DBT
Contributor
It isn't indifference to ethics; it's just that trying to explain ethics to anticapitalists is exhausting and usually futile. They are trapped in a zero-sum-game mentality that got hard-wired into our brains from a million years of living as hunter-gatherers, and ten thousand years of farming hasn't been long enough to wrap their minds around the new reality that zero-sum-game thinking has become hopelessly, unethically, obsolete.This easygoing indifference to ethics is based in turn on a hyper-capitalist, utilitarian assumption that the "invisible hand" of free market exchange will inevitably produce (literally) the greatest good for the greatest number (Dobson, 1999; Verschoor, 2002). By mere compliance with the market mechanism, self-interest becomes virtue.
Nothing that I have said has been anti capitalist. You are mistaking anti excessive concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a small percentage of the worlds population as anti capitalist.
The two are not the same. You could take it as improving capitalism.
No matter how many ways the problems of gross power and economic imbalance is explained, it is taken as anti capitalism, a left wing, socialist attack on capitalism and the free market.
That certainly does get exhausting.
The Disadvantages of Economic Inequality
Inequality Stifles GrowthA degree of inequality can act as a positive influence on economic growth in the short term.[24] However, some economists find empirical evidence of a negative correlation of about 0.5-0.8 percentage points between long-term growth rates and sustained economic inequality.[25]
A variety of explanations have been proposed to explain how inequality can work to stifle growth. A high level of economic inequality means a higher level of poverty. Poverty is associated with increased crime and poor public health, which places burdens on the economy. In the face of increasing food prices and lower incomes, support for pro-growth government policies declines.[26] Wealthy citizens maintain disproportionate political power compared to poorer citizens,[27] which encourages the development of inefficient tax structures skewed in favor of the wealthy. Unequal income distribution increases political instability, which threatens property rights, increases the risk of state repudiated contracts, and discourages capital accumulation.[28] A widening rich-poor gap tends to increase the rate of rent-seeking and predatory market behaviors that hinder economic growth.[29]
According to one theory, growth is suppressed in economically unequal societies, after a phase of increased growth, by the decreasing availability of investments for human capital. Physical capital becomes increasingly scarce, as fewer individuals have funds to invest in training and education.[30] As a result, demands for human capital are difficult or impossible to meet, and economic growth stalls.[31] As an additional consequence, market demands increase for risky unsecured loans, which increase lenders’ risk exposure to the borrower’s default. More risks in the markets increase market volatility and the possibility of cascading defaults such as the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis.[32]