this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2026
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Are you sure the growth of capitalism and the growth of technology are independent variables? Maybe they both contributed to each other and to people's conditions as a byproduct when the growth was big enough. It also seems some socialist countries' population have had some benefits from their country opening to a mixed economy with some free market and capitalism, instead of following strict socialist only policies.
"Mixed economy" isn't a phrase that fits in anyone's ideology though.
Technology was going to develop either way. This feels like your trying to to apply the age old talking point that competition breeds innovation and most of the innovation bred these days is how to make everything worse and more expensive. Whether it be apple innovating a way to brick apple devices using the "wrong" parts, planned obsolescence, over utilization of wifi and "AI".
The soft implication that people don't want to develop technology to improve lives unless they're getting paid is a really disturbing one.
It's a bit hard to say anything against what yoir saying as well because you didn't specify anything. What capitalist/free market policies, what countries?
Competition can breed innovation but I think it needs enough regulation for fair competition to actually happen and to protect consumers against abuse. I think this regulation was progressively dismantled in the USA especially under the various right wing presidents, culminating with the current one.
It's not the only motivation, but it's a big help. Do you believe people would be able to work as much without other incentive than helping people?
As an example, I do volunteering, but there's no way I would ever reach the same level of productivity as I do at my paid job.
China moved to a mixed economy system after the death of its ideologist.
Your again not specifying what exactly is happening. What's the job and what's the volunteer work. Some volunteer services will require you give it your all. Some jobs are very relaxed. What your talking about has less to do with incentive and more to do with lax labor laws. Nonvolunteer work isn't giving you upwards of 12 hours of mandatory overtime.
Incentives also aren't just rewards they're punishments and companies absolutely take advantage of the fact people are fucked without a job.
Your job and volunteer work likely have different expectations of performance from the get go and that has nothing to do with incentives.
You did touch on something though. Incentives can push people to work harder, now the issue is, what else does it introduce? It introduces redundancy where everything is being done twice, thrice, etc etc. How much more work could be done if they were working together.
If we want to talk about thinking well I don't think cancer researchers are in it for the money. I don't think many researchers are and if there are people like that it's only because society has been driving us to do that for centuries. In fact I would argue it harms innovation because it incentivizes people to work towards things that make money.
By doing so we shun vulnerable minorities who aren't a viable customer base. Minorities like trans people, amputees, chronic stroke victims, etc.
Hell this even hurts the majority, most food research is privately funded by parties with a conflict of interest. It's not just big dairy, it's big everything. In fact that's how the Anti-Vaccine movement blew up in the firat place, it started as an anti-MMR movement by Wakefield who had a financial motive to have people buy individual vaccines.
At what point do we just accept it's not capitalism that brings innovation to sociolism but the opposite? There are well intentioned people still working within capitalism, but it's in spite of it, not because of it.
China moved to a mixed economy system after the death of its ideologist.
I'm not touching this.
Sorry, I'm not going to give you private information.
I guess your experience is from the USA where democracy, labour laws, social systems and regulations are all pretty dysfunctional, and getting worse as half the voters keep supporting it going worse.
Consider a European social country where those are more functional, with reasonable work time, no mandatory overtime, public healthcare etc.
You are focusing on possible bad outcomes of being paid for something and ignoring the rest, such as motivation and earning money through where you are best at, so you can buy what you are not good at or not have time to produce yourself.
Working towards things that make money can also mean working towards things where there is a demand. It makes the economy more efficient when the offer tries to match the demand. That's the point of having some freedom in a market instead of believing some political bureau can estimate it all from their ideological elite point of view. The trade off is that it requires proper regulation to prevent negative outcomes on people, which also not easy.
Too bad you're not touching the mixed economy point because it's a pretty good illustration about my point of the usefulness of some degree of free market and capitalism, since it comes from a country that calls itself socialist.