Selfishness that benefits the whole

[integral]

A selfish act can still benefit the whole. That's how most of society runs, and the government's job is to control and coordinate selfishness. 

That's the heart of capitalism. To take the individual selfishness of everyone and make them all play a game together, so their actions benefit the whole not just themselves.

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

Except selfishness is not really the decisive distinction between the two. In order to win in capitalism, you need to become a highly efficient human being who's cognizant of other people's needs. And you need to keep being that way or else your business fails, or you'll possibly get fired from your job. Etc. So you may be selfish but your frame of mind and your actions cannot be actually selfish or else you won't succeed. If you compare that with the people in goverment, all they need to do is to pretend like they're gonna deliver something and then just baricade themselves for years and do nothing

[Jodistrict]

This is a charming myth propagated by economic schools.  But the fruits go to the top who manipulate the financial system and provide no real value in return.

[Basman]

5 hours ago, Jodistrict said:

This is a charming myth propagated by economic schools.  But the fruits go to the top who manipulate the financial system and provide no real value in return.

Your standard of living is leagues above historically, mate. Chill out and smell the roses a little. The fact that you have time to type shit is cushy AF.

[integral]

11 hours ago, Jodistrict said:

This is a charming myth propagated by economic schools.  But the fruits go to the top who manipulate the financial system and provide no real value in return.

Yes that's happening but because the government had its anti-corruption policies dismantled by people who accumulated too much money.

If you look at other countries like the Norwegian countries they have anticruption built in very strongly and their culture shun's corruption very strongly.

In the US they had the same anti-corruption mechanisms as the Norwegian, it was just slowly dismantled and you could see the history of all the points for where this happened in the past hundred years.

Edited yesterday at 02:10 AM by integral

[Jannes]

On 25.4.2026 at 10:29 PM, Basman said:

Your standard of living is leagues above historically, mate. Chill out and smell the roses a little. The fact that you have time to type shit is cushy AF.

Its beneficial for the elites to give society good living standard as that will make them more productive. 

In countries where the economy runs on natural resources living standards are usually very low, as it doesnt help or even hinders the elites, as a strong population could overthrow the government. 

[Jannes]

I think society would run much better if people were actually selfless. 

Selfishness can be beneficial for the whole or damaging. 

Scamming people for money, delivering fake products, lying, cheating are all selfish things which dont benefit the whole. 

If I develop a great product with the intention of making lots of money, thats beneficial to the whole. 

Higher forms of selfishness include more parts of others. 

[integral]

4 minutes ago, Jannes said:

I think society would run much better if people were actually selfless. 

Selfishness can be beneficial for the whole or damaging. 

Scamming people for money, delivering fake products, lying, cheating are all selfish things which dont benefit the whole. 

If I develop a great product with the intention of making lots of money, thats beneficial to the whole. 

Higher forms of selfishness include more parts of others. 

But that's not what Society is, the point I was saying is everyone it selfish and some people more selfish than others and now we need a strategy to get everyone to work together to benefit the whole.

Obviously we want people to be selfless, but that's just not going to happen

Edited 8 hours ago by integral

[Jannes]

1 minute ago, integral said:

But that's not what Society is, the point I was saying is everyone it selfish and some people more selfish than others and now we need a strategy to get everyone to work together to benefit the whole.

Obviously we want people to be selfless, but that's just not going to happen

Hehe and that strategy itself is selfish.

Yeah good point. 

[Basman]

1 hour ago, Jannes said:

Its beneficial for the elites to give society good living standard as that will make them more productive. 

In countries where the economy runs on natural resources living standards are usually very low, as it doesnt help or even hinders the elites, as a strong population could overthrow the government. 

Cartoonish.

[Bjorn K Holmstrom]

The system does incentivize some unselfishness, but it is largely skewed toward harmful behavior, lacks efficiency and coordination, and optimizes for the wrong metrics, if we consider the well-being of all.

[Jannes]

4 hours ago, Basman said:

Cartoonish.

My explanation was a little short and oversimplistic, but I am not talking out of my arse, its a thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse