Capitalism is the widelly accepted self-serving justification of those people for their acts.
The real problem is in the “widelly accepted” part: a sociopath killing an old lady and justifying it because “she looked funny at me” wouldn’t be “widelly accepted” and Society would react in a suitable way, but if said sociopath scammed the old lady’s pension fund because (and this is a typical justification in Investment Banking) “the opportunity was there and if I didn’t do it somebody else would’ve, so better be me and get the profit”, it’s deemed “acceptable” and Society does not react in a suitable way.
Mind you, Society (as in, most people) might actually want to react in a suitable way, but the structures in our society are such that the Official Power Of Force in our countries is controlled by a handful of people who got there with crafty marketing and backroom plays, and those deem it “acceptable”.
People will always find justification to be asholes. Capitalism tried to harvest that energy and unleashed it’s full potential, with rather devastating consequences.
Sure, but think-structures matter. We could have a system that doesn’t reward psychopathic business choices (as much), while still improving our lives bit by bit. If the system helps a bit with making the right choices, that would matter a lot.
That’s basically what I wrote, (free) market economy especially in combination with credit based capitalism gives those people a perfect combination of a system to thrive in. This seems to result in very fast progress and immense wealth, which is not distributed very equally. Than again, I prefer Besos and Zuckerberg as CEOs rather than politicians or warlords. Dudes with big Egos and Ambitions need something productive to work on.
It’s deemed “acceptable”? A sociopath scamming an old lady’s pension is basically the “John Wick’s dog” moment that leads to the insane death-filled warpath in recent movie The Beekeeper.
This is the kind of edgelord take that routinely expects worse than the worst of society with no proof to their claims.
This is the kind of shit I saw from the inside in Investment Banking before and after the 2008 Crash.
None of those assholes ever gets prison time for the various ways in which they abuse markets and even insider info for swindeling amongst other Pension Funds, so de facto the Society we have with the power structures it has, accepts it.
