Is Capitalism Human Nature?

There’s nothing on TV that captures the psychology of billionaires quite like Succession. The show’s patriarch, Logan Roy, is loosely based on Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News and the Sun IRL. A lovely guy.

In one powerful scene, Logan’s son calls him evil for monetizing the worst impulses of humanity.

Logan responds, “Life’s not knights on horseback. It’s a number on a piece of paper. It’s a fight for a knife in the mud.”

He claims he knows things about the world, “not necessarily nice things”, which he exploited to make his fortune. In his mind, if he wasn’t the one doing the exploiting, someone else would have.

All of us have the tendency to underestimate our own responsibility in creating the rules and norms of the world. Logan Roy talks of the world as if he had no hand in creating it. As if he doesn’t have the literal POTUS on speed dial.

Not everyone is as powerful as Logan Roy, but people create the world.

What we believe to be true creates the world. Logan Roy believes life is a battle to the death, and his belief shifted the world in that direction even further. The world is preprogrammed to some extent, but we are constantly making and remaking it.

A few weeks ago, I was at a family member’s place which has an amazing view of Los Angeles. You can see the skyscrapers of Downtown LA, the Hollywood sign, and Griffith Observatory in one panorama.

I’ve admired the view a few times, then I usually end up lamenting on the blend of colonialism, capitalism, slavery, and exploitation that led to the creation of a city like LA.

On my last visit, I realized that this perspective, while true, didn’t capture the full picture.

This time, I looked closer at the view, and I realized how many trees there were. There were more trees than almost anything else.

Woven between the threads of painful legacies were branches and roots and leaves that give us oxygen, cool shade, and quiet spiritual wisdom. All because someone made a decision to preserve the trees.

It’s important to criticize the systems that have created pain. But there is also ample evidence of human kindness. Holding these two truths at once is challenging but radical work.

We can apply this thinking to the way we view human nature in general.

In the past, my optimistic view of human nature has been met with patronizing remarks about my naivete, especially from guys in Econ classes or anyone who likes finance bro meme pages like Litquidity.

The nasty thing about capitalism is it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom.

Die-hard capitalists like Logan Roy claim “capitalism is just human nature” or “people are inherently greedy and the only other alternative to capitalism is destitution for everyone so I might as well try and win”.

This narrow view of human nature, that we are doomed to dominate, kill, and take, is one most people buy into. It’s only perpetuated and confirmed by a daily onslaught of negative and fearful media.

Our beliefs create the systems we live in.

The system we collectively buy into right now is a system of capitalism and patriarchy. At the core, this system holds deeply unforgiving assumptions about human nature.

Is there something ingrained in human default settings that has doomed us to create such a distorted system? And is that system doomed to destroy us and this precious planet, because we can’t be better? The collective certainly believes so, otherwise the system couldn’t exist.

Humans have reached an extremely powerful point in our evolution. We are wielding energy capable of wiping out the very planet that gives us life, and we are doing exactly that. This is tragic, but it’s not our fate.

Let’s unpack the collective beliefs that keep these systems in place.

Belief 1: Capitalism is human nature.

“It's a dog-eat-dog world”.

Our society normalizes the idea that hierarchy, domination, and exploitation are unavoidable truths of human nature and there's nothing we can do about it.

Some may even point to Darwin's theory of evolution as justification for capitalism. This idea that human beings are naturally evolved to dominate each other and “win” to survive is deeply ingrained in patriarchal ideology. It’s a problematic interpretation, like most historical “facts” that are used to justify harm.

In actuality, evolution states that an organism will do whatever it takes to survive and prosper. Human beings have always needed cooperation to survive. How else could we have built the Pyramids of Giza or developed life-saving medicine?

There’s hard evidence that enforcing a hierarchy is detrimental to human cooperation because lower-ranked people tend to be less invested in the goal. Anyone who’s worked a minimum wage job will attest, no study needed.

There’s nothing “natural” about organizing human beings into haves and have-nots. There’s nothing “natural” about assigning different values to different people. We are all worthy, we are all valuable, just as we are. Imagine if we institutionalized this kind of self-love. Instead, we have institutionalized self-loathing.

Miki Kashtan, creator of the Nonviolent Global Liberation Community, writes on her blog ‘The Fearless Heart’ about the feeling people in the Global North feel knowing our lifestyles come at the expense of people in the Global South. She calls this feeling “moral anguish”.

She argues that perpetuating violence, even unintentionally, creates inner pain. To deal with this inner pain, we numb and distract ourselves with consumerism, drugs, or we become depressed or anxious.

From this perspective, capitalism goes against human nature. We must continually deny and suppress our humanity to keep this system going.

Belief 2: Humans are fundamentally self-interested.

It was Adam Smith who said, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the baker, or the brewer that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Smith is one of the most influential figures in modern economic thought.

The global economic system is built on the assumption that people are motivated by advancing themselves first, and any act of good towards another is simply considered philanthropy, or extra.

As expected from a patriarchal system, there is no mention of love anywhere in modern economics. Love is brushed off as trivial in patriarchal systems. There is no mention of love in politics, institutions or the education system. But it’s the only reason any of us are alive.

Human babies require huge investment and parental sacrifice, for a long period of time. Motherhood is the most powerful proof of the fact that humans aren’t purely motivated by self-interest. But what would Adam Smith know about that?

There are so many other examples of human generosity that exist beyond pure self-interest. Indigenous Peoples around the world conserve more of the planet’s biodiversity than national parks and forests. People on a lower income tend to donate a higher proportion of their earnings to charity than higher-income people.

If you need more proof, here’s a question for you. Are you purely self-interested? Do you wake up every day solely concerned with you and only you? Or do you show concern, care, and consideration for other people? I'd say most people do.

Saying human beings are fundamentally self-interested is like saying human beings are fundamentally angry. Sure, we all get angry or act angry from time to time. But we are also capable of calm. We all act in pure self-interest from time to time. But we are also capable of selfless generosity.

This belief about the fundamentals of human nature has created an economic system designed to reward humanity’s worst qualities.

Some of these beliefs about human nature are also reinforced by popular religions. For example, Christianity believes all humans are born sinners, which feeds into the idea that certain harmful qualities are simply human nature.

For humans, a pessimistic outlook is hardwired in order to protect us from danger. Human brains have a negativity bias.

It feels safer to assume all people are greedy and selfish. It’s much scarier to have trust in each other. But it’s also the only way we can ever hope to live in peace long-term.

Art by Astrid Babayan

To imagine a better system, we must place more belief in humanity’s better qualities. We must override our brain’s natural tendency to pick out the negative. We must make an effort to see the overwhelming good around us.

When we look at the night sky, do we focus on the darkness or do we wonder at the shimmering beauty of the stars?

Once we start to notice the positive, it keeps growing. People die every day, but billions also keep on living. Hate is growing, but love is everywhere. Over time, difficult things get better if given the chance and attention.

Human society is alive, like anything else. It’s messy, complex, and subject to change. Everyone alive collectively creates and destroys norms with the choices we make.

It’s not because there’s anything faulty about human nature that we live in a capitalist system.

We must first believe that we can be better, in order to create better.