Opinion: It absolutely is. Compassion uplifts many of us who could otherwise be a burden on those around us. It helps the most productive avoid burn out. It spreads responsibility by enabling more people, and not relying solely on those who thrive with less support. Compassion is the long view as far as I can tell.
We may come to believe there’s an incompatibility, but I don’t believe it’s innate within capitalism itself. I think it’s more so a byproduct of how it has been implemented so far combined with deep cultural hang ups. There’s no reason I can see that would make capitalism and compassion exclusive of each other.
I believe addiction and a lack of compassion largely come down to culture. Rejection and condemnation of psychological issues likely occurred long before financial systems influenced our decisions so strongly.
I recently listened to a journalist discuss her work on corruption. She made this point: the prevalence of corruption rises in cultures that view monetary wealth as the only or primary mark of social status. She called it the Midas Disease as this pursuit is - at a certain point - meaningless (is another hundred million dollars when you already have 100 billion?), and yet - the effects of this pursuit have significant downstream effects on the fair application of justice, sustainable environmental policy, professional administration of governmental functions, etc.
I thought it was well known that corruption is a bigger problem in developing nations which are likely to be considerably less capitalistic than first world nations?
It may be well known, but is it true? "Corruption" implies there's a previously established social order to corrupt. But in developing nations this social order is not something that existed and is now being undermined; it's something that is still under development. Hence, "developing" countries - phrasing that assumes an "end-of-history" inevitability and self-evident goodness of the current status quo.
In that sense, corruption is the process of a society developing towards capitalism, but using its pre-existing societal toolset of ad-hoc interpersonal arrangements, in all their messy complexity, rather than the established processes of societies with centuries-old institutional traditions of having 1 universal metric for everything (capital). As capitalism is based on inter-generational accumulation of wealth, corruption can only be resolved over generations as societies become more trusting of the rationalist paradigm.
In today's hypercompetitive, multinational world, capitalism is indeed the sole goal of society, to enable those who work to make massive amounts of money, to do more and more. Even China, a quite communistic country, has fully embraced capitalism in terms of it's international dealings.
The culture issues we have in the US are largely a result of the hyper-rich influencing things in such a way that work itself becomes such a pride point, that those who are unable to work in the framework that society provides are called lazy and worthless, even when those people may flourish under a system with different constraints. Forcing some people to work jobs they have zero passion for, instead of allowing them to have a basic security net such that they can seek their own path in this life, is cruel. I have ADHD and it has so far been physically impossible to focus on something that doesn't somehow "grip" my focus, and I don't really control what things do so. So the vast majority of work out there is not something I can do and be successful, as the additional mental effort to even come close to focusing drains every bit of my being and makes me absolutely dreadfully miserable. If this is the path of capitalism for myself and countless others, then it needs serious reform.
We may come to believe there’s an incompatibility, but I don’t believe it’s innate within capitalism itself. I think it’s more so a byproduct of how it has been implemented so far combined with deep cultural hang ups. There’s no reason I can see that would make capitalism and compassion exclusive of each other.
I believe addiction and a lack of compassion largely come down to culture. Rejection and condemnation of psychological issues likely occurred long before financial systems influenced our decisions so strongly.