Thread by @TristamPratori1

The profit motive (that is, the *exclusive* use of *limited* resources for personal benefit) is a remnant of prior economic systems that were predicated on scarcity.

We also know that ideologies favoring hierarchy and (e.g right-wing ones) are based on a scarcity mentality.

Social classes and economic inequality are not inevitable, they are the result of underlying methods that humanity uses to produce for its survival.

We can see that humanity becomes more egalitarian as production resources develop and become more abundant.

The move from feudalism based on *scarce* natural resources (such as land) to capitalism based on *abundant* reproduced resources (machines) reduced many hierarchies.

In the transition to industrialized capitalist societies in the 19th and 18th centuries, the (liberal) supporters of representative government and natural rights were the bourgeoisie that produced using *abundant* resources, capital.

Meanwhile, the conservative supporters of the old, pre-modern order based on monarchies and autocratic states were land-owners who produced with *scarce* resources and reproduced general material scarcity in their form of economic activity.

Democracy and other egalitarian ideas emerged from industrialization. When production moved away from land, which required strict control of a large and unproductive labor force, the need for autocratic states in the eyes of the dominant social class was removed.

And because the use of capital in production rather than land induced sustained economic expansion for the first time in human history, the constant elimination of scarcity in many other areas (such as knowledge and expertise) was necessary.

This is where universal public education comes from. You cannot afford to keep the masses uneducated when they must do more than just menial labor on plantations and farms.

Furthermore, even today we can observe that the more conservative sections of society are industries that manage scarcity.

This is why the energy and agriculture sectors are known to be more conservative, because their form of production is to control physical things.

The more liberal industries (technology, film and entertainment) are at the opposite end of the spectrum, they produce almost completely immaterial things. They are not managing scarcity so much as contributing freely.

The ''profit motive'' of capitalism is internally contradictory with the constantly expanding forces of production and material wealth in that same economic system.

Such will only direct most activity and possibly even exist if resources, opportunities and knowledge are limited.

Think of it this way, you cannot sell a CD player for a profit if everyone has a CD player.

The same is true for the infinitely more complex systems of production and exchange that compose any economic system.