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TANSTAAFL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as_a_free_lunch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as... Also, peop

by csours 8y ago

TANSTAAFL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as_a_free_lunch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as... Also, people will pay more for a good story. --- > "25. Maybe this explains what’s so galling to people about the Folsom & Co. not-really-scam: It simply lays bare the categorical deception at the heart of all branding and retail. The different watch values are, in the strictest sense, speech acts: the watch is $29.99 because someone said it’s $29.99. It’s $29.99 because a certain person is wearing it on Instagram; it’s $29.99 because it’s photographed next to flannel and a Chemex. While “Bradley” of “Bradley’s men’s shop” may not be the most fleshed-out character, he – and the entire existence of Folsom & Co., Soficoastal, etc. – are examples of the now-household term, “brand storytelling.” And the internet makes it possible for anyone to tell any story, about anything, from anywhere." --- > " thateffingasian: Capitalism is making your own product and selling it. Capitalism isn't buying a piece of shit and telling people they're worth 25x the price, and lying to them about the actual value of the product. Your idea of capitalism is fucked up @soficoastal. Then the idiots blocked me, LOL. " If Capitalism isn't buying shit and lying about it to sell it for higher, I don't know what Capitalism is. This is only a difference in degree, not kind.

timr 8y ago
"If Capitalism isn't buying shit and lying about it to sell it for higher, I don't know what Capitalism is. This is only a difference in degree, not kind." I'm neutral on the question in this case, but really, any discussion of "capitalism" that goes beyond chapter one, page one of an undegrad economics textbook covers the point that efficient markets are not deceptive markets. Participants are assumed to share equal information. HN's understanding of capitalist theory seems to begin and end at the phrase, "supply and demand", and everything that has a two-sided market is otherwise A-OK. In this particular case, consumers are sort-of informed, but it's also a lot harder to be informed than it used to be. I'm someone who tries to find high-quality items, and even I screw up on a regular basis. I wouldn't fall for this one, though.
- adminu 8y ago
  Well, and advertisement is meant to be "information". Textbook capitalism is just not a good model of real world capitalism.
  - edw 8y ago
    It is irksome that people lay all of the horrors of the world at the door of “Capitalism” when people have been scamming, exploiting, and generally screwing each other over since the beginning of time. Capitalism is something that emerged in the Eighteen Century. The word means something and to ascribe every immoral or amoral act that aggrandizes someone to Capitalism is an act of intellectual vandalism. And to forstall the karma-harvesting mosquitos about to descend on my comment with a smug “But Capitalism is not therefore an unalloyed good!” reply, I’m not saying Capitalism isn’t without its problems.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >Capitalism is something that emerged in the Eighteen Century More like 15th century, is the widely accepted chronology. And it did bring with it a totally different kind of horror, including colonialism...
      - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
        Here is one definition of capitalism: Reinvesting the profits in the enterprise, to make it more efficient, larger, or better in some other way. That started in 12th Century Italy, and perhaps also in China's 11th Century Industrial Revolution. (China could have had an iron-based industrial revolution long before Europe. But the mandarins saw that some lower-class people were getting rich, and so they shut it down by force.) Also: Colonialism is an evil of capitalism? The Roman Empire did something very like colonialism. The Spanish in the 1500s weren't exactly capitalists, either.
    - claudiawerner 8y ago
      That's not a very charitable interpretation of the position, which I see to be along the lines of the fact that the economic mode of production in any given period reaches past mere individual transactions and into our whole mode of being, influencing everything from politics to art to religion. The criticisms of capitalism, at least from a scientific standpoint, are not that people under capitalism are doing bad things, it's either that (i) under previous or potentially future modes of production there would be little or no incentive to do those things, (ii) capitalism has exacerbated the degree to which the behavior persists. The second part of the criticism is that capitalism is a class society, and thus rife with the antagonism that comes with class society in the form of "contradictions", which manifest themselves in capitalism as the contradiction of abstract and concrete labour, use-value and exchange value, capital and labour, price and value, culture and the commodity etc.
dang 8y ago
Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. They lead to generic ideological flamewars—just what we don't need here.
- starbeast 8y ago
  How is that a generic ideological tangent, given the article?
  - dang 8y ago
    When people start arguing generically about capitalism, socialism, communism, etc., that's the kind of tangent I'm talking about. Such internet forum discussions are extremely repetitive, which makes them off topic here. Plus they're flammable, plus they get dumber the longer they go on.
    - starbeast 8y ago
      But the article itself is a critique of modern capitalism in general. Yes it was using watches to make the point, but it wasn't about watches. Right from the outset this is made clear. The watch being talked about hasn't been donated to a museum of watches, it has been donated to a museum of capitalism. Even the title was chosen to make it entirely explicit where they were going with the article. To then say that people shouldn't comment generically about capitalism regarding an article that is explicitly about capitalism, would seem a stretch too far in trying to keep this place neat and tidy. I felt it was a bit like if everyone were to be restricted to discussing pencil manufacture, should Leonard Read's 'I, Pencil' be the topic of discussion. Yes, the text describes making pencils, but it isn't about pencils.
      - dang 8y ago
        That's all fine but a comment that "capitalism [is] buying shit and lying about it to sell it for higher" is obviously unsubstantive. Unsubstantive plus generic is a bad combination for thoughtful discussion. I don't think it's hard to see what we're trying to avoid here.
TomMckenny 8y ago
That's arbitrage. Capitalism is where the gatekeepers on what can be produced and by whom, control through (typically hereditary) wealth and then use that position to capture the majority of and wealth produced (or wealth harvested in the case of unproductive business such as rent seeking). Dishonesty is not a necessary part but certainly occurs in any market where it is favored. Incidentally, notions of supply and demand are part of a free market which does not necessarily have to be run by capital.

by csours 8y ago

timr 8y ago

"If Capitalism isn't buying shit and lying about it to sell it for higher, I don't know what Capitalism is. This is only a difference in degree, not kind." I'm neutral on the question in this case, but really, any discussion of "capitalism" that goes beyond chapter one, page one of an undegrad economics textbook covers the point that efficient markets are not deceptive markets. Participants are assumed to share equal information. HN's understanding of capitalist theory seems to begin and end at the phrase, "supply and demand", and everything that has a two-sided market is otherwise A-OK. In this particular case, consumers are sort-of informed, but it's also a lot harder to be informed than it used to be. I'm someone who tries to find high-quality items, and even I screw up on a regular basis. I wouldn't fall for this one, though.

adminu 8y ago
Well, and advertisement is meant to be "information". Textbook capitalism is just not a good model of real world capitalism.
- edw 8y ago
  It is irksome that people lay all of the horrors of the world at the door of “Capitalism” when people have been scamming, exploiting, and generally screwing each other over since the beginning of time. Capitalism is something that emerged in the Eighteen Century. The word means something and to ascribe every immoral or amoral act that aggrandizes someone to Capitalism is an act of intellectual vandalism. And to forstall the karma-harvesting mosquitos about to descend on my comment with a smug “But Capitalism is not therefore an unalloyed good!” reply, I’m not saying Capitalism isn’t without its problems.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >Capitalism is something that emerged in the Eighteen Century More like 15th century, is the widely accepted chronology. And it did bring with it a totally different kind of horror, including colonialism...
    - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
      Here is one definition of capitalism: Reinvesting the profits in the enterprise, to make it more efficient, larger, or better in some other way. That started in 12th Century Italy, and perhaps also in China's 11th Century Industrial Revolution. (China could have had an iron-based industrial revolution long before Europe. But the mandarins saw that some lower-class people were getting rich, and so they shut it down by force.) Also: Colonialism is an evil of capitalism? The Roman Empire did something very like colonialism. The Spanish in the 1500s weren't exactly capitalists, either.
  - claudiawerner 8y ago
    That's not a very charitable interpretation of the position, which I see to be along the lines of the fact that the economic mode of production in any given period reaches past mere individual transactions and into our whole mode of being, influencing everything from politics to art to religion. The criticisms of capitalism, at least from a scientific standpoint, are not that people under capitalism are doing bad things, it's either that (i) under previous or potentially future modes of production there would be little or no incentive to do those things, (ii) capitalism has exacerbated the degree to which the behavior persists. The second part of the criticism is that capitalism is a class society, and thus rife with the antagonism that comes with class society in the form of "contradictions", which manifest themselves in capitalism as the contradiction of abstract and concrete labour, use-value and exchange value, capital and labour, price and value, culture and the commodity etc.

dang 8y ago

Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. They lead to generic ideological flamewars—just what we don't need here.

starbeast 8y ago
How is that a generic ideological tangent, given the article?
- dang 8y ago
  When people start arguing generically about capitalism, socialism, communism, etc., that's the kind of tangent I'm talking about. Such internet forum discussions are extremely repetitive, which makes them off topic here. Plus they're flammable, plus they get dumber the longer they go on.
  - starbeast 8y ago
    But the article itself is a critique of modern capitalism in general. Yes it was using watches to make the point, but it wasn't about watches. Right from the outset this is made clear. The watch being talked about hasn't been donated to a museum of watches, it has been donated to a museum of capitalism. Even the title was chosen to make it entirely explicit where they were going with the article. To then say that people shouldn't comment generically about capitalism regarding an article that is explicitly about capitalism, would seem a stretch too far in trying to keep this place neat and tidy. I felt it was a bit like if everyone were to be restricted to discussing pencil manufacture, should Leonard Read's 'I, Pencil' be the topic of discussion. Yes, the text describes making pencils, but it isn't about pencils.
    - dang 8y ago
      That's all fine but a comment that "capitalism [is] buying shit and lying about it to sell it for higher" is obviously unsubstantive. Unsubstantive plus generic is a bad combination for thoughtful discussion. I don't think it's hard to see what we're trying to avoid here.

TomMckenny 8y ago

That's arbitrage. Capitalism is where the gatekeepers on what can be produced and by whom, control through (typically hereditary) wealth and then use that position to capture the majority of and wealth produced (or wealth harvested in the case of unproductive business such as rent seeking). Dishonesty is not a necessary part but certainly occurs in any market where it is favored. Incidentally, notions of supply and demand are part of a free market which does not necessarily have to be run by capital.