Because the only thing that’s valued in a capitalist system is money. Poor people are not protected from pollution by the rich because they can’t afford to protect themselves.
There is no “valuation of emissions” in true unfettered capitalism. There is only the fact that the richer you are, the more you can afford to emit, pretty much linearly. I could never emit what a billionaire does because I can’t afford a private yacht or jet. I literally just don’t have the money to do so.
Ah, I see what you’re saying. I think your use of the word “deserves” is what threw me (and looks like other people) off here. I agree that in a capitalist system he as able to emit far more than the rest of us of course. However much he’s able to.
Capitalism as an economic system makes no sort of moral judgment that the word “deserves” implies though. That’s something that we project onto it.
Money is how resources are allocated in the system. It’s quite literally saying that those with more money deserve more resources than those with less.
Again, that is just not present in capitalism as an economic theory. There’s arguments to be made about capitalism as a sociological construct / how it exists in different systems around the world, and how that differs from capitalism as an economic theory, and how ethics enters there. But capitalism as an economic theory does not prescribe any moral judgment on its members.
I say all this as a leftist who hasn’t shopped at Target or Amazon for the better part of half a decade. I am not arguing for capitalism in any way.
We might just not have anything else to say here. I think I’m more or less repeating myself.
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u/a_trane13 May 04 '25
I didn’t say it should be. I said that’s what capitalism says it should be.