6 ms·

"Deeply ingrained in human nature" is a more accurate statement, unless you believe that socialist economies are magically immune to nepotism.

dmix 7y ago
This is what people far often don't get, the alternatives are almost always much worse. The best we can do is try to fix what we have and try to be better. Naming and shaming like this article is part of that process. Throwing the baby out with the bath water over a few bad actors has consistently failed and left people far, far worse off. You don't even need to look far back in history to see examples, South American countries were still obsessed with the Bolivarian idea of "capitalism is the root problem" nonsense well into the 2000s... until they ran out of money which masked the unsustainability of their alternative, like we're now seeing in Ecuador and other countries.
- iamasoftwaredev 7y ago
  > like we're now seeing in Ecuador and other countries. The protests in Ecuador are about IMF austerity measures. The sort of cruel anti-working class policy we've been seeing peddled by neo-liberals for a long time. The sort of policy that is now seeing a resurgent fascism and socialism.
  - dmix 7y ago
    Everyone loves to blame the austerity measures. Not the people or ideology that got them into the mess in the first place. I'm sure the government can find better ways to pay the money back but it's still a massive burden put onto an already struggling economy which didn't have to exist.
    - Apocryphon 7y ago
      Under Correa, living standards increased in Ecuador, and the economy grew. Hard to ask people to not have supported such policies.
      - dmix 7y ago
        Things always go great in socialist countries until they run out of other people's money to spend and then the whole thing gets exposed for what it is: an unsustainable system that just makes everyone poorer, all in the name of 'equity' and a bunch of hand-wavy misdirections so they can keep the lie their system is better than capitalism going.
        Apocryphon 7y ago
        What would you offer them instead? People want better lives. And it’s not as if a revolution caused that- the electorate willingly voted in those leaders.
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  In times of rampant inequality and growing economic anxiety, radical solutions become far more appealing to the desperate. While your point isn't far off, those propping up the current system need to actually "to fix what we have and try to be better". For instance, will those who support capitalism as it is be willing to support for massive estate taxes? Increase the social safety net? Push for greater access to quality education? Otherwise then it just perpetuates the "there is no alternative" narrative that keeps the status quo as it is.
refurb 7y ago
Anyone familiar with the “worker’s paradise” in China, Russia or other socialist/communist systems know that nepotism and connections have just as big an impact (if not more) in those countries. Hell, sometimes you can’t even get basic government services with “knowing someone”.
- yoz-y 7y ago
  Exactly. Taking money out of the equation just makes the society replace it with something else.
  - pluma 7y ago
    The problem with capitalism isn't money. The problem is a centralisation of power. If your only idea of an "alternative to capitalism" are nation states like the Soviet Union or China, you might have a massive blind spot. Look up historical anarchist movements like the commune of Paris, or in more modern days the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (unlike what news coverage would have you believe, they're not just "Kurdish rebels"). Or if you want a quick read, check out their founding principles by reading Öçalan's brochure about Democratic Confederalism. Or for something less grandiose, just look into anarcho-syndicalism and workers' cooperatives. It's not that alternative models haven't been tried yet, it's just that building egalitarian grassroots democratic structures within capitalist nation states is nearly impossible and even when you manage to do so, you now have to figure out how to interact with the rest of the world and prevent them from ending you. Let's be realistic: the United Nations isn't exactly going to take interest in an autonomous territory that intentionally rejects nationhood. And if foreign powers (even the "socialist" nation states) have any political, economical or military interest in your territory, things are unlikely to end well for you.
    - Nasrudith 7y ago
      Things centralize for a reason - and it has been around befofe nation states and capitalism's modern conception. Decentralization seldom scales better. Even if they somehow wound up in a magical perfect coop start state without rivals centralization would emerge and prevail yet again unless there were extremly significant changes to ensure different outcomes.
pluma 7y ago
Interesting that most people are so used to capitalism they can't fathom any system that isn't hierarchical. Nepotism is only a problem if you have centralised power and static top-down hierarchies. When people are saying capitalism is the problem that doesn't mean they're advocating for Soviet style state capitalism or "socialist" nation states. Not every anticapitalist is a Marxist-Leninist, especially in recent years.
- natechols 7y ago
  Again, you're assuming that hierarchies are a unique property of capitalism. I am arguing that they are an expected result of basic human behavior, regardless of how your economic or political system is organized. This is not a radical concept and there have been countless pages written on the subject (although I confess that the book that influenced me the most in this respect was science fiction, specifically "The Dispossessed" by Ursula LeGuin).
  - Apocryphon 7y ago
    Anarcho-primitives would disagree with you, and would have their choice anthropological case studies of hunter-gatherer or pastoral tribal peoples who seemingly live without hierarchy. On the other end of the spectrum, there's Roddenberry utopian sci-fi visions of the disappearance of hierarchies- at least those organized around property- in post-scarcity worlds. And even in tech, there are modern day utopians who try to build "holacracy" and flat organizations, always with decidedly mixed-to-negative results. I'm not endorsing this argument one way or another, just saying that hierarchies as they exist now are not inevitable, and the act of presuming that there is no alternative is an act of lack of imagination.
    - pluma 7y ago
      Keep in mind "no hierarchies" in these cultural studies does not mean that there are no authority figures or that there aren't any leaders. In many situation it is more practical to have one decision maker rather than always deferring to a democratic discussion. But the key difference is that the authority granted to these leaders is conditional and temporary. If the group loses their faith in the leader or the leader is no longer absolutely necessary, they can fall back to the democratic process again. Likewise in federal communal structures an individual commune or neighborhood can always object and, if its members don't feel adequately represented, secede without threats of violence. We recognise this level of autonomy in super-national structures like the European Union (hence the discussions around "Brexit" and such), yet we seem to treat them as unthinkable within a nation and any mention of autonomy at the communal level is easily seen as absurd. This is because nationhood has become our widespread cultural norm to the point we can rarely even entertain the notion of an alternative or a time before or after nation states.

dmix 7y ago

This is what people far often don't get, the alternatives are almost always much worse. The best we can do is try to fix what we have and try to be better. Naming and shaming like this article is part of that process. Throwing the baby out with the bath water over a few bad actors has consistently failed and left people far, far worse off. You don't even need to look far back in history to see examples, South American countries were still obsessed with the Bolivarian idea of "capitalism is the root problem" nonsense well into the 2000s... until they ran out of money which masked the unsustainability of their alternative, like we're now seeing in Ecuador and other countries.

iamasoftwaredev 7y ago
> like we're now seeing in Ecuador and other countries. The protests in Ecuador are about IMF austerity measures. The sort of cruel anti-working class policy we've been seeing peddled by neo-liberals for a long time. The sort of policy that is now seeing a resurgent fascism and socialism.
- dmix 7y ago
  Everyone loves to blame the austerity measures. Not the people or ideology that got them into the mess in the first place. I'm sure the government can find better ways to pay the money back but it's still a massive burden put onto an already struggling economy which didn't have to exist.
  - Apocryphon 7y ago
    Under Correa, living standards increased in Ecuador, and the economy grew. Hard to ask people to not have supported such policies.
    - dmix 7y ago
      Things always go great in socialist countries until they run out of other people's money to spend and then the whole thing gets exposed for what it is: an unsustainable system that just makes everyone poorer, all in the name of 'equity' and a bunch of hand-wavy misdirections so they can keep the lie their system is better than capitalism going.
      - Apocryphon 7y ago
        What would you offer them instead? People want better lives. And it’s not as if a revolution caused that- the electorate willingly voted in those leaders.
Apocryphon 7y ago
In times of rampant inequality and growing economic anxiety, radical solutions become far more appealing to the desperate. While your point isn't far off, those propping up the current system need to actually "to fix what we have and try to be better". For instance, will those who support capitalism as it is be willing to support for massive estate taxes? Increase the social safety net? Push for greater access to quality education? Otherwise then it just perpetuates the "there is no alternative" narrative that keeps the status quo as it is.

refurb 7y ago

Anyone familiar with the “worker’s paradise” in China, Russia or other socialist/communist systems know that nepotism and connections have just as big an impact (if not more) in those countries. Hell, sometimes you can’t even get basic government services with “knowing someone”.

yoz-y 7y ago
Exactly. Taking money out of the equation just makes the society replace it with something else.
- pluma 7y ago
  The problem with capitalism isn't money. The problem is a centralisation of power. If your only idea of an "alternative to capitalism" are nation states like the Soviet Union or China, you might have a massive blind spot. Look up historical anarchist movements like the commune of Paris, or in more modern days the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (unlike what news coverage would have you believe, they're not just "Kurdish rebels"). Or if you want a quick read, check out their founding principles by reading Öçalan's brochure about Democratic Confederalism. Or for something less grandiose, just look into anarcho-syndicalism and workers' cooperatives. It's not that alternative models haven't been tried yet, it's just that building egalitarian grassroots democratic structures within capitalist nation states is nearly impossible and even when you manage to do so, you now have to figure out how to interact with the rest of the world and prevent them from ending you. Let's be realistic: the United Nations isn't exactly going to take interest in an autonomous territory that intentionally rejects nationhood. And if foreign powers (even the "socialist" nation states) have any political, economical or military interest in your territory, things are unlikely to end well for you.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    Things centralize for a reason - and it has been around befofe nation states and capitalism's modern conception. Decentralization seldom scales better. Even if they somehow wound up in a magical perfect coop start state without rivals centralization would emerge and prevail yet again unless there were extremly significant changes to ensure different outcomes.

pluma 7y ago

Interesting that most people are so used to capitalism they can't fathom any system that isn't hierarchical. Nepotism is only a problem if you have centralised power and static top-down hierarchies. When people are saying capitalism is the problem that doesn't mean they're advocating for Soviet style state capitalism or "socialist" nation states. Not every anticapitalist is a Marxist-Leninist, especially in recent years.

natechols 7y ago
Again, you're assuming that hierarchies are a unique property of capitalism. I am arguing that they are an expected result of basic human behavior, regardless of how your economic or political system is organized. This is not a radical concept and there have been countless pages written on the subject (although I confess that the book that influenced me the most in this respect was science fiction, specifically "The Dispossessed" by Ursula LeGuin).
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  Anarcho-primitives would disagree with you, and would have their choice anthropological case studies of hunter-gatherer or pastoral tribal peoples who seemingly live without hierarchy. On the other end of the spectrum, there's Roddenberry utopian sci-fi visions of the disappearance of hierarchies- at least those organized around property- in post-scarcity worlds. And even in tech, there are modern day utopians who try to build "holacracy" and flat organizations, always with decidedly mixed-to-negative results. I'm not endorsing this argument one way or another, just saying that hierarchies as they exist now are not inevitable, and the act of presuming that there is no alternative is an act of lack of imagination.
  - pluma 7y ago
    Keep in mind "no hierarchies" in these cultural studies does not mean that there are no authority figures or that there aren't any leaders. In many situation it is more practical to have one decision maker rather than always deferring to a democratic discussion. But the key difference is that the authority granted to these leaders is conditional and temporary. If the group loses their faith in the leader or the leader is no longer absolutely necessary, they can fall back to the democratic process again. Likewise in federal communal structures an individual commune or neighborhood can always object and, if its members don't feel adequately represented, secede without threats of violence. We recognise this level of autonomy in super-national structures like the European Union (hence the discussions around "Brexit" and such), yet we seem to treat them as unthinkable within a nation and any mention of autonomy at the communal level is easily seen as absurd. This is because nationhood has become our widespread cultural norm to the point we can rarely even entertain the notion of an alternative or a time before or after nation states.