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Capitalism's race to the bottom continues unabated.

by beedogs 10y ago

GauntletWizard 10y ago
Communism's race to the bottom has already been won. Only, Capitalism is racing to the bottom of 'time spent by humans doing unfun things', and Communism's was 'human rights'
- sevenless 10y ago
  It's not like those are the only alternatives. We should try communism with modern IT infrastructure and AI. The big problem with many command economies was the inability to collect and act on the data. Call it a "just-in-time command economy" if you prefer.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - api 10y ago
    Ultimately those systems will have to be run by people, and all the same perverse incentives will apply. Corporations become corrupt too, but there is more than one and you can start new ones. In a command economy like you allude to there is only one corporation and if it becomes corrupt there is no recourse.
    - brightball 10y ago
      That's the exact point that applies to federal government programs vs state.
  - mattkrause 10y ago
    If you're interested in this, you may want to read Red Plenty, which describes the invention of linear programming and the subsequent Soviet attempt at doing just this.
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  It's weird how you think those are the only two options.
- beedogs 10y ago
  LOL, yeah, because I'm advocating communism in my post. HN posters are so goddamned predictable with their stupid comebacks.
clarkmoody 10y ago
Crushing poverty and starvation is the natural state of humanity. Without capital accumulation, investment, and technological progress, that's where we would be. Fostering those things requires private property protection and enforcement of contract. Capitalism's "race to the bottom" has made us rich beyond the wildest imagination of the people of the past. Our children do not have to work. Most jobs are indoors, in climate-controlled buildings. The rich may drive nice cars, but many of the poor have cars too. In the past, the rich rode in carriages and the poor trudged through the muck with no shoes. Automation is what allowed us to go from the vast majority of Americans working in the fields to agricultural employment being 2% of the labor force -- and we produce more food than ever.
- sevenless 10y ago
  Automation and IT in the US has little to do with free markets and a whole lot to do with enormous government expenditure, often war related. The internet is the obvious one. But if you go to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, you can see the first integrated circuit, which so happened to be built by Fairchild for the USAF, and the first computers, which were built in Silicon Valley for the Army. The same story is everywhere: About all the tech we take for granted owes its existence to state funding.
  - clarkmoody 10y ago
    Simply because something was invented to satisfy a government contract does not mean that it would never have been invented otherwise. Government spending simply shifts the preferences of goods arbitrarily away from what would have arisen through market processes. The government has been hiring the bulk of PhD-level researchers for the purposes of war (and surveillance). Imagine what those minds would have done with their ingenuity and initiative in the private sector the last 70 years. One of the few things that probably would never have been created by the private sector is nuclear weapons, since there is no profitable use of such devices.
    - Turing_Machine 10y ago
adventured 10y ago
> Capitalism's race to the bottom continues unabated. I'm trying to figure out whether that was posted in 1840, 1890, 1920, 1960, 1990, or 2016. Because it has been proclaimed non-stop since the free market began ushering in the greatest boom in prosperity humanity has ever seen. It was no more true in the prime days of the industrial revolution as farming jobs were rapidly being wiped out than it is today.

Capitalism's race to the bottom continues unabated.

by beedogs 10y ago

Capitalism's race to the bottom continues unabated.

Communism's race to the bottom has already been won. Only, Capitalism is racing to the bottom of 'time spent by humans doing unfun things', and Communism's was 'human rights'

sevenless 10y ago
It's not like those are the only alternatives. We should try communism with modern IT infrastructure and AI. The big problem with many command economies was the inability to collect and act on the data. Call it a "just-in-time command economy" if you prefer.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- api 10y ago
  Ultimately those systems will have to be run by people, and all the same perverse incentives will apply. Corporations become corrupt too, but there is more than one and you can start new ones. In a command economy like you allude to there is only one corporation and if it becomes corrupt there is no recourse.
  - brightball 10y ago
    That's the exact point that applies to federal government programs vs state.
- mattkrause 10y ago
  If you're interested in this, you may want to read Red Plenty, which describes the invention of linear programming and the subsequent Soviet attempt at doing just this.
PhasmaFelis 10y ago
It's weird how you think those are the only two options.
beedogs 10y ago
LOL, yeah, because I'm advocating communism in my post. HN posters are so goddamned predictable with their stupid comebacks.

clarkmoody 10y ago

Crushing poverty and starvation is the natural state of humanity. Without capital accumulation, investment, and technological progress, that's where we would be. Fostering those things requires private property protection and enforcement of contract. Capitalism's "race to the bottom" has made us rich beyond the wildest imagination of the people of the past. Our children do not have to work. Most jobs are indoors, in climate-controlled buildings. The rich may drive nice cars, but many of the poor have cars too. In the past, the rich rode in carriages and the poor trudged through the muck with no shoes. Automation is what allowed us to go from the vast majority of Americans working in the fields to agricultural employment being 2% of the labor force -- and we produce more food than ever.

sevenless 10y ago
Automation and IT in the US has little to do with free markets and a whole lot to do with enormous government expenditure, often war related. The internet is the obvious one. But if you go to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, you can see the first integrated circuit, which so happened to be built by Fairchild for the USAF, and the first computers, which were built in Silicon Valley for the Army. The same story is everywhere: About all the tech we take for granted owes its existence to state funding.
- clarkmoody 10y ago
  Simply because something was invented to satisfy a government contract does not mean that it would never have been invented otherwise. Government spending simply shifts the preferences of goods arbitrarily away from what would have arisen through market processes. The government has been hiring the bulk of PhD-level researchers for the purposes of war (and surveillance). Imagine what those minds would have done with their ingenuity and initiative in the private sector the last 70 years. One of the few things that probably would never have been created by the private sector is nuclear weapons, since there is no profitable use of such devices.
  - Turing_Machine 10y ago

adventured 10y ago

> Capitalism's race to the bottom continues unabated. I'm trying to figure out whether that was posted in 1840, 1890, 1920, 1960, 1990, or 2016. Because it has been proclaimed non-stop since the free market began ushering in the greatest boom in prosperity humanity has ever seen. It was no more true in the prime days of the industrial revolution as farming jobs were rapidly being wiped out than it is today.