Oh, agreed. That doesn't mean we can't have a capitalistic society that is operated intelligently. Capitalism unrestrained is like anything else, this is why I would probably call myself a social liberal in terms of policy preference. We can have workers' rights, capitalism and social programs while trying to curb the negative aspects and excesses of all 3 things.
Indonesia's problem isn't capitalism.
The way I see it, capitalism is a system and rather inhuman in its machinations. The problem is
unfettered capitalism, and things like workers' rights are merely checks on an ultimately dehumanizing process. I'd say that operating a capitalist system "intelligently" means you force it to act less-than-completely capitalistically, so to speak. The same goes for any institutional organization comprised of human actors.
Capitalism gravitates towards efficiency of achieving profits. Efficiency alone means nothing without means and ends.
Agreed, but it's not black and white. The system needs labor, but that doesn't mean capitalism is at its most efficient when its labor force is treated humanely. At very small, local levels this might be true, but it's certainly not true at multinational levels. It's an irreconcilable contradiction that drives the system forward. In order to work at its most efficient, the system would need to severely exploit its laborers; but laborers don't appreciate this, and so they push back. There's no ideal efficiency, only a system that sacrifices optimum efficiency in order to facilitate continual functionality.
The idea that individual (i.e. workers') rights and optimum efficiency go hand in hand is a myth rewritten back over the history of capitalism as a way to correlate the two. It's not built into the system itself.
not necessarily. asian labor forces can be treated like shit only because of the surrounding context. tech companies do the opposite here
I disagree because this, to my understanding, assumes that there's a fixed level of optimum efficiency that can be achieved materially; but that's not true. Capitalism by its very function is always striving to produce more and to produce more efficiently. So the bar of optimum is always just out of reach, materially speaking but also theoretically. At any point in time, capitalism is never functioning at its optimum capacity.
