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> Capitalism is about enriching yourself - not enriching your users and certainly not enriching society. Capitalism is not about enriching anyone, it's about b

> Capitalism is about enriching yourself - not enriching your users and certainly not enriching society. Capitalism is not about enriching anyone, it's about being free to do whatever you want with your resources. Free software developers use their resources to enrich society (and I applaud their work). Mark Zuckerberg uses his resources to enrich himself. Both are being capitalistic, as long as they don't steal or kill (I'm sorry, Hans Reiser). They freely decide who to work for.

briandear 7y ago
Capitalism is the most selfless economic system. It’s predicated on providing others with things they want at a price they are willing to pay for it. If you aren’t making a product or providing a service that others value, you do not succeed. Socialists like to frame capitalism as selfish, however, it’s exactly the opposite, you must provide value to others in order to succeed. The downvotes of your comment (and the inevitable downvotes for this one,) suggest that there is a fundamentally misunderstanding of capitalism. Capitalism requires that it’s participants provide value. Capitalism rewards providing others with things they want. When markets are distorted, often by government mis-regulation, it is then that capitalism struggles; it is then that the goal becomes not one if providing people with what they want and are willing to pay for, but one of providing government with what government decides what people should want.
- TuringTest 7y ago
  Capitalism has an enormous blind spot, in that it doesn't contains ethic provisions on what happens in a free market to people not able to create value that others are willing to pay for. Given the relentless tendency of capitalism to optimize towards eradicating any inefficiency, it contains as a natural consequence the propensity to expel those people out of the system - i.e. the ethical proposition of capitalism is essentially "produce or die". There are some relief provisions against this outcome of people being expelled from the system, supported by those who reject it as immoral; but they are typically frowned upon by those who see capitalism as an ethical system. The first one is building an unconditional safety net to take care of those who have run out of resources to compete inside the system. There's also the possibility to create make-believe work so that everybody will be able to earn a living; not exactly efficient, but for some reason this tends to be better accepted by free market supporters.
  - lone_haxx0r 7y ago
    > it doesn't contains ethic provisions on what happens in a free market to people not able to create value that others are willing to pay for. If you care so much about those people, you can create or support charity organizations. No one stops you from helping other people. Blaming capitalism for poverty carries an implication of wanting to steal from others in order to eradicate poverty. I say: Why don't you 'steal' from your own pocket and help the poor? If enough people actually care, then you can change the world for better without stealing from anyone.
  - TuringTest 7y ago
    (Replying to lone_haxx0r here, as the thread went dead while I was writing this): > Why don't you 'steal' from your own pocket and help the poor? See? That's exactly what I was referring to with "frowned upon by those who see capitalism as an ethical system" and with "capitalism has an enormous blind spot". There's a rational argument perfectly consistent with libertarian free market principles, by which a government collecting taxes is not "stealing", as long as you don't take "anything a government do is evil" as a premise. If you begin from the assumption that people can willingly enter into contracts as long as their terms are legal and free from coertion, the argument goes like this: - A country's land is owned by the state (or by its ruler, in case of a monarchy or a tyranny). - There's a "social contract", willingly enforced by the citizens in that country (either explicitly or tacitly)[1], that the government has a duty to protect its citizens, and the citizens in turn will obey the government and pay due taxes in order to support the country. - You were signed into that contract by your parents when you were born, as they had the legal authority over your rights to decide on your behalf. - As soon as you legally become an adult, you can step out of that social contract by leaving the country at any time. By remaining in your country, you consent to its social contract, so you pay taxes to the government by your own will. - Therefore, as an adult, you are not forced to pay taxes to that country where you acquired citizenship; but you don't have a right to be a free-rider by using the services provided by that country (military, roads, social welfare) without paying the required fee for those services. - There's a free market of countries with open borders; people can vote with their feet in this market and migrate to their preferred one. You have no obligation to pay taxes at any one of them, but they have no obligation to accept you nor provide you with services if you're not willing to play by their rules. TLDR version: creating governments and establishing taxes is the strategy we use to "'steal' from our own pocket and help the poor" in a sistematic way. Anyone not willing to participate is free to leave, but good luck finding a country that will not do the same. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > Capitalism requires that it’s participants provide value. Capitalism rewards providing others with things they want. No, and it's surprising this is still believed even though most of the market economy around you screams otherwise. Capitalism requires and rewards amassing capital. It may incidentally involve providing others with things they want, but it doesn't need to and frequently doesn't. Consider advertising, or the job of salesmen: the whole point is to convince people to buy your product/service where, left alone, they wouldn't. In a world where capitalism would reward providing others with value, these jobs would not exist. They're needed because there are more efficient ways of making money than giving people what they want.
  - djmips 7y ago
    "the whole point is to convince people to buy your product/service where, left alone, they wouldn't. " - your implication is cynical. Some of the time the reason you wouldn't is that you're ignorant of a better way. Certainly you don't want a better mousetrap if you don't know they exist. In that context, advertising and sales is just a way of getting the word out that something better is available.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      I strongly disagree. My implication is down-to-Earth realistic, whereas your argument is a Motte-and-Bailey defense of the advertising industry. Yes, informing consumers about what's available on the market is crucial for good operation of the market. No, that's not what the advertisers do. Informing consumers is putting yourself in Yellow Pages / catalogs of companies. Informing consumers is making a catalog of your products available. It's having a product page available with full specifications up front. It's showing up on trade shows. Informing consumers does not require spamming them with e-mail and snail-mail, banners, billboards, leaflets or interstitials. Informing consumers does not require branding, or polluting every inch of space available to you with said branding. It does not require tracking people, spying on people, or manipulating people with dark UI patterns, dishonest journalism (aka. native advertising), paying people to lie to their audience (aka. influencers). Most of money and effort in advertising is not spent on honestly informing people about availability of a better mousetrap.
- sctb 7y ago
  We just asked you (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20137064 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20137064) to please stop breaking the guidelines with generic ideological comments, and it hasn't slowed even a bit so we've banned the account. We're happy to unban accounts if you email hn@ycombinator.com and we believe you'll start using the site as intended.
Certhas 7y ago
Wikipedia states both, operation for profit and private ownership, as defining characteristics: "Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit." Classically free software works more like a gift economy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy No capitalist society ever worked without a state that enforces rules and social constructs (such as private property or contracts). Simple example of how simply talking about (some abstract notion of) freedom misses this: A gift based (ideas) economy could work without a state enforcing copyright. A capitalist (ideas) economy requires a state enforcing copyright.
- lone_haxx0r 7y ago
  > A capitalist (ideas) economy requires a state enforcing copyright. No. Copyright has nothing to do with capitalism. In a completely capitalistic system, there would be no intellectual "property". If you read the founders of right libertarian (pure capitalist) thought, the whole system is based around freedom. And property is justified based on the fact that it's necessary for freedom. Intellectual "property" doesn't enhance freedom in any way, to the contrary. Granted, Marx created the term 'capitalism' to refer to the private ownership, and he conveniently bonded that private ownership to for-profit operation. But there can be ownership that's not for profit, and libertarian theory considers owning things without operating them for profit a perfectly acceptable stance. Marx doesn't say anything about copyright or intellectual property, as far as I know.
  - Certhas 7y ago
    And no true Spartan... Some schools of thought use some weird notion of freedom to derive some abstract structure that has never been tried anywhere and claim it has some hypothetical properties. You want to call that "true capitalism". I like theory, I do theory, but the post was talking about existing social systems within which we operate. Your private definition of "true capitalism" has nothing to do with that system. Nor does it have anything to do with the accepted use of the term capitalism. E.g. in state capitalism [1]. Therefore it is a bad definition that hinders clear communication, and you have failed to convince me to use it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism
TuringTest 7y ago
There's a category error in treating commons as property. Even though Wikipedia copyright is nominally owned by the respective writer of each individual edit, the fact that it's licensed as copyleft allow anyone to treat it as a public good an benefit from something that you don't own. See a framework like the Universal Basic Assets (UBA)[1] manifesto: it distinguishes between Private assets, Public assets, and Open assets - each having different roles and expectations in relation to society and how each resource can be exploited. Trying to reduce everything to XIX century economical and political concepts is limiting in terms of discourse; we have acquired much better understanding of society-wide dynamics since then. [1] http://www.iftf.org/uba/ http://www.iftf.org/uba/
- lone_haxx0r 7y ago
  Ideas can't be property in the capitalistic sense. Intellectual "property" doesn't enhance freedom in any way. Conflating real (material) property with false, intellectual "property" is one of the biggest lies that have been fed upon our society. I approve the efforts of Creative Commons and other initiatives to get around the sick copyright system. But I don't believe in their premise of "commons" because it implies a dependence in a political system or society at large deeming things as commons.
  - TuringTest 7y ago
    We are always going to depend on politics or society in deeming some resource as "public", as "commons" or as "property", because those are concepts that get their meanings from how people think about them. Whether they are defined by custom, by the legal system or because everybody shares the same ideology, they are necessarily social constructs - there's no such thing as "real" and "fake" property except as understood by people. IMHO the biggest lie of our society is not property about physical vs intellectual goods, but the ideology that applies the same concept of "property" to the gadgets you can keep in your pocket and you can keep control personaly, and equate it to the large multinational company encompassing the work of thousands of people on several continents. They simply don't have the same behavior nor expectations, and yet somehow we're supposed to apply the same legal framework - in order to uphold the decisions made by the few people who are in control of the large organisation.

briandear 7y ago

Capitalism is the most selfless economic system. It’s predicated on providing others with things they want at a price they are willing to pay for it. If you aren’t making a product or providing a service that others value, you do not succeed. Socialists like to frame capitalism as selfish, however, it’s exactly the opposite, you must provide value to others in order to succeed. The downvotes of your comment (and the inevitable downvotes for this one,) suggest that there is a fundamentally misunderstanding of capitalism. Capitalism requires that it’s participants provide value. Capitalism rewards providing others with things they want. When markets are distorted, often by government mis-regulation, it is then that capitalism struggles; it is then that the goal becomes not one if providing people with what they want and are willing to pay for, but one of providing government with what government decides what people should want.

TuringTest 7y ago
Capitalism has an enormous blind spot, in that it doesn't contains ethic provisions on what happens in a free market to people not able to create value that others are willing to pay for. Given the relentless tendency of capitalism to optimize towards eradicating any inefficiency, it contains as a natural consequence the propensity to expel those people out of the system - i.e. the ethical proposition of capitalism is essentially "produce or die". There are some relief provisions against this outcome of people being expelled from the system, supported by those who reject it as immoral; but they are typically frowned upon by those who see capitalism as an ethical system. The first one is building an unconditional safety net to take care of those who have run out of resources to compete inside the system. There's also the possibility to create make-believe work so that everybody will be able to earn a living; not exactly efficient, but for some reason this tends to be better accepted by free market supporters.
- lone_haxx0r 7y ago
  > it doesn't contains ethic provisions on what happens in a free market to people not able to create value that others are willing to pay for. If you care so much about those people, you can create or support charity organizations. No one stops you from helping other people. Blaming capitalism for poverty carries an implication of wanting to steal from others in order to eradicate poverty. I say: Why don't you 'steal' from your own pocket and help the poor? If enough people actually care, then you can change the world for better without stealing from anyone.
- TuringTest 7y ago
  (Replying to lone_haxx0r here, as the thread went dead while I was writing this): > Why don't you 'steal' from your own pocket and help the poor? See? That's exactly what I was referring to with "frowned upon by those who see capitalism as an ethical system" and with "capitalism has an enormous blind spot". There's a rational argument perfectly consistent with libertarian free market principles, by which a government collecting taxes is not "stealing", as long as you don't take "anything a government do is evil" as a premise. If you begin from the assumption that people can willingly enter into contracts as long as their terms are legal and free from coertion, the argument goes like this: - A country's land is owned by the state (or by its ruler, in case of a monarchy or a tyranny). - There's a "social contract", willingly enforced by the citizens in that country (either explicitly or tacitly)[1], that the government has a duty to protect its citizens, and the citizens in turn will obey the government and pay due taxes in order to support the country. - You were signed into that contract by your parents when you were born, as they had the legal authority over your rights to decide on your behalf. - As soon as you legally become an adult, you can step out of that social contract by leaving the country at any time. By remaining in your country, you consent to its social contract, so you pay taxes to the government by your own will. - Therefore, as an adult, you are not forced to pay taxes to that country where you acquired citizenship; but you don't have a right to be a free-rider by using the services provided by that country (military, roads, social welfare) without paying the required fee for those services. - There's a free market of countries with open borders; people can vote with their feet in this market and migrate to their preferred one. You have no obligation to pay taxes at any one of them, but they have no obligation to accept you nor provide you with services if you're not willing to play by their rules. TLDR version: creating governments and establishing taxes is the strategy we use to "'steal' from our own pocket and help the poor" in a sistematic way. Anyone not willing to participate is free to leave, but good luck finding a country that will not do the same. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
TeMPOraL 7y ago
> Capitalism requires that it’s participants provide value. Capitalism rewards providing others with things they want. No, and it's surprising this is still believed even though most of the market economy around you screams otherwise. Capitalism requires and rewards amassing capital. It may incidentally involve providing others with things they want, but it doesn't need to and frequently doesn't. Consider advertising, or the job of salesmen: the whole point is to convince people to buy your product/service where, left alone, they wouldn't. In a world where capitalism would reward providing others with value, these jobs would not exist. They're needed because there are more efficient ways of making money than giving people what they want.
- djmips 7y ago
  "the whole point is to convince people to buy your product/service where, left alone, they wouldn't. " - your implication is cynical. Some of the time the reason you wouldn't is that you're ignorant of a better way. Certainly you don't want a better mousetrap if you don't know they exist. In that context, advertising and sales is just a way of getting the word out that something better is available.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    I strongly disagree. My implication is down-to-Earth realistic, whereas your argument is a Motte-and-Bailey defense of the advertising industry. Yes, informing consumers about what's available on the market is crucial for good operation of the market. No, that's not what the advertisers do. Informing consumers is putting yourself in Yellow Pages / catalogs of companies. Informing consumers is making a catalog of your products available. It's having a product page available with full specifications up front. It's showing up on trade shows. Informing consumers does not require spamming them with e-mail and snail-mail, banners, billboards, leaflets or interstitials. Informing consumers does not require branding, or polluting every inch of space available to you with said branding. It does not require tracking people, spying on people, or manipulating people with dark UI patterns, dishonest journalism (aka. native advertising), paying people to lie to their audience (aka. influencers). Most of money and effort in advertising is not spent on honestly informing people about availability of a better mousetrap.
sctb 7y ago
We just asked you (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20137064 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20137064) to please stop breaking the guidelines with generic ideological comments, and it hasn't slowed even a bit so we've banned the account. We're happy to unban accounts if you email hn@ycombinator.com and we believe you'll start using the site as intended.

Certhas 7y ago

Wikipedia states both, operation for profit and private ownership, as defining characteristics: "Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit." Classically free software works more like a gift economy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy No capitalist society ever worked without a state that enforces rules and social constructs (such as private property or contracts). Simple example of how simply talking about (some abstract notion of) freedom misses this: A gift based (ideas) economy could work without a state enforcing copyright. A capitalist (ideas) economy requires a state enforcing copyright.

lone_haxx0r 7y ago
> A capitalist (ideas) economy requires a state enforcing copyright. No. Copyright has nothing to do with capitalism. In a completely capitalistic system, there would be no intellectual "property". If you read the founders of right libertarian (pure capitalist) thought, the whole system is based around freedom. And property is justified based on the fact that it's necessary for freedom. Intellectual "property" doesn't enhance freedom in any way, to the contrary. Granted, Marx created the term 'capitalism' to refer to the private ownership, and he conveniently bonded that private ownership to for-profit operation. But there can be ownership that's not for profit, and libertarian theory considers owning things without operating them for profit a perfectly acceptable stance. Marx doesn't say anything about copyright or intellectual property, as far as I know.
- Certhas 7y ago
  And no true Spartan... Some schools of thought use some weird notion of freedom to derive some abstract structure that has never been tried anywhere and claim it has some hypothetical properties. You want to call that "true capitalism". I like theory, I do theory, but the post was talking about existing social systems within which we operate. Your private definition of "true capitalism" has nothing to do with that system. Nor does it have anything to do with the accepted use of the term capitalism. E.g. in state capitalism [1]. Therefore it is a bad definition that hinders clear communication, and you have failed to convince me to use it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism

TuringTest 7y ago

There's a category error in treating commons as property. Even though Wikipedia copyright is nominally owned by the respective writer of each individual edit, the fact that it's licensed as copyleft allow anyone to treat it as a public good an benefit from something that you don't own. See a framework like the Universal Basic Assets (UBA)[1] manifesto: it distinguishes between Private assets, Public assets, and Open assets - each having different roles and expectations in relation to society and how each resource can be exploited. Trying to reduce everything to XIX century economical and political concepts is limiting in terms of discourse; we have acquired much better understanding of society-wide dynamics since then. [1] http://www.iftf.org/uba/ http://www.iftf.org/uba/

lone_haxx0r 7y ago
Ideas can't be property in the capitalistic sense. Intellectual "property" doesn't enhance freedom in any way. Conflating real (material) property with false, intellectual "property" is one of the biggest lies that have been fed upon our society. I approve the efforts of Creative Commons and other initiatives to get around the sick copyright system. But I don't believe in their premise of "commons" because it implies a dependence in a political system or society at large deeming things as commons.
- TuringTest 7y ago
  We are always going to depend on politics or society in deeming some resource as "public", as "commons" or as "property", because those are concepts that get their meanings from how people think about them. Whether they are defined by custom, by the legal system or because everybody shares the same ideology, they are necessarily social constructs - there's no such thing as "real" and "fake" property except as understood by people. IMHO the biggest lie of our society is not property about physical vs intellectual goods, but the ideology that applies the same concept of "property" to the gadgets you can keep in your pocket and you can keep control personaly, and equate it to the large multinational company encompassing the work of thousands of people on several continents. They simply don't have the same behavior nor expectations, and yet somehow we're supposed to apply the same legal framework - in order to uphold the decisions made by the few people who are in control of the large organisation.