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A majority of millennials now reject capitalism

51 points by yusufp 10y ago

cmdkeen 10y ago
A man who has not been a socialist before 25 has no heart. If he remains one after 25 he has no head. — King Oscar II of Sweden Whilst that's a variant of an older quote there is generally an expectation that 19/20 year olds are going to be more revolutionary than their elders. As a 30 year old who grew up during the 90s capitalism had vanquished communism and was rapidly improving quality of life around the world. Economic growth was assumed and student radicalism went through one of its quieter patches and began to focus much more on equalities and access rather than economic issues. Today's youth are perhaps returning back to a more traditional model of rebellion against their parents. Be it the 1930s elite becoming communist at Cambridge, French students in the 60s or US students in 1970.
- mbrock 10y ago
  This article doesn't seem to suggest a widespread adoption of socialist ideology as much as a thorough dissatisfaction with the reality of capitalism today. It'd be surprising to me if a majority of polled youths did support "capitalism" given the state of affairs (impending climate doom, eternal crisis, unemployment, corruption, inequality).
- ethanbond 10y ago
  Alternatively, a rebellion against a system that screwed our parents (loss of labor jobs, mortgage crises) and is now screwing us (student loans, mass youth unemployment, climate change). Capitalism did a lot of good and then in order to really juice it for everything it had, we let it run wild. Now we're seeing the pendulum swing back. So we agree there, but I don't think it's a matter of youthful rebellion. It's the only logical stance for our generation to take.
- megalodon 10y ago
  > there is generally an expectation that 19/20 year olds are going to be more revolutionary than their elders I'd love to see some references to this statement. A quote from a 19th century Swedish king is hardly compelling evidence. I think you might be confusing socialism with activism in general.
- rowanseymour 10y ago
  From the Sanders/Clinton age divide apparent in exit polls, we might deduce that somewhere between 40 and 50 is the new 25. And to me that makes some sense. Baby boomers grew up in a world where you could get a decent paying blue collar job for life, and buy a house on a single income. You can afford to be individualist when you have that level of security. Young people today don't feel they have that and are looking for an alternative.
- conjectures 10y ago
  Rejection of the current crony capitalism doesn't imply socialism. A right winger can dislike how it makes markets lazy through government protection, and making entry and exit difficult. A left winger can criticise the inefficiency of outcomes in monopolistic markets, and the unfairness of outcomes based on initial endowments. The current status quo is very traditional: those in charge take every opportunity to enrich themselves either legally, illegally or by rigging the law.
- qrendel 10y ago
  This reminds me of my own version of a certain Churchill quote: "Capitalism is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have ever been tried." Seriously though, as others have pointed out, what we have in the US isn't so much capitalism as crony capitalism: privatized profit with socialized risk. Much of the anti-capitalism/pro-socialism crowd fails to make that distinction, or equates all capitalism with cronyism. Another overlapping portion simply live in a world entirely of theory (social theory, not economic theory), and are historically naive and uninformed about the fact that radical socialism has been tried many times, and had considerably worse failure modes than capitalism has shown thus far.
colincarter41 10y ago
Is it true? I have come across many articles that most of the millennials are focus on earning and career growth.
kome 10y ago
I may like the market (not always), but I see no reason to like capitalists...
tsaprailis 10y ago
I think this sums it all: ""The word 'capitalism' doesn't mean what it used to," said Zach Lustbader, a senior at Harvard involved in conducting the poll, which was published Monday. For those who grew up during the Cold War, capitalism meant freedom from the Soviet Union and other totalitarian regimes. For those who grew up more recently, capitalism has meant a financial crisis from which the global economy still hasn't completely recovered."
- tsaprailis 10y ago
  In my opinion Capitalism is not the perfect system, it's better than the alternatives. That, however, doesn't mean we should not criticize and try to amend any wrongdoings that Capitalism has evolved to have.
  - atemerev 10y ago
    Capitalism is free competitive markets and inability to lobby the government into protecting coercive monopolies. I don't know if anywhere in the world pure capitalism exists.
    - bad_user 10y ago
      Many monopolies are natural and the free market concept isn't infallible. That a truly free market doesn't exist might hint that it's not possible. True communism has never happened either.
      - atemerev 10y ago
        This is why I mentioned _coercive_ monopolies. Natural monopolies are OK (e.g. Google search), as long as nobody tries to protect them by law and force.
        kristofferR 10y ago
        How do you define force? If natural monopolies are left unchecked to grow in power, how can you be sure that they won't become powerful enough to use force to protect their or their cartels' interests?
vegancap 10y ago
A majority of millennial's don't really know what capitalism is.
- gadders 10y ago
  And more importantly, they've never really seen how bad the alternatives are.
- qwenda 10y ago
  They also do not know, what socialism is.
  - atemerev 10y ago
    There aren't many places in the world left where bona fide socialism now exists, thankfully. I can think only of Venezuela and North Korea.
    - lqdc13 10y ago
      There is also "capitalism" in Iraq, Syria, and Congo. There is "socialism" in Sweden and Finland. There is "socialism" in Belarus and "capitalism" in Ukraine. There is "socialism" in China and "capitalism" in Indonesia. None of these comparisons obviously make sense.
      - atemerev 10y ago
        You can own private property and run business in all these countries. I was born in USSR. Socialism there meant that private business ownership is definitely not allowed. As many other things, too. It was impossible to buy and sell real estate, for example.
        lqdc13 10y ago
        Exactly. I was commenting on how those are not real examples of socialism - you can own property in Venezuela for example. North Korea is more of an example of a dictatorship than anything else.
dkopi 10y ago
Capitalism Sucks! - Sent from my iphone
- vemy 10y ago
  The iPhone is still made by workers somewhere.
- rabbyte 10y ago
  Comcast Sucks! - Sent from Comcast
  - dkopi 10y ago
    Sure, we could all benefit from more broadband competition (and less regulatory barriers to entry from local governments). But would you really prefer the alternative of governments providing internet services instead?
    - vemy 10y ago
      They do fine in many places. Sasktel (Canada) is pretty good compared to what is available in some other provinces.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      Well, no. T-Online (and T-Mobile) as companies owned majorly by the German government have shown well that they always operate worse than competitors. Just like DHL (also owned by the German government in majority) has shown the same.
    - mbrock 10y ago
      That argument assumes that there are only two ways to organize productive activity: capitalist profit-seeking corporations or national governments. Anarchist thought, for example, rejects that premise.
    - Brybry 10y ago
      In some cities/towns/regions, yes, I would. Municipal ISPs work just fine. Governments already provide (or contract with private businesses to provide) mail, electricity, water, sewage, garbage collection, roads, etc. In an area that already has adequate service competition and coverage I don't see any reason they would want to run a municipal ISP. But state-wide laws that inhibit municipal ISPs, in order to protect the current ISP duopoly status quo, don't make sense either. It's not like it's something that requires new taxes to run. And many utilities already have to run their own networks anyway.
beardog 10y ago
A majority of millennials now circle-jerk with buzzwords they hear on Twitter.
return0 10y ago
Don't be quick to dismiss them as ignorants. Just looking at the markets the past few years, how they are and how they react, it doesn't seem like capitalism is trustworthy. There is no direction and often no reason behind it. If capitalism is a means to achieve national interests, it's not clear whose interests it serves anymore, it's too globalized.
- atemerev 10y ago
  Capitalism serves the interests of all market participants, including general public. As every consumer-faced business owner knows, rich and well-developed middle class is absolutely necessary for good sales and healthy profits. "National interests" don't care about public welfare. They only care about outcompeting other nation states, both in wartime and peacetime. Public interests are routinely sacrificed by governments for the sake of such competition.
  - return0 10y ago
    Then i would expect capitalists to have developed their own private armies (and probably road systems, and so on).
    - atemerev 10y ago
      Armed forces are one thing better left to the government. Police and courts are two other. The rest, including healthcare, road building and launching spaceships, can be safely handed by private sector.
      - kuschku 10y ago
        Anything that gives an actor power over other actors – so everything that includes a monopoly, and where actors can’t switch to competitors without moving into another area – is better left to an administration of that area, usually a state, federation, etc.
  - ethanbond 10y ago
tomp 10y ago
An important distinction to keep in mind: capitalism != free market. From the article http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2016/01/capitalism-vs-markets.html http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbli... > They are, in fact, two different things: capitalism is a system of ownership; markets a method of exchange. Although the two have sometimes gone together, this need not be so. Crony capitalism in which a few monopolies or cartels run much of the economy gives us capitalism without markets. And market socialism would give us markets without capitalism*.
- VMG 10y ago
  I'm not sure how "free" a market can be if you're not free to acquire capital.
  - atemerev 10y ago
    There is a button directly at the top of this page: "apply to S2016 YC batch". Boom! Capital acquired. There are other ways, too.
    - VMG 10y ago
      I agree with you. That's why I'm questioning GP's idea of "Free Markets without Capitalism" for any reasonable definition of "Free".
    - bad_user 10y ago
      I wouldn't call capital acquisition a meager loan that you'll have to pay back with interest.
  - js8 10y ago
    Word "free" in "free market" refers to choice of producers by consumers and competition. You can conceivably have that even if there is a restriction on capital accumulation.
  - WalterSear 10y ago
    Or to buy a monopoly on the market for that matter.
jensen123 10y ago
Instead of looking at capitalism vs. socialism, I think it would make more sense to look at free markets vs. unfree markets. Many businesses will lobby politicians for laws and regulations to protect themselves against competition, for subsidies, for special tax deductions etc. Private banks cooperate with the government in order to create fiat money, which primarily benefit those who are already rich etc. You can certainly have capitalism and an unfree market at the same time. Guess that's called crony capitalism. It's a very different beast from a free market.
dnautics 10y ago
"By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become 'profiteers,' who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery." -Keynes Ironically it is (a distorted version of) Keynesian economics that is used to justify inflationism as public policy Schumpeter would add, the middle class will then reject capitalism (presumably instead of placing the blame where it truly ought to lie).
- bainsfather 10y ago
  We have very low inflation.
  - dnautics 10y ago
    It's low, but it's "continuing".
deleted 10y ago
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tomelders 10y ago
Capitalism has become an umbrella term for fraud, tax avoidance and corruption.
- atemerev 10y ago
  In Panama Papers leak, who were the fraudsters, tax cheaters and generally corrupt persons? Hint: not the capitalist business owners.
ageofwant 10y ago
Corporate feudalism has ruined capitalism. In a surreal turn of events the east coast of communist China has the strongest "pure" form of capitalism currently in existence. This has a lot to do with their scant regard of imaginary property, what westerners insist on calling "intellectual property". Capitalism only work when information flows freely. When people can make decisions based on facts. This cannot happen when information is hoarded as a so called competitive advantage, not in the long run anyway, not any more. Ad to this the degree of rent-taking on all levels and its clear that capitalism as we know it a spent vein.
rawTruthHurts 10y ago
They reject it in their 20's, they'll embrace it in their forties. Nothing to see here.
trhway 10y ago
that is what young people do. 99 years ago they rejected capitalism in my old country. ~70 years ago - in China, and 20 years later during Cultural Revolution the next generation of young people in China doubled down on that rejection sending the first generation into re-education camps... "Mistakes of youth" :) US version of the same i guess is "If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain" Personally, at 43, born and grown in socialist USSR, having lived through transition to wild capitalism in 199x in Russia, and living in US for 16+ years, i'd rephrase Churchill - "capitalism is the worst economical system, except for all the others".
- kuschku 10y ago
  Capitalism as it’s implemented in the US, or Stalinism and Maoism as implemented in Mao’s China or the USSR are not the solution, sure. But the answer has to be a balance – one which Social Democracies have shown to be quite stable.
  - trhway 10y ago
    oh yes! i specifically mentioned wild capitalism of 199x in Russia which i immigrated from. Though it isn't about balance as a goal or a tool. It is just that the human civilization has learned through direct experience that capitalism is the most productive system while it most glaring deficiencies can be corrected [and those corrections happen to actually increase the productivity of the system] by government enforcing the rules to manage tragedies of commons and providing the things like education/medicine/welfare.
deleted 10y ago
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mtgx 10y ago
They reject capitalism because capitalism has been turned into "crony capitalism". They hate big corporations, because big corporations go out and buy politicians who then pass favorable laws only for those corporations, but not necessarily favorable to the people as well. If this didn't happen so pervasively I don't think millennials would be that mad about capitalism. To fix this, bring back real democracy in the US (and I mean that as a generic "People's voice must be heard" term, not as direct democracy or mob rule, as many often misconstrue such comments). Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig
- kome 10y ago
  What you call "crony capitalism", I call it capitalism in the real world. In my opinion people are not questioning the efficiency of democracy, but the legitimacy of the capital accumulation mechanism.
- WalterSear 10y ago
  If free market capitalism doesn't devolve into an oligarchy, it was never really free market capitalism.
moon_of_moon 10y ago
q: "do you support capitalism" a: "not in the way it treats engineers as 'resources', and cronies, friends and relatives as 'management' as but in principal yes" q: "i need a yes/no answer" a: ".." q: "so i'm putting down no" a: "whatever". fun fact: If the fortune 500 were a country it would have the second largest GDP in the world. Most of you here reject or would like to run away from that institutional form of capitalism anyway to a good startup.
k__ 10y ago
Where do we really have (free market) capitalism in the world? I once read something about how traffic works best when 100% regulated or 0% regulated. Everything in the middle is sub-optimal. That's what we seeing with capitalism at the moment. Everything is half-regulated. There are many people who got a big part of the global wealth and many of them inherited it from people that had it before the world switched away from kings and queens.
kristofferR 10y ago
"Only a Sith deals in absolutes." Seriously, this is stupid. It's a poll about words, not really about politics. I'm sure almost all would agree that either complete capitalism or complete socialism would be bad. Everyone actually agrees that there needs to be a balance.
jdimov9 10y ago
You can also reject sunlight if you want to. Guess who you're screwing up?
informatimago 10y ago
One word that is conspicuously absent from this articles and the comments so far, is "SCARCITY". Both socialism and capitalism are systems designed to deal with scarcity (and often, to generate it as well, since as systems, (and the stake holders in those systems), they benefit from scarcity. The problem we have now is to establish a new system (or systems), to deal with abondance, or at least greatly reduced scarcity. If the stakeholders of the old systems don't prevent us, eg. by declaring a very destructive WWIII.
- bad_user 10y ago
  Communism isn't based on scarcity. That's actually the whole point of communism. WWIII, really?
mrob 10y ago
I am in favor of socialism, and if I was forced to choose between "socialism" and "capitalism" on a survey I would pick socialism. But this does not mean I reject capitalism. I am generally in favor of free markets and private property. But I want taxes on externalities (eg. pollution), and I want enough wealth redistribution to prevent the kind of extreme inequality we see in America and similar countries. Countries generally considered capitalist already have some taxation and wealth redistribution. The question of "capitalist" as the article calls it vs. "socialist" is a matter of degree, not a binary choice. I think we should move further towards the socialist side, but that does not mean I want a centrally planned economy and everybody to have exactly the same wealth.
rtehfm 10y ago
Washington Post also published an article about how millennials prefer socialism until they get jobs and it comes out of their pocket. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/03/24/millennials-like-socialism-until-they-get-jobs/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/03/24/...
whazor 10y ago
The benefit of switching between systems is that power will be redistributed. The current problem is that organisations who previously offered superior value, are now abusing their position.
carsongross 10y ago
And why shouldn't they? Capitalism, as we have it, has given them a huge amount of debt right out of school, impossibly expensive housing, declining real wages, unemployment-hidden-as-not-seeking-work, almost non-existent family formation and backbreaking healthcare costs. I'm an instinctive libertarian, but how can you look at the current state of affairs and expect anything else?
websitescenes 10y ago
Capitalism killed democracy and now technology is killing capitalism. Once technology is fully embraced, capitalism will seem archaic and cumbersome. In capitalism money rules. In democratic socialism utility rules. Take your pic.

51 points by yusufp 10y ago

A man who has not been a socialist before 25 has no heart. If he remains one after 25 he has no head. — King Oscar II of Sweden Whilst that's a variant of an older quote there is generally an expectation that 19/20 year olds are going to be more revolutionary than their elders. As a 30 year old who grew up during the 90s capitalism had vanquished communism and was rapidly improving quality of life around the world. Economic growth was assumed and student radicalism went through one of its quieter patches and began to focus much more on equalities and access rather than economic issues. Today's youth are perhaps returning back to a more traditional model of rebellion against their parents. Be it the 1930s elite becoming communist at Cambridge, French students in the 60s or US students in 1970.

mbrock 10y ago
This article doesn't seem to suggest a widespread adoption of socialist ideology as much as a thorough dissatisfaction with the reality of capitalism today. It'd be surprising to me if a majority of polled youths did support "capitalism" given the state of affairs (impending climate doom, eternal crisis, unemployment, corruption, inequality).
ethanbond 10y ago
Alternatively, a rebellion against a system that screwed our parents (loss of labor jobs, mortgage crises) and is now screwing us (student loans, mass youth unemployment, climate change). Capitalism did a lot of good and then in order to really juice it for everything it had, we let it run wild. Now we're seeing the pendulum swing back. So we agree there, but I don't think it's a matter of youthful rebellion. It's the only logical stance for our generation to take.
megalodon 10y ago
> there is generally an expectation that 19/20 year olds are going to be more revolutionary than their elders I'd love to see some references to this statement. A quote from a 19th century Swedish king is hardly compelling evidence. I think you might be confusing socialism with activism in general.
rowanseymour 10y ago
From the Sanders/Clinton age divide apparent in exit polls, we might deduce that somewhere between 40 and 50 is the new 25. And to me that makes some sense. Baby boomers grew up in a world where you could get a decent paying blue collar job for life, and buy a house on a single income. You can afford to be individualist when you have that level of security. Young people today don't feel they have that and are looking for an alternative.
conjectures 10y ago
Rejection of the current crony capitalism doesn't imply socialism. A right winger can dislike how it makes markets lazy through government protection, and making entry and exit difficult. A left winger can criticise the inefficiency of outcomes in monopolistic markets, and the unfairness of outcomes based on initial endowments. The current status quo is very traditional: those in charge take every opportunity to enrich themselves either legally, illegally or by rigging the law.
qrendel 10y ago
This reminds me of my own version of a certain Churchill quote: "Capitalism is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have ever been tried." Seriously though, as others have pointed out, what we have in the US isn't so much capitalism as crony capitalism: privatized profit with socialized risk. Much of the anti-capitalism/pro-socialism crowd fails to make that distinction, or equates all capitalism with cronyism. Another overlapping portion simply live in a world entirely of theory (social theory, not economic theory), and are historically naive and uninformed about the fact that radical socialism has been tried many times, and had considerably worse failure modes than capitalism has shown thus far.

colincarter41 10y ago

Is it true? I have come across many articles that most of the millennials are focus on earning and career growth.

kome 10y ago

I may like the market (not always), but I see no reason to like capitalists...

tsaprailis 10y ago

I think this sums it all: ""The word 'capitalism' doesn't mean what it used to," said Zach Lustbader, a senior at Harvard involved in conducting the poll, which was published Monday. For those who grew up during the Cold War, capitalism meant freedom from the Soviet Union and other totalitarian regimes. For those who grew up more recently, capitalism has meant a financial crisis from which the global economy still hasn't completely recovered."

tsaprailis 10y ago
In my opinion Capitalism is not the perfect system, it's better than the alternatives. That, however, doesn't mean we should not criticize and try to amend any wrongdoings that Capitalism has evolved to have.
- atemerev 10y ago
  Capitalism is free competitive markets and inability to lobby the government into protecting coercive monopolies. I don't know if anywhere in the world pure capitalism exists.
  - bad_user 10y ago
    Many monopolies are natural and the free market concept isn't infallible. That a truly free market doesn't exist might hint that it's not possible. True communism has never happened either.
    - atemerev 10y ago
      This is why I mentioned _coercive_ monopolies. Natural monopolies are OK (e.g. Google search), as long as nobody tries to protect them by law and force.
      - kristofferR 10y ago
        How do you define force? If natural monopolies are left unchecked to grow in power, how can you be sure that they won't become powerful enough to use force to protect their or their cartels' interests?

vegancap 10y ago

A majority of millennial's don't really know what capitalism is.

gadders 10y ago
And more importantly, they've never really seen how bad the alternatives are.
qwenda 10y ago
They also do not know, what socialism is.
- atemerev 10y ago
  There aren't many places in the world left where bona fide socialism now exists, thankfully. I can think only of Venezuela and North Korea.
  - lqdc13 10y ago
    There is also "capitalism" in Iraq, Syria, and Congo. There is "socialism" in Sweden and Finland. There is "socialism" in Belarus and "capitalism" in Ukraine. There is "socialism" in China and "capitalism" in Indonesia. None of these comparisons obviously make sense.
    - atemerev 10y ago
      You can own private property and run business in all these countries. I was born in USSR. Socialism there meant that private business ownership is definitely not allowed. As many other things, too. It was impossible to buy and sell real estate, for example.
      - lqdc13 10y ago
        Exactly. I was commenting on how those are not real examples of socialism - you can own property in Venezuela for example. North Korea is more of an example of a dictatorship than anything else.

dkopi 10y ago

Capitalism Sucks! - Sent from my iphone

vemy 10y ago
The iPhone is still made by workers somewhere.
rabbyte 10y ago
Comcast Sucks! - Sent from Comcast
- dkopi 10y ago
  Sure, we could all benefit from more broadband competition (and less regulatory barriers to entry from local governments). But would you really prefer the alternative of governments providing internet services instead?
  - vemy 10y ago
    They do fine in many places. Sasktel (Canada) is pretty good compared to what is available in some other provinces.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    Well, no. T-Online (and T-Mobile) as companies owned majorly by the German government have shown well that they always operate worse than competitors. Just like DHL (also owned by the German government in majority) has shown the same.
  - mbrock 10y ago
    That argument assumes that there are only two ways to organize productive activity: capitalist profit-seeking corporations or national governments. Anarchist thought, for example, rejects that premise.
  - Brybry 10y ago
    In some cities/towns/regions, yes, I would. Municipal ISPs work just fine. Governments already provide (or contract with private businesses to provide) mail, electricity, water, sewage, garbage collection, roads, etc. In an area that already has adequate service competition and coverage I don't see any reason they would want to run a municipal ISP. But state-wide laws that inhibit municipal ISPs, in order to protect the current ISP duopoly status quo, don't make sense either. It's not like it's something that requires new taxes to run. And many utilities already have to run their own networks anyway.

beardog 10y ago

A majority of millennials now circle-jerk with buzzwords they hear on Twitter.

return0 10y ago

Don't be quick to dismiss them as ignorants. Just looking at the markets the past few years, how they are and how they react, it doesn't seem like capitalism is trustworthy. There is no direction and often no reason behind it. If capitalism is a means to achieve national interests, it's not clear whose interests it serves anymore, it's too globalized.

atemerev 10y ago
Capitalism serves the interests of all market participants, including general public. As every consumer-faced business owner knows, rich and well-developed middle class is absolutely necessary for good sales and healthy profits. "National interests" don't care about public welfare. They only care about outcompeting other nation states, both in wartime and peacetime. Public interests are routinely sacrificed by governments for the sake of such competition.
- return0 10y ago
  Then i would expect capitalists to have developed their own private armies (and probably road systems, and so on).
  - atemerev 10y ago
    Armed forces are one thing better left to the government. Police and courts are two other. The rest, including healthcare, road building and launching spaceships, can be safely handed by private sector.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      Anything that gives an actor power over other actors – so everything that includes a monopoly, and where actors can’t switch to competitors without moving into another area – is better left to an administration of that area, usually a state, federation, etc.
- ethanbond 10y ago

tomp 10y ago

An important distinction to keep in mind: capitalism != free market. From the article http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2016/01/capitalism-vs-markets.html http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbli... > They are, in fact, two different things: capitalism is a system of ownership; markets a method of exchange. Although the two have sometimes gone together, this need not be so. Crony capitalism in which a few monopolies or cartels run much of the economy gives us capitalism without markets. And market socialism would give us markets without capitalism*.

VMG 10y ago
I'm not sure how "free" a market can be if you're not free to acquire capital.
- atemerev 10y ago
  There is a button directly at the top of this page: "apply to S2016 YC batch". Boom! Capital acquired. There are other ways, too.
  - VMG 10y ago
    I agree with you. That's why I'm questioning GP's idea of "Free Markets without Capitalism" for any reasonable definition of "Free".
  - bad_user 10y ago
    I wouldn't call capital acquisition a meager loan that you'll have to pay back with interest.
- js8 10y ago
  Word "free" in "free market" refers to choice of producers by consumers and competition. You can conceivably have that even if there is a restriction on capital accumulation.
- WalterSear 10y ago
  Or to buy a monopoly on the market for that matter.

jensen123 10y ago

Instead of looking at capitalism vs. socialism, I think it would make more sense to look at free markets vs. unfree markets. Many businesses will lobby politicians for laws and regulations to protect themselves against competition, for subsidies, for special tax deductions etc. Private banks cooperate with the government in order to create fiat money, which primarily benefit those who are already rich etc. You can certainly have capitalism and an unfree market at the same time. Guess that's called crony capitalism. It's a very different beast from a free market.

dnautics 10y ago

"By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become 'profiteers,' who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery." -Keynes Ironically it is (a distorted version of) Keynesian economics that is used to justify inflationism as public policy Schumpeter would add, the middle class will then reject capitalism (presumably instead of placing the blame where it truly ought to lie).

bainsfather 10y ago
We have very low inflation.
- dnautics 10y ago
  It's low, but it's "continuing".

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

tomelders 10y ago

Capitalism has become an umbrella term for fraud, tax avoidance and corruption.

atemerev 10y ago
In Panama Papers leak, who were the fraudsters, tax cheaters and generally corrupt persons? Hint: not the capitalist business owners.

ageofwant 10y ago

Corporate feudalism has ruined capitalism. In a surreal turn of events the east coast of communist China has the strongest "pure" form of capitalism currently in existence. This has a lot to do with their scant regard of imaginary property, what westerners insist on calling "intellectual property". Capitalism only work when information flows freely. When people can make decisions based on facts. This cannot happen when information is hoarded as a so called competitive advantage, not in the long run anyway, not any more. Ad to this the degree of rent-taking on all levels and its clear that capitalism as we know it a spent vein.

rawTruthHurts 10y ago

They reject it in their 20's, they'll embrace it in their forties. Nothing to see here.

trhway 10y ago

that is what young people do. 99 years ago they rejected capitalism in my old country. ~70 years ago - in China, and 20 years later during Cultural Revolution the next generation of young people in China doubled down on that rejection sending the first generation into re-education camps... "Mistakes of youth" :) US version of the same i guess is "If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain" Personally, at 43, born and grown in socialist USSR, having lived through transition to wild capitalism in 199x in Russia, and living in US for 16+ years, i'd rephrase Churchill - "capitalism is the worst economical system, except for all the others".

kuschku 10y ago
Capitalism as it’s implemented in the US, or Stalinism and Maoism as implemented in Mao’s China or the USSR are not the solution, sure. But the answer has to be a balance – one which Social Democracies have shown to be quite stable.
- trhway 10y ago
  oh yes! i specifically mentioned wild capitalism of 199x in Russia which i immigrated from. Though it isn't about balance as a goal or a tool. It is just that the human civilization has learned through direct experience that capitalism is the most productive system while it most glaring deficiencies can be corrected [and those corrections happen to actually increase the productivity of the system] by government enforcing the rules to manage tragedies of commons and providing the things like education/medicine/welfare.

deleted 10y ago

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mtgx 10y ago

They reject capitalism because capitalism has been turned into "crony capitalism". They hate big corporations, because big corporations go out and buy politicians who then pass favorable laws only for those corporations, but not necessarily favorable to the people as well. If this didn't happen so pervasively I don't think millennials would be that mad about capitalism. To fix this, bring back real democracy in the US (and I mean that as a generic "People's voice must be heard" term, not as direct democracy or mob rule, as many often misconstrue such comments). Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig

kome 10y ago
What you call "crony capitalism", I call it capitalism in the real world. In my opinion people are not questioning the efficiency of democracy, but the legitimacy of the capital accumulation mechanism.
WalterSear 10y ago
If free market capitalism doesn't devolve into an oligarchy, it was never really free market capitalism.

moon_of_moon 10y ago

q: "do you support capitalism" a: "not in the way it treats engineers as 'resources', and cronies, friends and relatives as 'management' as but in principal yes" q: "i need a yes/no answer" a: ".." q: "so i'm putting down no" a: "whatever". fun fact: If the fortune 500 were a country it would have the second largest GDP in the world. Most of you here reject or would like to run away from that institutional form of capitalism anyway to a good startup.

k__ 10y ago

Where do we really have (free market) capitalism in the world? I once read something about how traffic works best when 100% regulated or 0% regulated. Everything in the middle is sub-optimal. That's what we seeing with capitalism at the moment. Everything is half-regulated. There are many people who got a big part of the global wealth and many of them inherited it from people that had it before the world switched away from kings and queens.

kristofferR 10y ago

"Only a Sith deals in absolutes." Seriously, this is stupid. It's a poll about words, not really about politics. I'm sure almost all would agree that either complete capitalism or complete socialism would be bad. Everyone actually agrees that there needs to be a balance.

jdimov9 10y ago

You can also reject sunlight if you want to. Guess who you're screwing up?

informatimago 10y ago

One word that is conspicuously absent from this articles and the comments so far, is "SCARCITY". Both socialism and capitalism are systems designed to deal with scarcity (and often, to generate it as well, since as systems, (and the stake holders in those systems), they benefit from scarcity. The problem we have now is to establish a new system (or systems), to deal with abondance, or at least greatly reduced scarcity. If the stakeholders of the old systems don't prevent us, eg. by declaring a very destructive WWIII.

bad_user 10y ago
Communism isn't based on scarcity. That's actually the whole point of communism. WWIII, really?

mrob 10y ago

I am in favor of socialism, and if I was forced to choose between "socialism" and "capitalism" on a survey I would pick socialism. But this does not mean I reject capitalism. I am generally in favor of free markets and private property. But I want taxes on externalities (eg. pollution), and I want enough wealth redistribution to prevent the kind of extreme inequality we see in America and similar countries. Countries generally considered capitalist already have some taxation and wealth redistribution. The question of "capitalist" as the article calls it vs. "socialist" is a matter of degree, not a binary choice. I think we should move further towards the socialist side, but that does not mean I want a centrally planned economy and everybody to have exactly the same wealth.

rtehfm 10y ago

Washington Post also published an article about how millennials prefer socialism until they get jobs and it comes out of their pocket. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/03/24/millennials-like-socialism-until-they-get-jobs/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/03/24/...

whazor 10y ago

The benefit of switching between systems is that power will be redistributed. The current problem is that organisations who previously offered superior value, are now abusing their position.

carsongross 10y ago

And why shouldn't they? Capitalism, as we have it, has given them a huge amount of debt right out of school, impossibly expensive housing, declining real wages, unemployment-hidden-as-not-seeking-work, almost non-existent family formation and backbreaking healthcare costs. I'm an instinctive libertarian, but how can you look at the current state of affairs and expect anything else?

websitescenes 10y ago

Capitalism killed democracy and now technology is killing capitalism. Once technology is fully embraced, capitalism will seem archaic and cumbersome. In capitalism money rules. In democratic socialism utility rules. Take your pic.