> As I understand it, capitalism is the free exchange of goods and services centered around personal property.

Not really; that's just a free market, which is linked to but not the same as capitalism.

The core principle of capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. It's just that most of the capitalist societies we know do free-market capitalism specifically.

And there absolutely is a single variable: Profit. It's the one and only variable capitalism optimises for, and anything else requires some form of intervention by tying profit to some other variable (e.g. a carbon tax to make greenhouse emissions more expensive, thereby making it more profitable to avoid these emissions); but that's always just an external force steering the market (thereby making it less of a free market), so it's not capitalism itself optimising for environmental preservation over profit.

> Each individual uses their own set of values in evaluating the net value they get out of the trade

On a small scale, this might be true; but we don't live in a world where most capital gets moved around by small businesses with owners that act based on their moral convictions; we live in a world of massive mega-corporations that shouldn't be expected to follow any moral principles, and that's exactly what we observe: they will do literally whatever they can get away with as long as it increases profit.

At the end of the day, CEOs answer to shareholders, and the only thing they care about is how much money they're making and whether they could be getting into legal trouble for it (to some extent, at least).

From the Investopedia article on Capitalism:

"Another drawback of capitalism is that it often leads to a host of negative externalities, such as air and noise pollution. Negative externalities are costs paid for by society and not the producer of the externality. A factory dumping waste into a river or emitting smoke into the air is a problem shouldered by the communities that the factory is in, and not the business itself."

I'm not sure how to interpret your comment.

I'm not suggesting that negative externalities aren't a thing under capitalism. I'm suggesting parent's definition of capitalism is incorrect. When you define capitalism as a free exchange of goods and services centered around private property, you can see how that quote is misleading at best.

Current humans, on average, place disproportionate value on the things that directly impact them. When they enter into trade under capitalism, they carry that bias with them. This leads to outcomes where individuals (the business in that example) make a decision to improve their standing by dumping waste into a river. But this isn't a shortcoming in capitalism, it's a shortcoming in human nature.

In order for your counter to be complete, you'd need to provide an example of another economic/governing system that humans organize under successfully avoiding those negative externalities. Without that, I don't understand how humans would avoid falling into the same traps under different structures. For example, your quote tells me nothing about how a central planning board under communism responsible for agriculture wouldn't decide to let pesticide run off into a water source in order to deliver the crop yield expected of them. That board is still comprised of humans who are carrying their biases into their interactions.

Right now, at best, my understanding from this conversation is "humans do this under capitalism, therefor humans do this because of capitalism" which isn't a compelling argument.

> In order for your counter to be complete, you'd need to provide an example of another economic/governing system that humans organize under successfully avoiding those negative externalities.

That's a text-book whataboutism. You can't just dismiss the inherent problems with capitalism by just pointing out that other systems have the same or even different problems. That's not the point here. So no, nobody needs to point out a better system.

> For example, your quote tells me nothing about how a central planning board under communism [...]

Tell me you don't know what communism is without telling me you don't know what communism is.

> Right now, at best, my understanding from this conversation is

Yes, you're entirely missing the point because you're trying to defend your world view. Somebody points out a problem with capitalism and your first reflex is "well communism is bad too", which tells me all I need to know about your motivation: 0% intellectual honesty and 100% crony belief.

So here's what the actual point of the conversation is: "Capitalism encourages people doing this, that is a problem"

There is no "because", there is no "as opposed to" and there is no "therefore", simply the statement of a problem. One person might see the solution in replacing capitalism with communism, another might suggest imposing additional restrictions on it. But right now, we're just talking about acknowledging a problem instead of completely shutting down and crying about how it's not capitalism's fault it's not capitalism's fault it's not capitalism's fault it's not capitalism's fault...

> That's a text-book whataboutism. You can't just dismiss the inherent problems with capitalism by just pointing out that other systems have the same or even different problems.

I’m not sure it’s whataboutism. You’ll need to help me get there.

My stance is that this happens under capitalism. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a problem to solve at the capitalism layer of society. And I’m trying to tease that apart.

I’ll try to restate to help. Let’s start with the argument “capitalism incentivizes this.” I don’t disagree with that. My definition of capitalism was incorrect, as a sibling comment pointed out. My definition is closer to free market capitalism. So I’ll use the siblings definition: “Private ownership of the means of production operated for profit.”

If the single variable is maximizing profit, as you argue, we have to understand why anyone would be incentivized by profit. What value does profit offer an individual? I’d submit that, for most operating under capitalism, it’s what you can do with that profit. I’m sure there are exceptions where folks are racking up points like a video game, but I’d hazard a guess most view profit as a medium of exchange. So they aren’t motivated by profit, they have their own set of incentives for accumulating that capital. I’d also argue most market participants also have non-profit motives (I.e. operating in line with their personal values or directly exchanging goods/services without going through currency as a intermediary, like travel being a perk of the job).

Incentives exist in every system. The things people want to use capital for under capitalism exist when you remove capitalism. Humans still want good food, shelter, and shiny bobbles. If you substitute capitalism for another form of self-organizing, and the problem doesn’t go away, I have a hard time understanding why we’d call out capitalism by name.

I don’t see this as a condemnation of capitalism, but as a problem with how individual humans make decisions. My current mental model for this problem, that I’m asking for your help in updating is: “this is a thing humans do, we’ve (mostly) always done this across time and cultures when societies get big, how do we get ourselves to stop?”

Given my understanding that this is a problem intrinsic to humans on average, the problem is with incentives and how to address individuals making decisions in their own self interest on a small scale (under any form of self organization) not being in line with keeping our ecosystems from collapsing and our societies healthy.

> But right now, we're just talking about acknowledging a problem instead of completely shutting down and crying about how it's not capitalism's fault it's not capitalism's fault it's not capitalism's fault it's not capitalism's fault...

No one is doing this. It seems impossible for you to avoid mischaracterise what's being said, so I think it's best to leave this.

> No one is doing this.

Except me, in my first comment, which started this conversation in the first place. Stop trying to convince me of what I'm arguing about, it only makes you look even more like you have no clue about the topic.

> completely shutting down and crying about how it's not capitalism's fault it's not capitalism's fault it's not capitalism's fault it's not capitalism's fault...

I'm saying no one is doing the above.

As I've already said, I don't think you're able to do this. Let's stop.

"But this isn't a shortcoming in capitalism, it's a shortcoming in human nature."

If you can't get wealthy dumping waste into a river under a different economic system the incentive is gone and it shouldn't happen.

"I'm suggesting parent's definition of capitalism is incorrect."

Maybe, but you made up a definition of capitalism.

Capitalism is not defined as a free exchange of gods. Definitions vary but most of the definitions talk about profit as a motive. Your folksy definition leaves out things like ownership of the means of production, capital and labor.

At any rate, your argument amounts to "I declare discussion of capitalism to be limited to this definition I made up." Encouraging people to argue what words mean in the dictionary just seems like derailment.