7 ms·

In my experience, people who criticize this article are probably benefiting from "capitalism" (the majority of people on here, I reckon, do), meanwhile those st

• friedman23 10y ago
  I can tell you that if you asked the poorest in America if they believed private ownership of property should be illegal in the US they would disagree. Socialism to most Americans is free healthcare and college. Capitalism is lobbying and the abuse of government sponsored monopolies.
  • eyeownyde 10y ago
    Which is unfortunate, because government involvement in business is a socialist idea, not a capitalist one.
    • pjmorris 10y ago
      Who enforces capitalist property rights?
      • friedman23 10y ago
        Historically property rights were defended by the owner.
        • Retric 10y ago
          Unless you mean before written history then no. Governments have been mediating property disputes at least as far as the written word and likely though the last 100,000+ years.
          • xyzzy4 10y ago
            In feudalistic society there were hundreds of small "governments" in a society, all of which had to defend their own rights.
          • friedman23 10y ago
            Do you believe that when we all lived in huts that the feudal lord would send out knights to defend you if your neighbor decided to take your property?
            • snowwrestler 10y ago
              Under a medieval feudal system, most people did not own property the way we think of it today; the feudal lord did. If the lord wanted to take all your clothes and throw you off their land, they could, with impunity. That said, yes, the feudal lord's band of merry thugs would keep the peace, because peasants can work harder if they're not squabbling with each other.
              • brightsize 10y ago
                >Under a medieval feudal system You don't have to go that far back in time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patroon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patroon
            • Retric 10y ago
              It's not that clear cut. If a poor person gets robbed today the cops will do basically nothing. Feudal lords will defend vs Viking raids. So, they both sit betweeen 0 and 100% on this.
      • lend000 10y ago
        Upholding the rule of law (punishing fraud, theft, murder, and other infringements of the rights of others) is the job of the government in a free market system. Protecting consumers from themselves and picking businesses to subsidize/grant privileges to is not. The gray area, which I consider to fall in the 'upholding the rule of law' category, are consumption-based regulations or incentives, where a practical piece of society (like burning fuel) infringes on the rights of many others to a small degree, and this is where a carbon tax could easily fit in a free market system. In fact, it could be argued that the system is freer than if there were no pollution taxes at all, because then people would be allowed to infringe on the property rights of others (via shared atmosphere, oceans, climate) unhindered.
    • Analemma_ 10y ago
      You're making the exact same mistake they are.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• gangcil_yc 10y ago
  "...capitalism and having things like free healthcare and education are hardly mutually exclusive..." -- good point. It's also important to note that the semantics on capitalism is almost always misleading in discussions: https://chomsky.info/20130305/ https://chomsky.info/20130305/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9XFBN5X1JU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9XFBN5X1JU
• dnautics 10y ago
  alright. I'll bite. I have made almost no money in the past year, and my bank account is nearly zero. I had a relatively middle class upbringing (but for reasons I'd rather not go into) my family is currently bankrupt. Capitalism (in the free markets sense) is great. The problem is that gobs of money are stolen from poor people like me by the government through various processes, the biggest of which is inflation. This money is largely redistributed to cronies - the easiest of which to see are the big contractors. Less obvious are the banks and directly profit off of low-interest loans by flipping them to higher-interest borrowers, and even less obvious is wall street (whose coffers are filled by middle class people pushed into protecting their assets from inflation). This is Capital-ism (in the marxian sense) -- the philosophy deciding that the pursuit of capital is a good unto itself. Unfortunately, the state has decided to attempt to 'harness' capitalism for its own idea of 'social good' which of course basically taints the non-zero-sum nature of free exchange with the zero-sum game of political hierarchy. The more this happens, the greater there will be inequality. It's a direct consequence of the first principles, and is unavoidable.
  • oconnore 10y ago
    If you have a bank account of almost zero, inflation can't possibly be stealing money from you (unless you also have gobs of cash under a mattress somewhere).
    • rocky1138 10y ago
      Except that the prices of everything rise every year.
      • oconnore 10y ago
        Blaming wage stickiness relative to prices is different than blaming inflation. And, outside unions and jobs with competitive labor markets, the best advocate for wage un-stickiness many workers have is government involvement via the minimum wage.
        • 10y ago
• dsacco 10y ago
  Your first paragraph manages to sort of dismiss both sides without really engaging with them. No one wants to be typecasted, even if they have legitimate biases. There's plenty more nuance to contribute to the discussion than simply characterizing most of the participants the same way Upton Sinclair would: by their salaries. I think you do raise a legitimate point about echo chambers, but how does that observation on its own help us? It's pessimistic. In my opinion, you've not really contributed to a resolution here except to be cynical. I support capitalism, and I admit it has done very well by me. I don't come from a privileged upbringing whatsoever, but it's now likely my children will. But your binary characterization of the inevitable functions as sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy here - will my opinions on capitalism be viewed as coming from someone who benefits from it because that's the way you framed it? By starting the conversation off in the way you did, I believe your framing antagonizes it prematurely. Why not decry an echo chamber when it actually emerges?
  • tabeth 10y ago
    Hmm, you make some good points. I accept that I may have not contributed to the conversation as much as I would like (though "contribution" wasn't really my intention, but your point stands). However, I will say that the latter part of your post is the kind of comment that I was expecting, for better or worse.
    • dsacco 10y ago
      Yes but you see this is my point entirely. Instead of engaging with the discussion you have this aloof cynicism. I didn't even say anything particularly in support of capitalism, yet you dismissed by point as "what you expected." How do you persuade others to see an alternative perspective if you don't first validate their opinions? For example, I'm willing to engage in dialectics about the advantages and disadvantages of a capitalist system (for example, see my other comment about this article), but you didn't really say anything other than "you make some good points, but this is what I expected." Take a position. You don't diminish an echo chamber just by observing that it exists, you have to engage with it and attempt to improve the discussion. I called out my potential bias and took a stance. You've not really done either here, which ultimately diminishes the impact of calling out the difficulty in the first place. What was the point?
• deleted 10y ago
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• ehnto 10y ago
  I find myself between the two ecosystems quite often and I have to admit I find it hard to know how to represent both sides fairly in discussions. It is definitely not a bipartisan issue. There is no us vs them, it is simply one big group of people where those on the bottom of the system are struggling to affect the smaller changes needed to make life more sustainable for them. They aren't big changes either, small incremental policy changes make huge differences to individuals. Those individuals just don't have the capacity after work, or the connections, to advocate effectively for themselves.
  • dasil003 10y ago
    > Those individuals just don't have the capacity after work, or the connections, to advocate effectively for themselves. It's not just that, but it's the fact that it takes a huge amount study to even understand how things like the national economy work. Business people and the upper class already have a huge leg up in this because it's their bread and butter. Poor people and shift workers really need to go out of their way to learn the ins and outs. And what ruins the whole endeavor is the fact that it is much easier to cherry-pick statistics and spin any given policy decision to adhere to a certain message and populist ideology. Republicans have mastered the art of spinning every talking point to appeal to rural and working class voters while maintaining a firm agenda benefitting the special interests they claim to be against. Not that Democrats are objectively any better—the two party system ensures that anyone with deep enough pockets can just donate to both sides and not worry too much about anyone with real principles standing in their way. But considering that Trump has managed to paint himself as somehow being of and for The People despite the most elite and privileged trust-fund roots imaginable really goes to show what an uphill battle it will be to make real progress. It is sometimes said that truth is powerful, but in an increasingly complex world with cheaper and cheaper information production and distribution, propaganda is gaining power much faster than the populace's capacity to understand it.
  • Eridrus 10y ago
    > small incremental policy changes make huge differences to individuals I'm curious to hear what small changes you think will have a huge difference.
• mjfl 10y ago
  > meanwhile those struggling from inequality, not being here, will fail to have their voice heard. And so the echo chamber ensues. Those struggling from from inequality are struggling from relative deprivation, not absolute deprivation, while the latter is the only thing that rationally matters. I don't give a damn that Bill Gates is a ridiculous amount richer than me, in fact I admire him and want to be rich too someday. I have enough to survive and buy books, why should I worry about my relative wealth? People on the poverty line in the US ($20k) actually make 2x as much as the global mean wage ($10k). I doubt the people that currently complain about inequality today would be willing to give up >50% of their wage to alleviate it on the global scale, rather they will make arguments about "standard of living" as if they have some fundamental right to live better than those in Africa, poor India, ect... meanwhile I would rather be lower middle class now in US than Rockefeller 100 years ago. I'm taking a pretty hard stance on this because I feel pretty strongly about it.
  • 0xfaded 10y ago
    Society has to decide what "right" people have to a certain minimum quality of life and access to services. It turns out the level can actually be quite high, one only need look to the highly successful Nordic states. The argument in america seems to be that if you work hard, you can have a decent life and a house in the suburbs. There are already problems here, what of the people born with disabilities? But assuming everyone is capable of work, there is still the assumption that adequately rewarding work exists for everybody. Perhaps this assumption can be summarised as the american dream that people need to wake from. Conservatives argue that bringing back well paying, low skilled jobs can restore this dream time. Perhaps if they also rolled back 50 years of legislation and restored the unions this would be true, but times have changed. The reality is that access to rewarding work almost requires a privileged upbringing. It is completely unfair to assume that if poor people worked harder they would make it. I personally have a friend who grew up in a trailer park. After slogging it out through multiple entrepreneurial ventures, in his 30's he used his life savings to relocate his mother to find better medical care. Imagine at 30, a time when by your argument one should be buying and reading books, the burden of caring for you parents fell solely on your shoulders. Even in your 30's you are at a disadvantage due to your family's wealth. I personally believe that I should not have such an automatic advantage (for what its worth I do). I would be much happier in a world where I was taxed 50% but lived in a world where I knew the person serving me at a restaurant wasn't potentially a desperate single mother trying to hold down a job to care for her child. A person who probably doesn't have time for books. Before we get to charity, long story short I don't believe that wealthy people should get to choose were their money goes. That's a decision for society as a whole, and I believe people should be represented in that decision equally. Therefore I don't donate to charity. > "Why shouldn't the American people take half my money from me? I took all of it from them." Edward Albert Filene
• twblalock 10y ago
  The survey you linked to is from 2011, and it was mentioned in the article as a precursor to the April 2016 Harvard survey that the article was written about. I think this is the 2016 Harvard poll the article was referring to: http://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/harvard-iop-spring-2016-poll http://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/harvard-iop-spring-2016-po...