intentional shipping would function at any recognizable level if there wasn't profit in it for the sailors, ship builders, insurance companies, port authorities, and so on and so forth? None of then give a shit about your really cool idea. They don't even know about it. But they're necessary for you to get ahold of that molybdenum you need in order to prove your idea works, much less scale it to production levels that would actually benefit society.
You have to remember, the world is filled with people who mostly just want to hang out with their friends, and that's fine. Some of us are movers, shakers, and innovators, yes, but we need help from all those people who would rather be tanning or at a soccer match. How do we get them to help out? Pay em. Give them money for their trouble.
When the Tulsa race riots happened, black applications for patents in the US fell dramatically. Why? Because black people saw that they could put in lots of hard work, become hugely successful, and the US government wasn't gonna protect them and their wealth like it would other people's. Why spend your time on something that could be taken at at any moment? It should be unsurprising for you to learn that increases corruption and authoritarianism cause decreases in inventions and economic activity. Why? Same reason. Why put in the hard work and take the risks if some official's cousin is going to get a contract at ridiculous rates and drive you out of business? Why even bother when the government could just nationalize your industry on a whim?
You mentioned that businesses will kill ideas they don't think are profitable or will cannibalize sales. Do you know who used to be the biggest killer of innovation? The government and the workers. Most innovation is fundamentally finding ways to do things better with less labor. You know who doesn't like suddenly not having a job? Workers. Why would a government oppose labor saving devices? Too many people out of a job can lead to political unrest.
I suggest: Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson.
Of course black patents, in a world where their ideas could be stolen and they could even be barred from access to them, went down. Like, that’s in a system with a heavy profit motive.
People will always like a little treat for doing their task. That’s at a very basic level, though, and when you start talking about everyone needing a “profit motive” you’re now talking about an economic system that claims that few people would do anything without a deeply selfish reward. And yea, not everyone would have the really great ideas but they would do work, and we can see that happen. I literally don’t have a job right now and just to keep busy I’ll go help my friends with stuff, for free, because I like to keep busy and feel productive. The low salaries in my last few jobs weren’t the reasons I left, it was because the management made it very clear they didn’t value any of us and were essentially stealing our labour to enrich themselves.
Like in the patent example, the thing people want is for their work to be recognized. If you steal their work they get pissed, obviously, but most people are happy to do things for others. I even know conservatives who are genuinely motivated to make the world a better place and who want to supprort others(except that they’re really stupid and easily misinformed so they end up doing it wrong and it turns them sour on anyone who isn’t directly in front of them).
Let’s invert the reason why people out of a job leads to political unrest: People with longer hours and low pay are simply largely unable to risk anything when there are no social safety nets, and it gives them more time to actually get into politics and learn about shitty things that the government is doing. It’s a big reason that the USA is the way that it is right now but many countries in Europe have shorter work weeks, better pay, more protections for workers, and stronger safety nets.
You’ve got everything backwards because it’s all you know. You’re justifying the suffering being inflicted on you because it’s easier than facing it.
You're looking at the source of new ideas: inventive people, and saying they would exist under any system. I'm looking at the system and saying great ideas go nowhere without a way to engage people who don't care about your idea.
Imagine a world without money. In order to convince people to promote and enable your great idea, you have to convince them it's valuable, beneficial, and actually a great idea. Imagine a world with money. In order to convince people to promote and enable your great idea, you have to pay them. I'm being serious here: which do you think is easier?
A massive reason why people are hard to convince in the system we live in is because they’re scared of not having enough money. Trying new things is hard and scary when you don’t have a lot of money to go around. On the flipside, if all you have to do is pay them then it doesn’t matter if your idea is good or bad, only that you have enough money to pay for it and your competitor doesn’t. A big wallet is not a good replacement for convincing people that an idea is good.
I don’t care which is easier when one of them is basically cheating. Of course it’s simpler to essentially bribe people to care, but that’s not a system we should strive for. I don’t mind a challenge if the challenge is fair, or near enough to fair.
Besides, money is definitely a fine thing to have and we know this. The problem is when it is made the central and singular goal of a system and when people who don’t have an active income stream are left in the dirt.
But like, money is what creates the profit motive? How do you keep money and remove the ability to accumulate wealth? Money is power and there are those who crave power. I agree, the less money you have, the more help you should get. Same with the opposite. But like, this discussion is based off "innovation exists without the profit motive" and I chimed in to point out that it's not really the innovation that the profit motive is good for. It's all the support systems around the invitation that enable these ideas to become big. The ultra-fast pace of innovation is enabled by these systems and given us all the wonderful medicines and quality of life improvements. I am on disability. My lifestyle is immense luxury compared to royalty from even just a dozen generations ago.
Money is power when the lack of it is death and/or suffering. If someone wants to work a little more or does something particularly awesome then ok, they get a cooler thing, but when you take care of everyone’s basic needs and you properly enforce taxation then everything on top is just a little bonus and not a runaway train to tyrrany. Money is not the core of that system but it can still exist.
I was thinking about this conversation earlier while watching a video about vaccines and was reminded also that the profit motive, for many companies in that sphere, actually prevents them from releasing technologies that could help people long term because they make more money off of costly, short term solutions. Life saving medicine is worthless to these people of they can’t charge a premium for it and but you better believe they’ll lock down that patent so no one else can get to it, just in case.
See, that’s the thing about putting money first, it doesn’t matter how you get it. Sometimes you gotta innovate, but these companies are chasing easy money, not honest money. I mean look at stock market traders and you’ll see an army of criminals and thieves. The very concept of private health insurance is making gobs of money off of people you never plan on actually helping in their time of greatest need. Large corporations will spend untold millions on propaganda and hush money schemes before they’ll actually make improvements. 3M knew the dangers of PFAS and still dumped it into the environment and hurt a lot of people. GM did the math and found that recalls for a faulty ignition would be more expensive than paying out any settlements if someone died so they just let it ride because the lives of their customers are less important than lining their pockets.
I need you to work on imagining a better world. It’s not that far away but we’ll never reach it if we don’t even try.
I think you take my defense of the usefulness of the profit motive, and the wonderful things it's gotten us, as a declaration that it is the best external motivator and should be used in all situations. Of course not.
Your first paragraph is simply not true in the sense that even if everyone's basic needs were met (and we should create a society where they are) money would still be the main source of power outside violence. Most people are not satisfied by basic necessities, especially when given examples that better is possible.
Your second paragraph is an excellent example of the limitations of the profit motive, and it's why we should continue to fund public research and development in areas where the profit motive fails. We already do it and in fact we should significantly increase our funding levels. There are other areas where the profit motive fails (utilities, healthcare at the point of delivery, national defense, education, etc.) and I think we (the United States) should expand into internet and universal health insurance.
For your third paragraph.... What do you want? For humans to be better? They will nearly always go with the easy solution. It's weirdos who look at difficult problems and take the honest, long term, responsible solution at the expense of themselves or even just short-term pain. This is fine. You're not going to change human nature. I just don't know what kind of system you want to set up where money still exists, yet greedy short-sighted people don't exist or work their ways into leadership positions at companies? I think the current punishments they receive for their bad behavior isn't nearly harsh or immediate enough, but.... They're still gonna do it.
I have lots of improvements I want to make to the world, they just don't involve denying human nature when you keep the fundamental structure of the system they exist in.