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> Dogmas are a disease… We should use the right tool for the problem. It's bizarre to me how rare this stance is. I understand disagreement over what exactly

> Dogmas are a disease… We should use the right tool for the problem. It's bizarre to me how rare this stance is. I understand disagreement over what exactly the "right tool" is, because these things are complex. But people who believe there is only one right tool for every job -- big government, small government, free markets, more regulation, whatever -- strike me as intellectually lazy.

imsofuture 7y ago
Completely agree. The problem is not that capitalism is just blanket bad, or something reductive like that, but instead: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20956786 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20956786 Capitalism specifically enables a meta-game of spreading as dogma.
- csallen 7y ago
  There are negative side effects of capitalism for sure, but it's possible to identify these effects and work to counteract them. In a democratic country, the populace regularly campaigns for new regulations to counteract some of the bad behavior incentivized by capitalism and the negative externalities produced by capitalism. We're chatting in a thread about California banning private prisons, for example. In fact, I'm not even sure regulation by a state is something opposed to capitalism. Rather, regulation enables capitalism. One could view capitalism as a system of regulations that attempts to limit the ways that people can profit from one another, ideally by limiting them to value-creating activities, but at a minimum blocking them from nefarious and value-destroying activities. If you want money, it's far easier to take it by force, or trickery, or monopoly, or coercion, or bribery, or espionage, or cutting corners, or nourishing addiction, or any number of unsavory things. Capitalism is an attempt to cut off these options, at least to the extent that many people abandon them, and instead decide to create value for others instead.
- Paperweight 7y ago
  The US system is actually the worst of both worlds (capitalist and socialist). It combines heavy regulation costs, high litigation costs, high public funding, AND profiteering. Literally anything would be better. It's based on a government-protected trade union married to a system of geographic monopolies... yet it's still allowed to charge whatever it wants to a captive market - and then price discriminate on top! It's overburdened with CYA and barrier-to-entry regulations, yet falsely labelled as "free-market" and "capitalist" by its status-quo PR & lobbyists to get that political support. Same thing as Universities. If it was truly "capitalist" then literally anyone would be free to hang a shingle and provide medical services (kind of like car mechanics), there would be competing professional accreditations (trademarked brands) as well (kind of like private technical certificates). But when the "market" is so perverted, "capitalism" (whatever is left of it) gets a bad rap because the incentives are fked to begin with.
sudoscript 7y ago
It's rare because it's hard. It's much easier to just pretend you have a hammer and treat everything like a nail.

imsofuture 7y ago

Completely agree. The problem is not that capitalism is just blanket bad, or something reductive like that, but instead: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20956786 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20956786 Capitalism specifically enables a meta-game of spreading as dogma.

csallen 7y ago
There are negative side effects of capitalism for sure, but it's possible to identify these effects and work to counteract them. In a democratic country, the populace regularly campaigns for new regulations to counteract some of the bad behavior incentivized by capitalism and the negative externalities produced by capitalism. We're chatting in a thread about California banning private prisons, for example. In fact, I'm not even sure regulation by a state is something opposed to capitalism. Rather, regulation enables capitalism. One could view capitalism as a system of regulations that attempts to limit the ways that people can profit from one another, ideally by limiting them to value-creating activities, but at a minimum blocking them from nefarious and value-destroying activities. If you want money, it's far easier to take it by force, or trickery, or monopoly, or coercion, or bribery, or espionage, or cutting corners, or nourishing addiction, or any number of unsavory things. Capitalism is an attempt to cut off these options, at least to the extent that many people abandon them, and instead decide to create value for others instead.
Paperweight 7y ago
The US system is actually the worst of both worlds (capitalist and socialist). It combines heavy regulation costs, high litigation costs, high public funding, AND profiteering. Literally anything would be better. It's based on a government-protected trade union married to a system of geographic monopolies... yet it's still allowed to charge whatever it wants to a captive market - and then price discriminate on top! It's overburdened with CYA and barrier-to-entry regulations, yet falsely labelled as "free-market" and "capitalist" by its status-quo PR & lobbyists to get that political support. Same thing as Universities. If it was truly "capitalist" then literally anyone would be free to hang a shingle and provide medical services (kind of like car mechanics), there would be competing professional accreditations (trademarked brands) as well (kind of like private technical certificates). But when the "market" is so perverted, "capitalism" (whatever is left of it) gets a bad rap because the incentives are fked to begin with.

sudoscript 7y ago

It's rare because it's hard. It's much easier to just pretend you have a hammer and treat everything like a nail.