this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2026
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Selfishness. Capitalism rewards and reinforces selfishness. As others pointed out, making more money than what you've worked for requires that you start out with more money and the more money you started out with, the more you are rewarded with more. And remember that money, the thing we agree socially has universal value, is essentially frozen labor (labor being the source of value). It is only feasible through money to accumulate others' labor. An accumulation of money that you didn't work for (i.e. capital) is stolen labor. Capitalism rewards the hoarding of stolen labor, with the more labor you hoard the more you are rewarded with. Capitalism fundamentally, definitionally, requires the exploitation of others and once again, the more exploitation you do, the more exploitation you are able to do and the more value you possess. That is the epitome of selfishness.
A great deal of evil flows from this, including the pathological individualism that infects the deepest aspects of a capitalist society, it is the system reproducing itself.