Capitalism forever

Charles Brown CharlesB at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us
Wed Feb 27 10:05:17 PST 2002


Brad Delong: In Easterlin's belief, we are trapped... Material desires are never sated. They never lose importance in the relative scale of human concerns.

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CB: Interesting book. What's his evidence that material desires are never sated , that no human society has ever satisfied its material desires ?

^^^^^^

And so a social system--"capitalism"--which is as if designed to play off of this weak point in human psychology can flourish indefinitely.

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CB: Did it really take humans 40,000 years or more to come up with a system to play off of this human weak point, or is it more likely that many societies managed to satisfy their historically derived material desires substantially ?



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