>she's absolutely succeeding according to the values of capitalism.
It is not entirely clear why you call these the values of capitalism. These are universal human values that do not depend on the economic formation.
If anything, capitalism makes people less cynical, simply because it is designed to function independently of such qualities in people. While in many other systems, cynicism, cruelty, unscrupulousness and deceitfulness of people are simply ignored, giving people with such qualities huge advantages within the system and ruining the lives of everyone else.
Capitalism is not "designed", for starters. It is an economic formation that emerged through natural forces. And if there's anything that process optimized for, it's allowing cynical, cruel, unscrupulous and deceitful people (who, as you rightly note, existed before) to take advantage of the new technological advancements like industrialization, which the previous arrangement was not particularly good at.
The reason these qualities aren't rewarded isn't because of capitalism itself, it's due to the enforcement of laws and regulations against them. The profit motive incentives owners to adopt practices like employing children because they will work for less than an adult, or suppressing research harmful to their core business like how tobacco companies were aware of the harm of smoking long before they publicly acknowledged them
To clarify, are you suggesting capitalism doesn't select for cynicism, cruelty, unscrupulousness, and deceitfulness? If so I find that remarkable.
If I were to guess at what true universal human values were, I'd take a look at history, anthropology, theology, and philosophy. The trend seems to be that humans universally value selflessness, sharing, doing good to one another, long term thinking, justice, and fairness. Humans seem to universally deride greed, selfishness, cowardice, causing harm to other humans, injustice, unfairness, and boastfulness.
I argue that the derided values are those that are rewarded the most under capitalism, and capitalism at its worst punishes those that live the desired values.
It sounds like you disagree, so, some examples:
In my characterization of the worker / employer relationship, the employer that best is able to exploit their workers (without going so far as to have measurably negative consequences on output or turnover), will have the highest profit margins compared to their competitors, all other things being equal. When they've all found all the other inefficiencies in the market, the last that remains is how terribly they can treat the workforce and still turn a profit. The investment market will see this organization having the highest margins and reward it with the largest stock price. The people who made the decisions to treat the workers poorly will be compensated well for it, being executives and having equity. They might even build career reputations on being able to come into a company and find the maximum possible level of exploitation (it won't be called that, it's called cost cutting or similar).
Thus capitalism rewarded treating humans poorly and short term thinking. Conversely the employer that treats its workers well won't have as high profit margins or growth, money to spend on stock buybacks etc, and so will have a lower stock price, lower valuations, etc, and will be punished according to the KPIs of capitalism. "How happy are your workers" isn't a KPI of capitalism.
Next, the cigarette industry. People like smoking tobacco. People would have bought paper tubes with tobacco in it. But they wouldn't smoke it as much as paper tubes with tobacco and a shitload of known-toxic additives. So, the companies that added a bunch of toxic additives (that increase addictiveness, etc), were rewarded immensely under capitalism. When non capitalist mechanisms kicked in to limit their profits, the companies leveraged their capitalistic power to maintain margins, through lobbying. Thus greed and harming humans was rewarded under capitalism. Marlboro is worth far more than your given indie tobacco purveyor that doesn't add additives.
Just look at the overall state of our society and the fact that capitalism rewards our most derided values and often punishes our most treasured values is fairly obvious: teachers make less than investment bankers. Landlord success is correlated with tenant misery. Public transit in the USA died to feed the automative industry. I mean, America turned its healthcare into a for-profit industry, and just look at the results. But, the health insurance industry is worth 1.59 trillion, so, by capitalism's values, it's awesome!
>you suggesting capitalism doesn't select for cynicism, cruelty, unscrupulousness, and deceitfulness?
Yeas, that is exactly what I am saying. People with these qualities still receive certain advantages, but selection selection by these qualities does not happening as in other social systems.
>The trend seems to be that humans universally value selflessness, sharing, doing good to one another, long term thinking, justice, and fairness.
Not universlly, and that's the problem. And you can ignore this fact and fall into slavery to the most cruel, deceitful and selfish people, or you can effectively protect yourself from such people with the help of capitalism.
>I argue that the derided values are those that are rewarded the most under capitalism
For the purposes of the discussion, I am even ready to agree with this to a certain extent. It's just that without capitalism, people with such qualities get everything, including other people as slaves.
>The people who made the decisions to treat the workers poorly will be compensated well for it
The people who made the decisions to treat the workers poorly will not receive a single worker. Because there is competition for labor and because the worker has the freedom to decide where and how to work. This is why workers under capitalism get the best conditions among all social systems.
>the companies leveraged their capitalistic power to maintain margins, through lobbying.
That is, through other non-capitalist mechanisms. The obvious problem of the lack of capitalism
> Yeas, that is exactly what I am saying. People with these qualities still receive certain advantages, but selection selection by these qualities does not happening as in other social systems.
Oh, well, I disagree, and the evidence supports my position. The people who capitalism has most rewarded are billionaires. Billionaires became as rich as they are through cynicism, cruelty, unscrupulousness, and deceitfulness. I challenge you to find me a billionaire without these qualities in spades.
I'm happy to hear arguments that other modes of economic organization may also reward these values if it makes you feel better, but I maintain my point that capitalism rewards them also. In comparison, gift economies reward the opposite values.
> Not universlly, and that's the problem.
I do agree that it's worth a hedge, however, it appears these values are as near-universal as is possible for humans. Every religion I've ever learned about teaches these lessons, Confucianism for the most part as well, we can read about these values in Plato, Aristotle, ancient Greek myths, ancient native american myths... certainly there are outlier cultures, but for these values to be an underlying current in so many cultures... what else could we call universal?
> . And you can ignore this fact and fall into slavery to the most cruel, deceitful and selfish people, or you can effectively protect yourself from such people with the help of capitalism.
But, under capitalism, the majority of people are wage enslaved. Certainly an improvement over chattel slavery, no arguments from me! However given that many forms of slavery persist in the capitalist world, including wage slavery, I don't agree that capitalism stops slavery. In fact totally unfettered capitalism would select for it. We saw this with factory towns. Why do you think capitalism prevents slavery?
> It's just that without capitalism, people with such qualities get everything, including other people as slaves.
I don't understand, are you talking about feudalism or something? I agree with you that feudal lords had many of these features, but feudalism even more than capitalism selected for orifice origin, so I don't think it really selected for much other than how long you could keep enemy states at bay and how long you could keep the peasants from revolting.
> The people who made the decisions to treat the workers poorly will not receive a single worker.
Why do Amazon warehouse workers work in such terrible conditions?
> Because there is competition for labor and because the worker has the freedom to decide where and how to work. This is why workers under capitalism get the best conditions among all social systems.
You genuinely believe working class people have freedom to decide where to work? Geographical limitations, background limitations, whether or not someone has any criminal record, there's so many reasons that many people are trapped in their jobs and can't really move. This is like the fundamental reason wages are allowed to be as low as they are today. It's flagrantly obvious there's today almost no worker freedom today.
> That is, through other non-capitalist mechanisms. The obvious problem of the lack of capitalism
It is not entirely clear why you call these the values of capitalism. These are universal human values that do not depend on the economic formation.
If anything, capitalism makes people less cynical, simply because it is designed to function independently of such qualities in people. While in many other systems, cynicism, cruelty, unscrupulousness and deceitfulness of people are simply ignored, giving people with such qualities huge advantages within the system and ruining the lives of everyone else.