5 ms·

Then turn off the computer and cancel your internet.

malka 6y ago
https://i.imgur.com/CDgZs2m_d.webp?maxwidth=728&fidelity=grand https://i.imgur.com/CDgZs2m_d.webp?maxwidth=728&fidelity=gra...
coldtea 6y ago
That doesn't follow. That's like saying: - Slavery is bad. - Then don't wear cotton clothes. Maybe instead change the system so there's no slavery, and have non-slaves pick up cotton and make cotton clothes? Non-capitalist countries can have computers and internet too. In fact most computers today are made in "communist" China.
- syshum 6y ago
  > In fact most computers today are made in "communist" China. No Most computers today are made in "Special Economic Zone" China that has exempted almost all communist economic policies in favor of Free market capitalism because even hard core authoritarian communists know that their economic model is a path to poverty for everyone including the leaders
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    Nevertheless, such a system is quite a long way from a true free-market approach. And I think it demonstrates that market based systems that aren't "free markets" can be quite effective, and indeed from a theoretical perspective it seems to me very likely that such approaches work better than a "remove regulation at all costs" approach. EDIT: there was initially a typo in this comment. I meant "aren't free markets", not "are free markets".
    - syshum 6y ago
      it is insane to me that anyone would point to china as a example of how the rest of the world should operate If you do clearly you place no value on what most people call Basic Human Rights. >> And I think it demonstrates that market based systems that are "free markets" can be quite effective, I am not sure what you are trying to say here, everyone knows Free markets result in the best economic outcomes, that was my point. The argument I was countering was the Free markets are bad and socialism is good which history has proven wrong time and time again the only counter that socialist have is "those were not real socialism" Any society more than a couple hundred people in size will fail miserably under a socialist economic model. Only Free markets provide for the best outcomes for the most people. That is not to say there is no issue with capitalism in general, Crony Capitalism which is what you have with Heavily regulated markets like we see in the US is a real problem and is largely the cause of Wealth Disparity in capitalist systems, I am further confused by your statement the Free Markets are better than "remove regulation at all costs" approach Truly free markets have no regulation, so I am not sure what point you are driving at.
      - nicoburns 6y ago
        > it is insane to me that anyone would point to china as a example of how the rest of the world should operate. If you do clearly you place no value on what most people call Basic Human Rights. I don't like the human rights abuses in China. But that doesn't mean they don't do anything well. Such an argument is silly. I could makes a similar claim about the US. How does the US do on the right to healthcare for example? Awfully. But that is only tangentially related to the merit of their overall economic policy. > everyone knows Free markets result in the best economic outcomes No they don't. There is a lot of evidence that free markets lead to better economic outcomes then soviet-style planned economies. That they lead to the best possible outcomes of all possible economic systems is a highly suspect claim given that the economic outcomes they lead to aren't all that great (e.g. high levels of inequality). You seem to have in your mind that free markets and planned economies (which you call socialism, although there are actually many forms of socialism that don't use a state-planned approach such as market socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism) are the only possible economic models. But in fact there are many other approaches. For example the scandinavian model is a mixed economy with some free-market aspects but also a large state (32% of the economy is public sector in Denmark vs 17% for the US and 50% for China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_sector_size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_se...), and much stronger regulation than in the US. > That is not to say there is no issue with capitalism in general, Crony Capitalism which is what you have with Heavily regulated markets like we see in the US is a real problem and is largely the cause of Wealth Disparity in capitalist systems Regulation is indeed a problem in the US. But that is only because of the regulatory capture leading to ridiculous regulations that enforce monopolies. In other places (I live in the UK) regulation actually prevents monopolies (e.g. we have laws that anybody may start an ISP using the shared fibre/copper infrastructure) and leads to much better outcomes than unregulated markets. I find it hilarious that you think the US markets are heavily regulated when they are some of the least regulated amongst OECD countries > I am further confused by your statement the Free Markets are better than "remove regulation at all costs" approach. Truly free markets have no regulation, so I am not sure what point you are driving at. Having no regulation is what I am describing as "remove regulation at all costs". My point is that there is a lot of evidence that such markets don't in fact function better than a more measured approach of "regulate where it's appropriate". The political position that all markets ought to be as free as possible is almost as extreme as the one that economies ought to state run.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Actually, most computers today are made in China that hardly favors "free market capitalism". The companies take lots of subsidies, some are state owed, they depend on state infrastructure and policies (even to get workers), and so on. At best it's a mix, but hardly "free market capitalism".
dividedbyzero 6y ago
You know, people can hold even very critical views of things without full-on 120% zealot-level boycott, especially if it's about the very system that produces next to every single thing necessary for life and survival, save oxygen maybe.
- microcolonel 6y ago
  Capital markets produced the the goods and services that make this forum possible. If you hate capitalism, you hate basically everything that got you to this conversation. So why not stop feeding into it, in the few obvious ways you can? Because it's fake, you don't hate capitalism if you like Hacker News, even if you think you can. Hacker News is literally owned and operated by venture capital firm
  - smoe 6y ago
    There is a difference between being critical of something and hating it. And if you want to change a system, there are not many ways to do so without interacting with it. Say you happen to be born into a communist regime but dislike communism. Getting out of it might not be feasible for any reason ranging from not being allowed to, not having the means, to not wanting to leave your community behind. No matter if you now want to completely tear down the predominant social-economical systems or just tweak them, either way you going to have to interact with them. If you want to destroy capitalism, hacker news is probably not the most promising place to start. If your goal is to tweak it I actually think it is.
    - microcolonel 6y ago
      > There is a difference between being critical of something and hating it. The original comment said “hate” not “is bad”; probably the source of a lot of the confusion in this thread lol. > If you want to destroy capitalism, hacker news is probably not the most promising place to start. If your goal is to tweak it I actually think it is. Idunno, even just calling it “bad” seems to imply that there are better things, which is not really a statement about “tweaking” anything. A statement in favour of tweaking capitalism would be something like “capitalism on its own can not reliably produce moral goods”.

https://i.imgur.com/CDgZs2m_d.webp?maxwidth=728&fidelity=grand https://i.imgur.com/CDgZs2m_d.webp?maxwidth=728&fidelity=gra...

coldtea 6y ago

That doesn't follow. That's like saying: - Slavery is bad. - Then don't wear cotton clothes. Maybe instead change the system so there's no slavery, and have non-slaves pick up cotton and make cotton clothes? Non-capitalist countries can have computers and internet too. In fact most computers today are made in "communist" China.

syshum 6y ago
> In fact most computers today are made in "communist" China. No Most computers today are made in "Special Economic Zone" China that has exempted almost all communist economic policies in favor of Free market capitalism because even hard core authoritarian communists know that their economic model is a path to poverty for everyone including the leaders
- nicoburns 6y ago
  Nevertheless, such a system is quite a long way from a true free-market approach. And I think it demonstrates that market based systems that aren't "free markets" can be quite effective, and indeed from a theoretical perspective it seems to me very likely that such approaches work better than a "remove regulation at all costs" approach. EDIT: there was initially a typo in this comment. I meant "aren't free markets", not "are free markets".
  - syshum 6y ago
    it is insane to me that anyone would point to china as a example of how the rest of the world should operate If you do clearly you place no value on what most people call Basic Human Rights. >> And I think it demonstrates that market based systems that are "free markets" can be quite effective, I am not sure what you are trying to say here, everyone knows Free markets result in the best economic outcomes, that was my point. The argument I was countering was the Free markets are bad and socialism is good which history has proven wrong time and time again the only counter that socialist have is "those were not real socialism" Any society more than a couple hundred people in size will fail miserably under a socialist economic model. Only Free markets provide for the best outcomes for the most people. That is not to say there is no issue with capitalism in general, Crony Capitalism which is what you have with Heavily regulated markets like we see in the US is a real problem and is largely the cause of Wealth Disparity in capitalist systems, I am further confused by your statement the Free Markets are better than "remove regulation at all costs" approach Truly free markets have no regulation, so I am not sure what point you are driving at.
    - nicoburns 6y ago
      > it is insane to me that anyone would point to china as a example of how the rest of the world should operate. If you do clearly you place no value on what most people call Basic Human Rights. I don't like the human rights abuses in China. But that doesn't mean they don't do anything well. Such an argument is silly. I could makes a similar claim about the US. How does the US do on the right to healthcare for example? Awfully. But that is only tangentially related to the merit of their overall economic policy. > everyone knows Free markets result in the best economic outcomes No they don't. There is a lot of evidence that free markets lead to better economic outcomes then soviet-style planned economies. That they lead to the best possible outcomes of all possible economic systems is a highly suspect claim given that the economic outcomes they lead to aren't all that great (e.g. high levels of inequality). You seem to have in your mind that free markets and planned economies (which you call socialism, although there are actually many forms of socialism that don't use a state-planned approach such as market socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism) are the only possible economic models. But in fact there are many other approaches. For example the scandinavian model is a mixed economy with some free-market aspects but also a large state (32% of the economy is public sector in Denmark vs 17% for the US and 50% for China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_sector_size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_se...), and much stronger regulation than in the US. > That is not to say there is no issue with capitalism in general, Crony Capitalism which is what you have with Heavily regulated markets like we see in the US is a real problem and is largely the cause of Wealth Disparity in capitalist systems Regulation is indeed a problem in the US. But that is only because of the regulatory capture leading to ridiculous regulations that enforce monopolies. In other places (I live in the UK) regulation actually prevents monopolies (e.g. we have laws that anybody may start an ISP using the shared fibre/copper infrastructure) and leads to much better outcomes than unregulated markets. I find it hilarious that you think the US markets are heavily regulated when they are some of the least regulated amongst OECD countries > I am further confused by your statement the Free Markets are better than "remove regulation at all costs" approach. Truly free markets have no regulation, so I am not sure what point you are driving at. Having no regulation is what I am describing as "remove regulation at all costs". My point is that there is a lot of evidence that such markets don't in fact function better than a more measured approach of "regulate where it's appropriate". The political position that all markets ought to be as free as possible is almost as extreme as the one that economies ought to state run.
- coldtea 6y ago
  Actually, most computers today are made in China that hardly favors "free market capitalism". The companies take lots of subsidies, some are state owed, they depend on state infrastructure and policies (even to get workers), and so on. At best it's a mix, but hardly "free market capitalism".

dividedbyzero 6y ago

You know, people can hold even very critical views of things without full-on 120% zealot-level boycott, especially if it's about the very system that produces next to every single thing necessary for life and survival, save oxygen maybe.

microcolonel 6y ago
Capital markets produced the the goods and services that make this forum possible. If you hate capitalism, you hate basically everything that got you to this conversation. So why not stop feeding into it, in the few obvious ways you can? Because it's fake, you don't hate capitalism if you like Hacker News, even if you think you can. Hacker News is literally owned and operated by venture capital firm
- smoe 6y ago
  There is a difference between being critical of something and hating it. And if you want to change a system, there are not many ways to do so without interacting with it. Say you happen to be born into a communist regime but dislike communism. Getting out of it might not be feasible for any reason ranging from not being allowed to, not having the means, to not wanting to leave your community behind. No matter if you now want to completely tear down the predominant social-economical systems or just tweak them, either way you going to have to interact with them. If you want to destroy capitalism, hacker news is probably not the most promising place to start. If your goal is to tweak it I actually think it is.
  - microcolonel 6y ago
    > There is a difference between being critical of something and hating it. The original comment said “hate” not “is bad”; probably the source of a lot of the confusion in this thread lol. > If you want to destroy capitalism, hacker news is probably not the most promising place to start. If your goal is to tweak it I actually think it is. Idunno, even just calling it “bad” seems to imply that there are better things, which is not really a statement about “tweaking” anything. A statement in favour of tweaking capitalism would be something like “capitalism on its own can not reliably produce moral goods”.