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What's the best solution to this - if wealthy and high-income individuals get more power via political lobbying, they can then gain more wealth and higher incom

What's the best solution to this - if wealthy and high-income individuals get more power via political lobbying, they can then gain more wealth and higher incomes, gaining even more lobbying power. They can also flood the media with advertising money and propagandist messaging to convince voters to care more about less impactful issues. It feels like an endless cycle to me. Other than war or complete societal upheaval, what can actually be done to solve the problem?

jjoonathan 8y ago
I'm still amazed at how effectively we have collectively shunned thought along these lines by turning the founding father of the relevant branch of economical philosophy into a real life he-who-shall-not-be-named. Anyone who wants to talk about these problems either has to either re-invent the wheel or mention the unmentionable name and doom themselves to immediate dismissal as a kook.
- danharaj 8y ago
  A spectre is haunting Hacker News...
- csallen 8y ago
  Who are you talking about?
  - java_script 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx_Brothers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx_Brothers e: Oh shit I just realized who I'm replying to. Serious answer time. Socialism will be a disruptive new paradigm for start-ups and other businesses where (following the idea of a meritocracy) workers, and not stuffy old capitalists, each own an equal number of shares at their place of work. And even more innovative in structure than Zappos and Valve, it allows for capital investment decisions to be voted on by individual contributors, throwing away traditional management structures you see at crufty old firms. Pretty cool stuff! According to some dusty old theories it's the "Exit Strategy" for our largest firms.
    - csa 8y ago
      I liked your original answer. It got the point across while being absolutely fucking hilarious.
      - java_script 8y ago
        Thanks. People keep getting mad at my jokes though (I'm on thin ice with dang) so I wanted to contribute a little bit more.
    - fixermark 8y ago
      Fast Company was reporting on a bill that would implement part of this idea for companies with over $1 billion in revenue. https://www.fastcompany.com/90223130/how-elizabeth-warrens-accountable-capitalism-act-works https://www.fastcompany.com/90223130/how-elizabeth-warrens-a...
    - virmundi 8y ago
      Who's dang and why are you self-censoring? Are you afraid of getting banned from HN? I don't think the site can remove your comments. If you are banned, I'd take it as a badge of honor.
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        > Who's dang and why are you self-censoring? dang is the HN admin, lead moderator, or whatever the official title is. > If you are banned, I'd take it as a badge of honor. Some people would rather continue to participate then accumulate honor badges.
        virmundi 8y ago
        It's a waste of time contributing. Everyone has their little bubbles. I do this while my RL agent learns. Once I'm out of ML, probably out of HN. #OrangeManBad
  - simias 8y ago
    Karl Marx. And I see the point the parent is making, although that's probably more of an issue in the USA than in Europe for instance. And I do agree that it's a shame because the writings of Marx are extremely interesting and deserve to be studied and discussed even if you don't believe in socialism and communism, it's really about economy in general first and foremost. Dismissing this important ground-breaking work because of what people did in its name decades after Marx's death is pretty strange. You could argue that he was wrong in his "praxis" but the diagnostic is very thorough, methodical and unfortunately a lot of it is very much relevant. And let's not even talk about whatever rebranding of Marx is used as a strawman these days, like this "cultural marxism" dog whistle I hear 10 times a day and I can't be bothered to figure out what that's even supposed to mean anymore. Actually I just tried to search the term and the first result was an entry on "urban dictionary" which goes like: >An umbrella term for identity politics, affirmative action, feminism, radical LGBT activism, Islam apologetics, white privilege, political correctness... Basically the SJW ideology. I think I missed that part in Das Kapital...
    - thanatropism 8y ago
      In a past life I went to film school at a very very left-leaning university and distinctly remember learning about Lukács, Gramsci and Althusser as a "Cultural Marxist" wave that was all about correcting the excessive emphasis on economics of previous orthodox marxism. So there -- not only the phrase makes perfect sense if you do read Gramsci like I have, it's been uttered by Marxist professors somewhere in the world sometime this century.
      - beat 8y ago
        The Frankfurt School, which coined the term "cultural Marxism", were German Marxists who survived WWI, saw the revolution fail in Germany and turn to Leninist/Stalinist horror in Russia, and tried to understand what went wrong. They were seeking a route to revolution that was not wracked with violence and dictatorship. Fascinating stuff, actually.
        jahaja 8y ago
- claudiawerner 8y ago
  Fortunately, though, it seems as though the movement-that-shall-not-be-named is gaining some traction through groups like DSA and Momentum, even if it is reformist. I think there's still some hope - he-who-shall-not-be-named is only as such in public discourse, and in the academic discourse (in particular political economy, sociology, critical theory, philosophy, literature and with a good dose in psychoanalysis) he is named by his true name. I think we ignore him and his work (in favor of sound bites from supporters and detractors) at our peril. There is enough to be critical of in what he said, we don't need to rub out his name over what Badiou called the 20th c. experiments.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  At least on HN, you can actually say “Karl Marx” in a non-negative context without automatic dismissal.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- 0181109 8y ago
  Probably because the implementations tried have failed so badly. If people distanced themselves from the hammer and sickle, communism could possibly be given another chance but in the meantime it looks like people showing that icon either don't know about history or they have explained it away quite callously.
  - danharaj 8y ago
    I mean, Marx specifically thought that communism could not be achieved by jumping from a pre-industrialized economy and skipping capitalism.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Probably because the implementations tried have failed so badly Implementations of Leninism did, sure, but (deliberate mislabeling aside), I'm not sure what that has to do with Marc, since Leninism rejected the preconditions Marx laid out and altered the approach to address the changed preconditions. Leninism is farther from Marxism than the near-universal abandonment of the system Marx named “capitalism” for modern mixed economies (which, to be sure, is still pretty far from Marxism), so if you are going to blame Marx at all for the failure of the former, you have to credit him at least as much for the success of the latter.
    - 0181109 8y ago
      Well could people who do understand Marx (by your interpretation, at least) do more in distancing themselves from Leninism and the hammer and sickle?
- fixermark 8y ago
  In fairness, attempts have been made to translate the revolution part of his ideas into functional policy at least twice now and both events have included massive violence (and one has followed up that massive violence with a general mismanagement of public resources to the detriment of the "unconnected," not unlike the pain inflicted upon them by the previous ruling class). At this point, the burden of proof is on the theory to show merit. It's a bit like Extreme Programming in that regard---looks great on paper, but how many times does it get to fall short of its promises before people stop blaming the implementers for "holding it wrong" and start talking seriously about the flaws in the originating theory? Perhaps also like XP, however, pieces of it do seem worthwhile and are bearing fruit in the nations that have adopted them.
  - claudiawerner 8y ago
    Those familiar with contemporary ideas of communism, socialism, communalism, left-anarchism, etc. will know there's been a lot of work done since the 50s (and a little earlier) on criticism of Marx, of the Soviet system and of the Chinese system. Modern Marxology actually takes up these issues with regard to their historical context, the USSR in particular. Unfortunately very few people actually get round to reading this wealth of work, especially after the year 1970 or so, in which most departments Marxism was declared dead and refuted. The question of Marx's meaning and intentions, what does or does not flow from his critique, the idea of revolution, the issue of Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin and Mao are all very much actively discussed today. At the same time, there is a distinct, perhaps irreconcilable, difference of opinion between the liberals who treat property as part of an individual, or an extension of him, and the tradition since Marx which does not take this for granted at all.
  - beat 8y ago
    I've done XP. It was awesome. As for the two attempts to implement Marxism (assuming you're speaking of Russia and China here)... in Russia, you can't separate it from Leninism and Stalinism. Is Marxism the problem, or the authoritarian government? China is more interesting. China is still ostensibly a Marxist nation, right? Per World Bank data I just looked up, China's per capita GDP (in constant US dollars) was lowest in 1962, at $71.91. That's per year. In 2017, it's $8826.99. Constant dollars, mind you. That's 123 times more. I have a hard time calling that a failure of any sort. There hasn't been large-scale political violence in China since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. That ten-year period killed 5-10 million on the high end. Which is, of course, quite bad, but in comparison to the 50-80M that died in ostensibly capitalist Europe during WWII, it doesn't seem that outsized. So for burden of proof, I think you need to argue that an alternative model would have resulted in less political violence and more economic prosperity than that for China. Good luck.
- Aunche 8y ago
  The problem with Marxism is that there's always a way to game a system. The people who are opportunistic CEOs right now would find a way to be opportunistic as an official in a socialist government, except now they wouldn't be producing as much economic surplus. Marxists tend to hand wave this problem by claiming that a strong democracy would keep this in check. However, the world is too complicated, and people have neither the intelligence nor patience to make sure everyone is a good actor.
dredmorbius 8y ago
Among other factors, advertising was taxed in England through the 1850s. https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1675 https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1675 Taxing rents generally would be beneficial.
fake-name 8y ago
Best option is probably hackernews's boogeyman - government regulation. The issue is it has to be in place before money command structures have a chance to develop, so it's not something you can really implement now. Realistically, it may not be fixable without fixing capitalism, which no one has figured out how to do.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
  - frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
    Of course you still want the government to do some regulating. For instance government will be necessary to solve collective action and public good problems. So once we've entered that realm, the solution isn't to just back off and let collective action and public good problems run rampant, it's to restrict lobbying and corruption while continuing to regulate.
- FranzFerdiNaN 8y ago
  Capitalism is working quite as intended right now. The goal is to move more and more money to the capitalists, and that goal is increasingly faster being reached.
  - jeffdavis 8y ago
    Not sure that all the money is moving to those who own the most capital/machines. It seems to be moving to those that have the most data. Mark Zuckerburg has very little of what I'd call "capital" that actually produces stuff, yet he makes tons of money.
    - johnchristopher 8y ago
      Means of production.
      - 8y ago
jchrisa 8y ago
A resource allocation system that didn't have this problem should out-compete one that suffers these information masking flaws. So we just need fully automated space communism* to arise once, and it will overwhelm the less effective resource allocation systems. * I'm not expressing an opinion on what this future more effective organization method would look like, just I'm pretty sure it wouldn't create incentives to keep masses of people less effective than they'd otherwise be.
- fromthestart 8y ago
  >just I'm pretty sure it wouldn't create incentives to keep masses of people less effective than they'd otherwise be. Self-interested authoritarians always have incentive to keep the population controlled, ignorant, and subdued, to preserve their status. The trouble is that in order to establish something like communism, the populace must cede all powers to an extremely authoritatian government, in which case it becomes inevitable that bad actors will co-opt the system for personal gain, which the "proletariat" will be powerless to legally resist, because of the restriction of rights necessary for centrally planned collectivist society. See USSR, DPRK, China, Venuezuala, etc. In becoming absolute arbiters of resource distribution, communism, and extreme socialism, can only exist by removing most of the freedoms that allow citizens to keep governments from being overly tyrannical. This is a sort of emergent progression, and it is a consequence of collective human nature. Just a disclaimer, I'm not arguing that democratic capitalism is perfect either, especially because similar bad, selfish actors can take advantage of this system as well, especially with regulatory capture. However, at least under this system we theoretically have the ability to vote both by ballot and by wallet.
  - jchanimal 8y ago
    Trying to stay out of my beliefs here, but I agree authoritarian communism is about as likely to help us as the Koch brothers.
golemiprague 8y ago
I am not worried about rich people propaganda, all the rich companies in the silicon valley supported Clinton, all the rich in Hollywood supported her and in general most people in the upper class supported her but she still lost, there are always other companies who will support the other side and people in general will decide who to believe anyways, today even 4chan basement dwellers can spread propaganda if they want.
brandonmenc 8y ago
> Other than war or complete societal upheaval, what can actually be done to solve the problem? A wealth (not income) tax.
- paulddraper 8y ago
  Gut feel: Repeating taxing someone more for living frugally is wrong.
  - logfromblammo 8y ago
    I'd prefer a tax on increase in wealth. Which is to say a tax on income with a deduction for consumption. So you're taxing the act of becoming richer, rather than just owning stuff. I suppose you could still have a wealth tax, if you set the threshold high enough that it only affects the top 10%.
    - zanny 8y ago
      More like affects the top .02%. What a lot of discussions on economics miss out on is that for every order of magnitude less people you are talking about out of the whole (10%, 1%, .1%, .01%) you are talking about people who then also have orders of magnitude more wealth than the previous categorization. Your .001% is billionaires, your .01% is hundred millionaires, the .1% is tens millionaires, the 1% millionaires, the 10% is hundred thousandaires (of readily accessible capital, at least - a lot of people in the 10% push themselves into the millions on their consumable assets like their house). Beyond .01% it exponentiates up to Bezos levels of wealth. When talking about wealth taxes we shouldn't even be thinking about anyone but the 300,000 who have as much wealth as the bottom 292,000,000 - the .1% - at most.
- malandrew 8y ago
  That interferes with individual liberty. Robert Nozick did a great job illustrating this with his Wilt Chamberlain example: The font is terrible, but this is the shortest explanation of it that I could find easily: http://faculty.seattlecentral.edu/jhubert/wiltchamberlainargument.html http://faculty.seattlecentral.edu/jhubert/wiltchamberlainarg...
bluGill 8y ago
Many things can be done. Be careful though as ALL have unintended side effects. What we have is an unintended side effect of our system of government, in different systems of governments people find other ways to make themselves more powerful. I think on balance I'll take our current system. It isn't perfect, but all systems have downsides (if you think otherwise you don't know much about your preferred system): so far nobody has suggested something better.
TaylorAlexander 8y ago
Well, I bet most commenters on here are, like myself, part of a pretty privileged class. What we can do is spread our own ideas about what privileged people can do to actively counteract the work of selfish privileged people who want more for themselves. Personally I really dislike that my day job only serves to grow the income divide, and I’m working hard on finding a new job where my work will be open source. In that way, my work will not just be for a select few, but for anyone with the means to take advantage of it. That is still a select group, but I also advocate for selfless giving of our labor to others. I want to do more than just commit my work to open source, but also to seek out those with less privilege, learn more about what they need, and direct my efforts towards work that is more clearly beneficial to these broader groups. In short, those of us with privilege can practice selflessness, and use our privilege to help the disadvantaged even if that does not pay as much. I believe I will be happier in the future if I am helping others than if I had a big bank account but only worked to grow the divide. Oh and a big part is education - I work in robotics and am passionate about mitigating inequality and so I see that building high quality cheap and free robotics educational resources can help avoid a privileged class taking advantage of those who would otherwise not be able to participate in growth due to automation. What do you think of this?
bilbo0s 8y ago
War and societal upheaval never solve the problem of the common man's inequality with the élites. "Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece etc etc etc" Or something like that anyway. That was Goering, or Goebels. Don't really remember which, but the point is war and societal upheaval are not tools to solve problems that the common man has with élites. War and societal upheaval are tools to solve the problems that one group of élites has with some other group of élites. The only thing a common guy would get out of it is to "come back to his farm in one piece", so to speak. (And a lot of us might not even get that.) I mean, frankly, we can live on our farms in one piece without going to war at all. Sure, there are some rare exceptions, usually involving being a minority, where you truly are fighting for your life. In those instances the enemy's stated purpose is not to allow you to live on your farm. But even then, you don't gain equality with the élites if you win, you just get to stay alive.
- malandrew 8y ago
  War typically reduces inequality by making everyone more equally poor. It never helps the poor become richer because it is destructive of value.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
qaminsod 8y ago
Seems like getting rid of lobbying and other forms of legalized corruption might be a good start.
conanbatt 8y ago
This mad-max painting of economics is not really true. Since the 80's, global wealth exploded like nothing else. Extreme poverty face an erradication unlike any other period. Recently it was published that for the first time, the majority of the world is middle class. Ever.
- beat 8y ago
  Globally, not locally. I've read Factfulness and felt profoundly inspired by Hans Rosling's insights, but he's talking about the nations who are catching up, not the nations at the top. I suspect what happens is that nations climb out of the steady-state of poverty, and into the steady-state of fully modern economies, and the growth rate ceases. At that point, the powers in control of the flow of money become ever more sophisticated at directing any growth to themselves, until we see roughly 100% of all post-inflation growth going to a tiny minority at the top. I don't know how to fix this, but I think it's a reasonable observation of the source of the problem.
  - conanbatt 8y ago
    It's one way to look at it, and you will find multiple macro-models that will sustain some ideas, for example the increasing weight of government or how captured economies become. But globalization has definitely been a huge cause of stagnant wages in developed countries and sky-rocketing poverty reduction in the rest of the world.
- jahaja 8y ago
  I'm seeing this sentiment often. Some people seem to think that the storming of the Bastille would never have happened if the people would just have known how much better France's trading partners had progressed over the last decade or so.
  - conanbatt 8y ago
    I understand the interests as a nation and as a globe are different and sometimes antagonistic, but it pokes a massive hole in the idea that the rich are stealing and from the poor: if the rich are richer, and the poorer richer, the ones complaining are the ones in the middle. It would change the rhetoric from "poor vs rich" to "middle vs rich and poor".
munk-a 8y ago
Societally we need to fix politics. There are some really easy things we can go after first in fact. To start with removing monied interests from politics by passing laws to counteract citizen's united would help, supporting proportional representation to invalidate any efforts to gerrymander maps and allow the expression of minority opinions would also help and, the big bad one, by adopting proportional representation (either via STV or some sort of mixed member balance) we could destroy America's two party system, this would discourage negative campaigning and ideally let in collation governance which is much more resistant to corruption. After all that we could regroup and discuss how to ensure people in need get an appropriate amount of vital services.

jjoonathan 8y ago

I'm still amazed at how effectively we have collectively shunned thought along these lines by turning the founding father of the relevant branch of economical philosophy into a real life he-who-shall-not-be-named. Anyone who wants to talk about these problems either has to either re-invent the wheel or mention the unmentionable name and doom themselves to immediate dismissal as a kook.

danharaj 8y ago
A spectre is haunting Hacker News...
csallen 8y ago
Who are you talking about?
- java_script 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx_Brothers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx_Brothers e: Oh shit I just realized who I'm replying to. Serious answer time. Socialism will be a disruptive new paradigm for start-ups and other businesses where (following the idea of a meritocracy) workers, and not stuffy old capitalists, each own an equal number of shares at their place of work. And even more innovative in structure than Zappos and Valve, it allows for capital investment decisions to be voted on by individual contributors, throwing away traditional management structures you see at crufty old firms. Pretty cool stuff! According to some dusty old theories it's the "Exit Strategy" for our largest firms.
  - csa 8y ago
    I liked your original answer. It got the point across while being absolutely fucking hilarious.
    - java_script 8y ago
      Thanks. People keep getting mad at my jokes though (I'm on thin ice with dang) so I wanted to contribute a little bit more.
  - fixermark 8y ago
    Fast Company was reporting on a bill that would implement part of this idea for companies with over $1 billion in revenue. https://www.fastcompany.com/90223130/how-elizabeth-warrens-accountable-capitalism-act-works https://www.fastcompany.com/90223130/how-elizabeth-warrens-a...
  - virmundi 8y ago
    Who's dang and why are you self-censoring? Are you afraid of getting banned from HN? I don't think the site can remove your comments. If you are banned, I'd take it as a badge of honor.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > Who's dang and why are you self-censoring? dang is the HN admin, lead moderator, or whatever the official title is. > If you are banned, I'd take it as a badge of honor. Some people would rather continue to participate then accumulate honor badges.
      - virmundi 8y ago
        It's a waste of time contributing. Everyone has their little bubbles. I do this while my RL agent learns. Once I'm out of ML, probably out of HN. #OrangeManBad
- simias 8y ago
  Karl Marx. And I see the point the parent is making, although that's probably more of an issue in the USA than in Europe for instance. And I do agree that it's a shame because the writings of Marx are extremely interesting and deserve to be studied and discussed even if you don't believe in socialism and communism, it's really about economy in general first and foremost. Dismissing this important ground-breaking work because of what people did in its name decades after Marx's death is pretty strange. You could argue that he was wrong in his "praxis" but the diagnostic is very thorough, methodical and unfortunately a lot of it is very much relevant. And let's not even talk about whatever rebranding of Marx is used as a strawman these days, like this "cultural marxism" dog whistle I hear 10 times a day and I can't be bothered to figure out what that's even supposed to mean anymore. Actually I just tried to search the term and the first result was an entry on "urban dictionary" which goes like: >An umbrella term for identity politics, affirmative action, feminism, radical LGBT activism, Islam apologetics, white privilege, political correctness... Basically the SJW ideology. I think I missed that part in Das Kapital...
  - thanatropism 8y ago
    In a past life I went to film school at a very very left-leaning university and distinctly remember learning about Lukács, Gramsci and Althusser as a "Cultural Marxist" wave that was all about correcting the excessive emphasis on economics of previous orthodox marxism. So there -- not only the phrase makes perfect sense if you do read Gramsci like I have, it's been uttered by Marxist professors somewhere in the world sometime this century.
    - beat 8y ago
      The Frankfurt School, which coined the term "cultural Marxism", were German Marxists who survived WWI, saw the revolution fail in Germany and turn to Leninist/Stalinist horror in Russia, and tried to understand what went wrong. They were seeking a route to revolution that was not wracked with violence and dictatorship. Fascinating stuff, actually.
      - jahaja 8y ago
claudiawerner 8y ago
Fortunately, though, it seems as though the movement-that-shall-not-be-named is gaining some traction through groups like DSA and Momentum, even if it is reformist. I think there's still some hope - he-who-shall-not-be-named is only as such in public discourse, and in the academic discourse (in particular political economy, sociology, critical theory, philosophy, literature and with a good dose in psychoanalysis) he is named by his true name. I think we ignore him and his work (in favor of sound bites from supporters and detractors) at our peril. There is enough to be critical of in what he said, we don't need to rub out his name over what Badiou called the 20th c. experiments.
dragonwriter 8y ago
At least on HN, you can actually say “Karl Marx” in a non-negative context without automatic dismissal.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
0181109 8y ago
Probably because the implementations tried have failed so badly. If people distanced themselves from the hammer and sickle, communism could possibly be given another chance but in the meantime it looks like people showing that icon either don't know about history or they have explained it away quite callously.
- danharaj 8y ago
  I mean, Marx specifically thought that communism could not be achieved by jumping from a pre-industrialized economy and skipping capitalism.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Probably because the implementations tried have failed so badly Implementations of Leninism did, sure, but (deliberate mislabeling aside), I'm not sure what that has to do with Marc, since Leninism rejected the preconditions Marx laid out and altered the approach to address the changed preconditions. Leninism is farther from Marxism than the near-universal abandonment of the system Marx named “capitalism” for modern mixed economies (which, to be sure, is still pretty far from Marxism), so if you are going to blame Marx at all for the failure of the former, you have to credit him at least as much for the success of the latter.
  - 0181109 8y ago
    Well could people who do understand Marx (by your interpretation, at least) do more in distancing themselves from Leninism and the hammer and sickle?
fixermark 8y ago
In fairness, attempts have been made to translate the revolution part of his ideas into functional policy at least twice now and both events have included massive violence (and one has followed up that massive violence with a general mismanagement of public resources to the detriment of the "unconnected," not unlike the pain inflicted upon them by the previous ruling class). At this point, the burden of proof is on the theory to show merit. It's a bit like Extreme Programming in that regard---looks great on paper, but how many times does it get to fall short of its promises before people stop blaming the implementers for "holding it wrong" and start talking seriously about the flaws in the originating theory? Perhaps also like XP, however, pieces of it do seem worthwhile and are bearing fruit in the nations that have adopted them.
- claudiawerner 8y ago
  Those familiar with contemporary ideas of communism, socialism, communalism, left-anarchism, etc. will know there's been a lot of work done since the 50s (and a little earlier) on criticism of Marx, of the Soviet system and of the Chinese system. Modern Marxology actually takes up these issues with regard to their historical context, the USSR in particular. Unfortunately very few people actually get round to reading this wealth of work, especially after the year 1970 or so, in which most departments Marxism was declared dead and refuted. The question of Marx's meaning and intentions, what does or does not flow from his critique, the idea of revolution, the issue of Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin and Mao are all very much actively discussed today. At the same time, there is a distinct, perhaps irreconcilable, difference of opinion between the liberals who treat property as part of an individual, or an extension of him, and the tradition since Marx which does not take this for granted at all.
- beat 8y ago
  I've done XP. It was awesome. As for the two attempts to implement Marxism (assuming you're speaking of Russia and China here)... in Russia, you can't separate it from Leninism and Stalinism. Is Marxism the problem, or the authoritarian government? China is more interesting. China is still ostensibly a Marxist nation, right? Per World Bank data I just looked up, China's per capita GDP (in constant US dollars) was lowest in 1962, at $71.91. That's per year. In 2017, it's $8826.99. Constant dollars, mind you. That's 123 times more. I have a hard time calling that a failure of any sort. There hasn't been large-scale political violence in China since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. That ten-year period killed 5-10 million on the high end. Which is, of course, quite bad, but in comparison to the 50-80M that died in ostensibly capitalist Europe during WWII, it doesn't seem that outsized. So for burden of proof, I think you need to argue that an alternative model would have resulted in less political violence and more economic prosperity than that for China. Good luck.
Aunche 8y ago
The problem with Marxism is that there's always a way to game a system. The people who are opportunistic CEOs right now would find a way to be opportunistic as an official in a socialist government, except now they wouldn't be producing as much economic surplus. Marxists tend to hand wave this problem by claiming that a strong democracy would keep this in check. However, the world is too complicated, and people have neither the intelligence nor patience to make sure everyone is a good actor.

dredmorbius 8y ago

Among other factors, advertising was taxed in England through the 1850s. https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1675 https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1675 Taxing rents generally would be beneficial.

fake-name 8y ago

Best option is probably hackernews's boogeyman - government regulation. The issue is it has to be in place before money command structures have a chance to develop, so it's not something you can really implement now. Realistically, it may not be fixable without fixing capitalism, which no one has figured out how to do.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
- frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
  Of course you still want the government to do some regulating. For instance government will be necessary to solve collective action and public good problems. So once we've entered that realm, the solution isn't to just back off and let collective action and public good problems run rampant, it's to restrict lobbying and corruption while continuing to regulate.
FranzFerdiNaN 8y ago
Capitalism is working quite as intended right now. The goal is to move more and more money to the capitalists, and that goal is increasingly faster being reached.
- jeffdavis 8y ago
  Not sure that all the money is moving to those who own the most capital/machines. It seems to be moving to those that have the most data. Mark Zuckerburg has very little of what I'd call "capital" that actually produces stuff, yet he makes tons of money.
  - johnchristopher 8y ago
    Means of production.
    - 8y ago

jchrisa 8y ago

A resource allocation system that didn't have this problem should out-compete one that suffers these information masking flaws. So we just need fully automated space communism* to arise once, and it will overwhelm the less effective resource allocation systems. * I'm not expressing an opinion on what this future more effective organization method would look like, just I'm pretty sure it wouldn't create incentives to keep masses of people less effective than they'd otherwise be.

fromthestart 8y ago
>just I'm pretty sure it wouldn't create incentives to keep masses of people less effective than they'd otherwise be. Self-interested authoritarians always have incentive to keep the population controlled, ignorant, and subdued, to preserve their status. The trouble is that in order to establish something like communism, the populace must cede all powers to an extremely authoritatian government, in which case it becomes inevitable that bad actors will co-opt the system for personal gain, which the "proletariat" will be powerless to legally resist, because of the restriction of rights necessary for centrally planned collectivist society. See USSR, DPRK, China, Venuezuala, etc. In becoming absolute arbiters of resource distribution, communism, and extreme socialism, can only exist by removing most of the freedoms that allow citizens to keep governments from being overly tyrannical. This is a sort of emergent progression, and it is a consequence of collective human nature. Just a disclaimer, I'm not arguing that democratic capitalism is perfect either, especially because similar bad, selfish actors can take advantage of this system as well, especially with regulatory capture. However, at least under this system we theoretically have the ability to vote both by ballot and by wallet.
- jchanimal 8y ago
  Trying to stay out of my beliefs here, but I agree authoritarian communism is about as likely to help us as the Koch brothers.

golemiprague 8y ago

I am not worried about rich people propaganda, all the rich companies in the silicon valley supported Clinton, all the rich in Hollywood supported her and in general most people in the upper class supported her but she still lost, there are always other companies who will support the other side and people in general will decide who to believe anyways, today even 4chan basement dwellers can spread propaganda if they want.

brandonmenc 8y ago

> Other than war or complete societal upheaval, what can actually be done to solve the problem? A wealth (not income) tax.

paulddraper 8y ago
Gut feel: Repeating taxing someone more for living frugally is wrong.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  I'd prefer a tax on increase in wealth. Which is to say a tax on income with a deduction for consumption. So you're taxing the act of becoming richer, rather than just owning stuff. I suppose you could still have a wealth tax, if you set the threshold high enough that it only affects the top 10%.
  - zanny 8y ago
    More like affects the top .02%. What a lot of discussions on economics miss out on is that for every order of magnitude less people you are talking about out of the whole (10%, 1%, .1%, .01%) you are talking about people who then also have orders of magnitude more wealth than the previous categorization. Your .001% is billionaires, your .01% is hundred millionaires, the .1% is tens millionaires, the 1% millionaires, the 10% is hundred thousandaires (of readily accessible capital, at least - a lot of people in the 10% push themselves into the millions on their consumable assets like their house). Beyond .01% it exponentiates up to Bezos levels of wealth. When talking about wealth taxes we shouldn't even be thinking about anyone but the 300,000 who have as much wealth as the bottom 292,000,000 - the .1% - at most.
malandrew 8y ago
That interferes with individual liberty. Robert Nozick did a great job illustrating this with his Wilt Chamberlain example: The font is terrible, but this is the shortest explanation of it that I could find easily: http://faculty.seattlecentral.edu/jhubert/wiltchamberlainargument.html http://faculty.seattlecentral.edu/jhubert/wiltchamberlainarg...

bluGill 8y ago

Many things can be done. Be careful though as ALL have unintended side effects. What we have is an unintended side effect of our system of government, in different systems of governments people find other ways to make themselves more powerful. I think on balance I'll take our current system. It isn't perfect, but all systems have downsides (if you think otherwise you don't know much about your preferred system): so far nobody has suggested something better.

TaylorAlexander 8y ago

Well, I bet most commenters on here are, like myself, part of a pretty privileged class. What we can do is spread our own ideas about what privileged people can do to actively counteract the work of selfish privileged people who want more for themselves. Personally I really dislike that my day job only serves to grow the income divide, and I’m working hard on finding a new job where my work will be open source. In that way, my work will not just be for a select few, but for anyone with the means to take advantage of it. That is still a select group, but I also advocate for selfless giving of our labor to others. I want to do more than just commit my work to open source, but also to seek out those with less privilege, learn more about what they need, and direct my efforts towards work that is more clearly beneficial to these broader groups. In short, those of us with privilege can practice selflessness, and use our privilege to help the disadvantaged even if that does not pay as much. I believe I will be happier in the future if I am helping others than if I had a big bank account but only worked to grow the divide. Oh and a big part is education - I work in robotics and am passionate about mitigating inequality and so I see that building high quality cheap and free robotics educational resources can help avoid a privileged class taking advantage of those who would otherwise not be able to participate in growth due to automation. What do you think of this?

bilbo0s 8y ago

War and societal upheaval never solve the problem of the common man's inequality with the élites. "Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece etc etc etc" Or something like that anyway. That was Goering, or Goebels. Don't really remember which, but the point is war and societal upheaval are not tools to solve problems that the common man has with élites. War and societal upheaval are tools to solve the problems that one group of élites has with some other group of élites. The only thing a common guy would get out of it is to "come back to his farm in one piece", so to speak. (And a lot of us might not even get that.) I mean, frankly, we can live on our farms in one piece without going to war at all. Sure, there are some rare exceptions, usually involving being a minority, where you truly are fighting for your life. In those instances the enemy's stated purpose is not to allow you to live on your farm. But even then, you don't gain equality with the élites if you win, you just get to stay alive.

malandrew 8y ago
War typically reduces inequality by making everyone more equally poor. It never helps the poor become richer because it is destructive of value.

deleted 8y ago

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qaminsod 8y ago

Seems like getting rid of lobbying and other forms of legalized corruption might be a good start.

conanbatt 8y ago

This mad-max painting of economics is not really true. Since the 80's, global wealth exploded like nothing else. Extreme poverty face an erradication unlike any other period. Recently it was published that for the first time, the majority of the world is middle class. Ever.

beat 8y ago
Globally, not locally. I've read Factfulness and felt profoundly inspired by Hans Rosling's insights, but he's talking about the nations who are catching up, not the nations at the top. I suspect what happens is that nations climb out of the steady-state of poverty, and into the steady-state of fully modern economies, and the growth rate ceases. At that point, the powers in control of the flow of money become ever more sophisticated at directing any growth to themselves, until we see roughly 100% of all post-inflation growth going to a tiny minority at the top. I don't know how to fix this, but I think it's a reasonable observation of the source of the problem.
- conanbatt 8y ago
  It's one way to look at it, and you will find multiple macro-models that will sustain some ideas, for example the increasing weight of government or how captured economies become. But globalization has definitely been a huge cause of stagnant wages in developed countries and sky-rocketing poverty reduction in the rest of the world.
jahaja 8y ago
I'm seeing this sentiment often. Some people seem to think that the storming of the Bastille would never have happened if the people would just have known how much better France's trading partners had progressed over the last decade or so.
- conanbatt 8y ago
  I understand the interests as a nation and as a globe are different and sometimes antagonistic, but it pokes a massive hole in the idea that the rich are stealing and from the poor: if the rich are richer, and the poorer richer, the ones complaining are the ones in the middle. It would change the rhetoric from "poor vs rich" to "middle vs rich and poor".

munk-a 8y ago

Societally we need to fix politics. There are some really easy things we can go after first in fact. To start with removing monied interests from politics by passing laws to counteract citizen's united would help, supporting proportional representation to invalidate any efforts to gerrymander maps and allow the expression of minority opinions would also help and, the big bad one, by adopting proportional representation (either via STV or some sort of mixed member balance) we could destroy America's two party system, this would discourage negative campaigning and ideally let in collation governance which is much more resistant to corruption. After all that we could regroup and discuss how to ensure people in need get an appropriate amount of vital services.