8 ms·

The Trouble with Capitalism

33 points by danielam 5y ago

eyelidlessness 5y ago
> Now, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with any of those things. Indeed, some of them (such as private property [...]) are required as a matter of natural law. This part is understandable but disappointing. The concept of “private” property in this context is conflated with common usage but has a jargon meaning that’s been used to malign or misunderstand socialism and doesn’t help this article make its case. Here, “private property” is being used to reference physical things owned by private individuals. But in the Marxist context in which it was used to describe/critique capitalism that’s not what it means. “Private property” as used here refers to profit-driving ownership, i.e. the reference to “means of production”. It doesn’t refer to what would be called “personal ownership”, property which belongs to individuals for their personal disposal and discretion. There is nothing in “natural law” which suggests that for people to be free some people should be protected to own things which allow them to extract competitive value. That’s a decision society makes, at whatever granularity.
- xupybd 5y ago
  Isn't it very difficult to draw such a line? One man may own a small farm to feed himself, another a small farm to make a profit. Should the ownership of the first be more virtuous than the second?
  - halsom 5y ago
    The line is drawn by relations between people in the extraction process. As anything, it can be complicated but the starting point is very simple: wage labor. In other words, all workers should own, which is to say they should have democratic rights to the management of, the means of production.
    - disposekinetics 5y ago
      I think you made a jump from laborers should own their own labor to laborers should own labor collectively. Democratically control of individual resources appears to be less than ideal.
      - halsom 5y ago
        I am simply saying that personal property is out of the picture. And there is no such thing as “owning labor.” There is only laborers, which under wage labor are owned for a certain amount of time. But my central point is that Marxism has no conflict whatsoever with personal property. But, as I said, it can be complicated, especially if that is your goal, as can be done with anything if you so please. But, a self-sufficient farmer with no employees is not even part of a societal economy in any modern sense. They are a mere peasant. If they are a farmer with a farm that requires no hired labor or modern technology then same thing. If they require a military to protect them and they send surplus to a feudal arrangement, they probably live in a feudalist society. If they own their land and use industrial technology and hire their own wage laborers to produce a surplus to trade it on a market to pay for all of that, they are now part of a modern economy and Marxism would have more to say about that. The latter have dependencies beyond the mere protection of their farmland, meaning the farmer now lives in a capitalist society.
        eyelidlessness 5y ago
        I attempted to bridge the language from a “this appears to be lay usage, introduce a Marxist distinction” perspective. You’re outright using Marxist language and reasoning and doing a much more effective job communicating it. I appreciate your contribution. Thank you for jumping in where I failed.
        halsom 5y ago
        I think you did a good job!
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    I’m confounded by moralizing an effort to define terms. Why does clarifying what “private” means in context have anything to do with virtue? Why is that the framework you think muddies the water? The same context in which the usage was defined celebrated capitalism as a liberating development from feudalism. It critiqued capitalism as well, and certainly arrived at a moral judgment against that as a societal goal. But in that jargon effort it didn’t make a moral point to distinguish personal versus private ownership. It expressed a set of terminology to distinguish things. I’m not even especially intent on reinforcing the jargon. Only in clarifying when it’s being referenced outside the spirit it was defined in, so perhaps the conversation isn’t scattered around different things.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- akarma 5y ago
  > “Private property” as used here refers to profit-driving ownership, i.e. the reference to “means of production”. It doesn’t refer to what would be called “personal ownership”, property which belongs to individuals for their personal disposal and discretion. This is a blurry line as a sibling comment noted. If I want to start raising chickens on my property, do you take it away from me? What if I start selling the eggs from the hens to my neighbors, do you take it away from me then? Somebody will eventually have a more efficient production idea compared to the big government, and then they want to build it on their own property. Should their property be seized? Should they be imprisoned if they attempt it again? All this to say: If I'm not relatively free to do what I want - barring the harm of other people - on my property, it's not really my property. Separately, it's interesting how much further away from reality this is sounding as technology continues to improve and absorb more of GDP. When the world's largest companies deliver value by writing code on laptops, and are often started by a couple kids who think 'it would be cool if this existed,' how do these restrictions on physical property fit in? How could that be equivalently taken away from them?
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    > This is a blurry line as a sibling comment noted. If I want to start raising chickens on my property, do you take it away from me? What if I start selling the eggs from the hens to my neighbors, do you take it away from me then? No. So far what you’re describing is personal property. It’s one thing to own a toothbrush. It’s similar to make toothbrushes for your neighbors for their benefit. It’s another thing entirely to capitalize on that, making toothbrushes a vector for personal gain; making people pay more for that formerly shared endeavor, compete to provide it, engage in legal disputes around who may provide what. > Somebody will eventually have a more efficient production idea compared to the big government, and then they want to build it on their own property. Should their property be seized? Should they be imprisoned if they attempt it again? It’s similarly disappointing that the competition you have in mind is what it is. The goal in defining private ownership isn’t to distinguish it from public ownership! It’s to distinguish it from personal ownership. The distinction isn’t between state and people, it’s between people and organizations. Nobody should be put in prison for making a more efficient machinery of any kind. They should be blocked from either preventing other people from doing so, or from depriving others from the benefit of that improvement existing.
xupybd 5y ago
This is the best write up I have seen on this topic. I started reading expecting to be offended but I don't think this will be anyone's response. Despite the title this is a balanced piece that leaves you thinking not raging.
- wffurr 5y ago
  Leading with Bible quotes and then citing “natural law” several times in the first paragraph essentially destroyed all possible credibility left in the rest of the essay. I’m offended anyone thought this was worthy of a second’s critical thought.
  - ThalesX 5y ago
    > I’m offended anyone thought this was worthy of a second’s critical thought. Perhaps it sheds more light on the reader’s grasp of philosophy and his capacity for critical thought…
- visualradio 5y ago
  It's not a great write up. It did not mention the largest problem of capitalism: the capitalization of ground rent in asset prices. It instead fixates on another explanation: human desire for riches. > Again, the problem is not riches per se, but the fixation on riches. The desire for riches is not problematic if the majority of people are willing to cooperate to acquire wealth, and seek income from increasing the mastery of humanity over the environment rather by obtaining at the expense of others. Effective cooperation requires distinguishing between income which is positive sum, which adds to the aggregate stock of wealth, and income which is zero sum, which merely transfers existing wealth from others. Both types of income are mixed together when capitalized into asset prices. Effective cooperation requires individuals to devise methods for distinguishing between the two and communicate these methods with others. Capitalism vs socialism debates tend to prevent this from happening because they emphasize either productive income or unproductive income without advancing the practical arts and sciences for distinguishing between the two in manner which allows the majority of individuals willing to engage in cooperative production to do so more efficiently.
halsom 5y ago
> “Socialism in the strict sense, which would centralize the most fundamental economic decision-making, is intrinsically evil.” What do they think socialism is? Even the most radical Marxists define it as “democratic worker ownership of the means of production.” And fwiw the USSR did not even consider itself a socialist state. That’s why it decided on using the term communism instead, and Marxists tend to agree it was not deserving of that name either, deeming it state capitalist.
- dopu 5y ago
  This is why I wish Marx's thoughts were actually gone over in standard philosophy/economics/history college curricula. For having had such a deep impact on the world, the average level of comprehension about what Marxism even was among well educated people is so frightfully low. The fact that so many conflate it with central planning and state capitalism is a clear example of it. If we ever hope to understand, in a thorough and critical way, why Marxism in the 20th century was a failed project, we need to actually learn what it was.
- xupybd 5y ago
  Your comment here is a red flag to me. That I don't understand socialism. My issues with socialism and libertarian capitalism are the same. Too few control too much. If that's a Soviet style government or a dystopian mega corporation, the outcome appears the same to me. I'm attempting to say this in the least confrontational way I can. So please know that my questions come from genuine ignorance. Is there a practical way to administer democratic worker ownership, without centralized control? Is it also possible to do this on smaller scales than entire countries? I fear socialism as I understand it. Only because I want people to be as free as is practically possible. I equally fear monopolistic control from large corporations. The only way I know to offset this control is competition. If people could freely move between small socialist societies I'd see no loss in freedoms. I've only really hear people advocate for socialism on look large scales. There may be significant holes in my thinking but this is where I am today.
  - gremlinsinc 5y ago
    > Is there a practical way to administer democratic worker ownership, without centralized control? Commonly called anarcho-communism or relatedly anarcho-syndicalism (this being actually more of a mechanism to get to anarcho-communism)... Anarcho-syndicalism looks like you form a union, that union then builds companies that are their own "entity" but pool resources/revenues. Workers, and consumers of the companies are linked to the overall union, and can petition for things like medical bills, etc to be paid. The union could grow and grow maybe it builds a total Amazon competitor, maybe walmart too, and convenience/gas stations. All proceeds belong collectively to all in the union, all Top level staff might have a max salary of 500k or better yet, 10x the average worker salary, so keeping worker salaries high increases wages. The unions could as it grows seek to buy up hospitals, and other parts of healthcare systems, and run them like a normal company just with different organization. It'd basically be like Kaiser Health where it's the insurer and hospital and pharmacy and maybe even manufacturer of drugs. The insurer part could even build out programs to basically make states Medicare/Medicaid easier to manage... So all these related/syndicated/union companies are non-profit, extra proceeds would go towards: expansion of syndicates, mutual aid, and left over would be paid out to workers/consumers. Each worker would get a share, each consumer spending over 1000k per year would get a share. Workers could get 2 shares by being a worker and consumer... Shares would grow, so longer-loyalty === more shares. The share is your % of revenue from the pot, so say 33% goes to expansion, 33% goes to mutual aid and 33% goes to UBI type payout, you'd get a percent based on shares you own. Philanthropic people who don't need the money could opt-out as well if they did acquire shares so their portion could be re-distributed to those who have more need. This creates a situation where healthcare is ran by a central/quasi-power structure aka the syndicate, but it's separate from the government and it's worker-owned with shares also being used like shareholder votes on things... It's basically a non-statist form of socialism. Another term is libertarian socialism, or left-libertarianism, but it's totally different from anarcho-capitalism or right-libertarianism. You'll find a lot of people who might lean left or be DSA would really support this... I think a weaker central govt is good, maybe even making states have their own militaries that the fed "conscripts" when there's mutual agreed threats, and the governors would be the senate.. the fed would just govern international stuff, and interstate commerce. States would be more in control, and even cities would have more power than states and majority of taxes would go to county, state, then federal... maybe like 50%, 30%, 20%. That's how my ideal society would look. Eventually the healthcare union syndicate program could roll out nationally for everybody, and maybe be subsidized some by the government for those who aren't officially "customers" but as we grow we'd have so many competing businesses it'd hard not to be a customer for one of them...
Ericson2314 5y ago
> In defense of the first claim, I would simply refer to the standard arguments made by libertarians, free market conservatives, and liberals like Steven Pinker, which I regard as unanswerable. Um, try https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-poverty https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-... ? I would like to think modernity is better globally in strict utilitarian sense, but Hickel raises some serious issues so I'd say it's unclear. This professor thinks he weighing in on culture war issues above the fray, but for this and many other reasons his analysis of worldly matters is quite pitifully weak. I'm in no position to critique his theology but I doubt it's much better.
- pas 5y ago
  Regarding Hickel's work: https://mobile.twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1378730932308471809 https://mobile.twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1378730932308471...
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    There is a lot of claims of Hickle's behavior that does sound quite shitty, but the two clearly despise each other and the claims of bad behavior go both ways. I cannot validate either's ad-homininunms; this sort of thing is why I don't have a twitter acount. On to the substantive claims, neither dispute that things have gotten a bit better in recent years. Reading the previous piece makes that clear. Hickle's main claim is a) the data for the old period up to 1981 is misleading, and 2) the recent progress isn't "worth" the bad stuff that came before / we're still net bad. In the latter part of the thread Roser claims the GDP-is-misleading claim is wrong, which would be quite interesting, but there isn't much detail there and then it's back to ad-hominums.
- halsom 5y ago
  Yeah, he would probably be shocked to learn what Karl Marx actually thought about capitalism and the human spirit, and how comparable their analyses are. See:https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts...
visualradio 5y ago
> The institution of private property, including private ownership of the basic means of production Property is never really wholly private or wholly public. Deeds, titles, freeholds, leaseholds, etc all generally come with some form of public obligations to a sovereign. And in a republic the sovereign is a general government which uses its authority on behalf of the people as a whole to maximize their happiness. > A doctrinaire laissez-faire mentality that is reflexively hostile to all governmental economic intervention Laissez-faire was originally a progressive ideology advocated by the French physiocrats which opposed the internal tariffs and private privileges which the king, nobility, and church enjoyed under the Ancien Régime. Part of laissez-faire was the idea that governments should collect a large direct tax on landed property and raise 100% of tax revenues from the most privileged classes of society. These capitalism vs socialism debates are never really worth having. There's many types of capitalism and really only a subset of what is commonly referred to as capital has a material basis. These debates always oversimplify things, under-estimate the degree to which western economies are central planned by private banks, and ignore the problem of fictitious capital.
stikit 5y ago
>” Again, the problem is not riches per se, but the fixation on riches” Is this really a problem with capitalism or with human nature?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
omginternets 5y ago
Could we please not flag this? It’s quite substantive and the comments are thoughtful and engaging.
smitty1e 5y ago
This is a great article, and does not deserve the flagging. It is a well-written, and -linked, dispassionate treatment of important material. That said, let me respond to: > II. Capitalism has made us spiritually much worse off. Not Capitalism's task. Economics is an external, aggregate concept. The notion that it is somehow responsible for internal, personal results is novel. Capitalism is a system, and as such is amoral. It is frequently and perhaps accurately attacked for bringing out the ugly carnivore in humans. But that seems like attacking the street for the drunk driver. These attacks are often delivered by those favoring Socialism. I would suggest that perhaps the difficulty stems from the tendency toward aggregation, externalization, and materialism in human thinking, at the expense of the individual, internal, and the spiritual.
Gabriel_Martin 5y ago
Not to be too meta, but I kinda like that this just has [flagged] in the title, without much else changed. Hopefully it serves as a challenge to discuss the topic while following the "interpret each other generously" rule, and discussing reasonably. Ever since I got called on being less than charitable in a past comment thread, I've really come to love that rule here.
- xupybd 5y ago
  I suspect this was flagged due to the off topic rule. I loved the article but expected it to get flagged as it's not focused on technology.
  - omginternets 5y ago
    Which off-topic rule? Non-technological topics are more than welcome, here.
    - xupybd 5y ago
      From the guidelines. " What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic"
      - danielam 5y ago
        "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." Unless I am to read this fragment to mean "gratifying one's superficial fetish for frivolous novelty", why wouldn't this article satisfy this criterion in a general sense? Feser offers an analysis of what he takes to be the moral hazards of the material prosperity, etc of capitalism. If that can't be said to be a topic of interest, then I'm sorry, but IMO, that's an indictment of the accuser, not the article. I read articles on HN every day that are far less substantive or original than this blog post. Plenty of posts are off-topic if we go by the description above. And articles on the subject of capitalism have been featured on the front page just these last two days which is why I thought this article's publication was especially opportune. I don't wish to make accusations, but it's difficult not to suspect prejudice.
airhead969 5y ago
Number 9 (not The Beatles thing) is supported by the Texas Senate and Abbott will sign it: criminalizing homelessness.
emrah 5y ago
For me, the biggest issue with capitalism is that it narrowly tries to optimize "profit" above all and at all cost. The problem with that is there are essential human needs that should be taken care of without trying to optimize profits but currently it doesn't work and people suffer needlessly. I'm not necessarily advocating for completely getting rid of capitalism or switching to socialism, but the capitalism model certainly needs some adjustments to account for essential human needs (health, food, shelter etc), the environment and so forth.
GoodJokes 5y ago
The trouble with capitalism is the exploitation of workers and the alienation that causes in their life and society. Just like, can hackernews please read some real political science so we don’t have to keep reading these armchair over-confident blog posts.

33 points by danielam 5y ago

> Now, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with any of those things. Indeed, some of them (such as private property [...]) are required as a matter of natural law. This part is understandable but disappointing. The concept of “private” property in this context is conflated with common usage but has a jargon meaning that’s been used to malign or misunderstand socialism and doesn’t help this article make its case. Here, “private property” is being used to reference physical things owned by private individuals. But in the Marxist context in which it was used to describe/critique capitalism that’s not what it means. “Private property” as used here refers to profit-driving ownership, i.e. the reference to “means of production”. It doesn’t refer to what would be called “personal ownership”, property which belongs to individuals for their personal disposal and discretion. There is nothing in “natural law” which suggests that for people to be free some people should be protected to own things which allow them to extract competitive value. That’s a decision society makes, at whatever granularity.

xupybd 5y ago
Isn't it very difficult to draw such a line? One man may own a small farm to feed himself, another a small farm to make a profit. Should the ownership of the first be more virtuous than the second?
- halsom 5y ago
  The line is drawn by relations between people in the extraction process. As anything, it can be complicated but the starting point is very simple: wage labor. In other words, all workers should own, which is to say they should have democratic rights to the management of, the means of production.
  - disposekinetics 5y ago
    I think you made a jump from laborers should own their own labor to laborers should own labor collectively. Democratically control of individual resources appears to be less than ideal.
    - halsom 5y ago
      I am simply saying that personal property is out of the picture. And there is no such thing as “owning labor.” There is only laborers, which under wage labor are owned for a certain amount of time. But my central point is that Marxism has no conflict whatsoever with personal property. But, as I said, it can be complicated, especially if that is your goal, as can be done with anything if you so please. But, a self-sufficient farmer with no employees is not even part of a societal economy in any modern sense. They are a mere peasant. If they are a farmer with a farm that requires no hired labor or modern technology then same thing. If they require a military to protect them and they send surplus to a feudal arrangement, they probably live in a feudalist society. If they own their land and use industrial technology and hire their own wage laborers to produce a surplus to trade it on a market to pay for all of that, they are now part of a modern economy and Marxism would have more to say about that. The latter have dependencies beyond the mere protection of their farmland, meaning the farmer now lives in a capitalist society.
      - eyelidlessness 5y ago
        I attempted to bridge the language from a “this appears to be lay usage, introduce a Marxist distinction” perspective. You’re outright using Marxist language and reasoning and doing a much more effective job communicating it. I appreciate your contribution. Thank you for jumping in where I failed.
        halsom 5y ago
        I think you did a good job!
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  I’m confounded by moralizing an effort to define terms. Why does clarifying what “private” means in context have anything to do with virtue? Why is that the framework you think muddies the water? The same context in which the usage was defined celebrated capitalism as a liberating development from feudalism. It critiqued capitalism as well, and certainly arrived at a moral judgment against that as a societal goal. But in that jargon effort it didn’t make a moral point to distinguish personal versus private ownership. It expressed a set of terminology to distinguish things. I’m not even especially intent on reinforcing the jargon. Only in clarifying when it’s being referenced outside the spirit it was defined in, so perhaps the conversation isn’t scattered around different things.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
akarma 5y ago
> “Private property” as used here refers to profit-driving ownership, i.e. the reference to “means of production”. It doesn’t refer to what would be called “personal ownership”, property which belongs to individuals for their personal disposal and discretion. This is a blurry line as a sibling comment noted. If I want to start raising chickens on my property, do you take it away from me? What if I start selling the eggs from the hens to my neighbors, do you take it away from me then? Somebody will eventually have a more efficient production idea compared to the big government, and then they want to build it on their own property. Should their property be seized? Should they be imprisoned if they attempt it again? All this to say: If I'm not relatively free to do what I want - barring the harm of other people - on my property, it's not really my property. Separately, it's interesting how much further away from reality this is sounding as technology continues to improve and absorb more of GDP. When the world's largest companies deliver value by writing code on laptops, and are often started by a couple kids who think 'it would be cool if this existed,' how do these restrictions on physical property fit in? How could that be equivalently taken away from them?
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  > This is a blurry line as a sibling comment noted. If I want to start raising chickens on my property, do you take it away from me? What if I start selling the eggs from the hens to my neighbors, do you take it away from me then? No. So far what you’re describing is personal property. It’s one thing to own a toothbrush. It’s similar to make toothbrushes for your neighbors for their benefit. It’s another thing entirely to capitalize on that, making toothbrushes a vector for personal gain; making people pay more for that formerly shared endeavor, compete to provide it, engage in legal disputes around who may provide what. > Somebody will eventually have a more efficient production idea compared to the big government, and then they want to build it on their own property. Should their property be seized? Should they be imprisoned if they attempt it again? It’s similarly disappointing that the competition you have in mind is what it is. The goal in defining private ownership isn’t to distinguish it from public ownership! It’s to distinguish it from personal ownership. The distinction isn’t between state and people, it’s between people and organizations. Nobody should be put in prison for making a more efficient machinery of any kind. They should be blocked from either preventing other people from doing so, or from depriving others from the benefit of that improvement existing.

xupybd 5y ago

This is the best write up I have seen on this topic. I started reading expecting to be offended but I don't think this will be anyone's response. Despite the title this is a balanced piece that leaves you thinking not raging.

wffurr 5y ago
Leading with Bible quotes and then citing “natural law” several times in the first paragraph essentially destroyed all possible credibility left in the rest of the essay. I’m offended anyone thought this was worthy of a second’s critical thought.
- ThalesX 5y ago
  > I’m offended anyone thought this was worthy of a second’s critical thought. Perhaps it sheds more light on the reader’s grasp of philosophy and his capacity for critical thought…
visualradio 5y ago
It's not a great write up. It did not mention the largest problem of capitalism: the capitalization of ground rent in asset prices. It instead fixates on another explanation: human desire for riches. > Again, the problem is not riches per se, but the fixation on riches. The desire for riches is not problematic if the majority of people are willing to cooperate to acquire wealth, and seek income from increasing the mastery of humanity over the environment rather by obtaining at the expense of others. Effective cooperation requires distinguishing between income which is positive sum, which adds to the aggregate stock of wealth, and income which is zero sum, which merely transfers existing wealth from others. Both types of income are mixed together when capitalized into asset prices. Effective cooperation requires individuals to devise methods for distinguishing between the two and communicate these methods with others. Capitalism vs socialism debates tend to prevent this from happening because they emphasize either productive income or unproductive income without advancing the practical arts and sciences for distinguishing between the two in manner which allows the majority of individuals willing to engage in cooperative production to do so more efficiently.

halsom 5y ago

> “Socialism in the strict sense, which would centralize the most fundamental economic decision-making, is intrinsically evil.” What do they think socialism is? Even the most radical Marxists define it as “democratic worker ownership of the means of production.” And fwiw the USSR did not even consider itself a socialist state. That’s why it decided on using the term communism instead, and Marxists tend to agree it was not deserving of that name either, deeming it state capitalist.

dopu 5y ago
This is why I wish Marx's thoughts were actually gone over in standard philosophy/economics/history college curricula. For having had such a deep impact on the world, the average level of comprehension about what Marxism even was among well educated people is so frightfully low. The fact that so many conflate it with central planning and state capitalism is a clear example of it. If we ever hope to understand, in a thorough and critical way, why Marxism in the 20th century was a failed project, we need to actually learn what it was.
xupybd 5y ago
Your comment here is a red flag to me. That I don't understand socialism. My issues with socialism and libertarian capitalism are the same. Too few control too much. If that's a Soviet style government or a dystopian mega corporation, the outcome appears the same to me. I'm attempting to say this in the least confrontational way I can. So please know that my questions come from genuine ignorance. Is there a practical way to administer democratic worker ownership, without centralized control? Is it also possible to do this on smaller scales than entire countries? I fear socialism as I understand it. Only because I want people to be as free as is practically possible. I equally fear monopolistic control from large corporations. The only way I know to offset this control is competition. If people could freely move between small socialist societies I'd see no loss in freedoms. I've only really hear people advocate for socialism on look large scales. There may be significant holes in my thinking but this is where I am today.
- gremlinsinc 5y ago
  > Is there a practical way to administer democratic worker ownership, without centralized control? Commonly called anarcho-communism or relatedly anarcho-syndicalism (this being actually more of a mechanism to get to anarcho-communism)... Anarcho-syndicalism looks like you form a union, that union then builds companies that are their own "entity" but pool resources/revenues. Workers, and consumers of the companies are linked to the overall union, and can petition for things like medical bills, etc to be paid. The union could grow and grow maybe it builds a total Amazon competitor, maybe walmart too, and convenience/gas stations. All proceeds belong collectively to all in the union, all Top level staff might have a max salary of 500k or better yet, 10x the average worker salary, so keeping worker salaries high increases wages. The unions could as it grows seek to buy up hospitals, and other parts of healthcare systems, and run them like a normal company just with different organization. It'd basically be like Kaiser Health where it's the insurer and hospital and pharmacy and maybe even manufacturer of drugs. The insurer part could even build out programs to basically make states Medicare/Medicaid easier to manage... So all these related/syndicated/union companies are non-profit, extra proceeds would go towards: expansion of syndicates, mutual aid, and left over would be paid out to workers/consumers. Each worker would get a share, each consumer spending over 1000k per year would get a share. Workers could get 2 shares by being a worker and consumer... Shares would grow, so longer-loyalty === more shares. The share is your % of revenue from the pot, so say 33% goes to expansion, 33% goes to mutual aid and 33% goes to UBI type payout, you'd get a percent based on shares you own. Philanthropic people who don't need the money could opt-out as well if they did acquire shares so their portion could be re-distributed to those who have more need. This creates a situation where healthcare is ran by a central/quasi-power structure aka the syndicate, but it's separate from the government and it's worker-owned with shares also being used like shareholder votes on things... It's basically a non-statist form of socialism. Another term is libertarian socialism, or left-libertarianism, but it's totally different from anarcho-capitalism or right-libertarianism. You'll find a lot of people who might lean left or be DSA would really support this... I think a weaker central govt is good, maybe even making states have their own militaries that the fed "conscripts" when there's mutual agreed threats, and the governors would be the senate.. the fed would just govern international stuff, and interstate commerce. States would be more in control, and even cities would have more power than states and majority of taxes would go to county, state, then federal... maybe like 50%, 30%, 20%. That's how my ideal society would look. Eventually the healthcare union syndicate program could roll out nationally for everybody, and maybe be subsidized some by the government for those who aren't officially "customers" but as we grow we'd have so many competing businesses it'd hard not to be a customer for one of them...

Ericson2314 5y ago

> In defense of the first claim, I would simply refer to the standard arguments made by libertarians, free market conservatives, and liberals like Steven Pinker, which I regard as unanswerable. Um, try https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-poverty https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-... ? I would like to think modernity is better globally in strict utilitarian sense, but Hickel raises some serious issues so I'd say it's unclear. This professor thinks he weighing in on culture war issues above the fray, but for this and many other reasons his analysis of worldly matters is quite pitifully weak. I'm in no position to critique his theology but I doubt it's much better.

pas 5y ago
Regarding Hickel's work: https://mobile.twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1378730932308471809 https://mobile.twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1378730932308471...
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  There is a lot of claims of Hickle's behavior that does sound quite shitty, but the two clearly despise each other and the claims of bad behavior go both ways. I cannot validate either's ad-homininunms; this sort of thing is why I don't have a twitter acount. On to the substantive claims, neither dispute that things have gotten a bit better in recent years. Reading the previous piece makes that clear. Hickle's main claim is a) the data for the old period up to 1981 is misleading, and 2) the recent progress isn't "worth" the bad stuff that came before / we're still net bad. In the latter part of the thread Roser claims the GDP-is-misleading claim is wrong, which would be quite interesting, but there isn't much detail there and then it's back to ad-hominums.
halsom 5y ago
Yeah, he would probably be shocked to learn what Karl Marx actually thought about capitalism and the human spirit, and how comparable their analyses are. See:https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts...

visualradio 5y ago

> The institution of private property, including private ownership of the basic means of production Property is never really wholly private or wholly public. Deeds, titles, freeholds, leaseholds, etc all generally come with some form of public obligations to a sovereign. And in a republic the sovereign is a general government which uses its authority on behalf of the people as a whole to maximize their happiness. > A doctrinaire laissez-faire mentality that is reflexively hostile to all governmental economic intervention Laissez-faire was originally a progressive ideology advocated by the French physiocrats which opposed the internal tariffs and private privileges which the king, nobility, and church enjoyed under the Ancien Régime. Part of laissez-faire was the idea that governments should collect a large direct tax on landed property and raise 100% of tax revenues from the most privileged classes of society. These capitalism vs socialism debates are never really worth having. There's many types of capitalism and really only a subset of what is commonly referred to as capital has a material basis. These debates always oversimplify things, under-estimate the degree to which western economies are central planned by private banks, and ignore the problem of fictitious capital.

stikit 5y ago

>” Again, the problem is not riches per se, but the fixation on riches” Is this really a problem with capitalism or with human nature?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

omginternets 5y ago

Could we please not flag this? It’s quite substantive and the comments are thoughtful and engaging.

smitty1e 5y ago

This is a great article, and does not deserve the flagging. It is a well-written, and -linked, dispassionate treatment of important material. That said, let me respond to: > II. Capitalism has made us spiritually much worse off. Not Capitalism's task. Economics is an external, aggregate concept. The notion that it is somehow responsible for internal, personal results is novel. Capitalism is a system, and as such is amoral. It is frequently and perhaps accurately attacked for bringing out the ugly carnivore in humans. But that seems like attacking the street for the drunk driver. These attacks are often delivered by those favoring Socialism. I would suggest that perhaps the difficulty stems from the tendency toward aggregation, externalization, and materialism in human thinking, at the expense of the individual, internal, and the spiritual.

Gabriel_Martin 5y ago

Not to be too meta, but I kinda like that this just has [flagged] in the title, without much else changed. Hopefully it serves as a challenge to discuss the topic while following the "interpret each other generously" rule, and discussing reasonably. Ever since I got called on being less than charitable in a past comment thread, I've really come to love that rule here.

xupybd 5y ago
I suspect this was flagged due to the off topic rule. I loved the article but expected it to get flagged as it's not focused on technology.
- omginternets 5y ago
  Which off-topic rule? Non-technological topics are more than welcome, here.
  - xupybd 5y ago
    From the guidelines. " What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic"
    - danielam 5y ago
      "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." Unless I am to read this fragment to mean "gratifying one's superficial fetish for frivolous novelty", why wouldn't this article satisfy this criterion in a general sense? Feser offers an analysis of what he takes to be the moral hazards of the material prosperity, etc of capitalism. If that can't be said to be a topic of interest, then I'm sorry, but IMO, that's an indictment of the accuser, not the article. I read articles on HN every day that are far less substantive or original than this blog post. Plenty of posts are off-topic if we go by the description above. And articles on the subject of capitalism have been featured on the front page just these last two days which is why I thought this article's publication was especially opportune. I don't wish to make accusations, but it's difficult not to suspect prejudice.

airhead969 5y ago

Number 9 (not The Beatles thing) is supported by the Texas Senate and Abbott will sign it: criminalizing homelessness.

emrah 5y ago

For me, the biggest issue with capitalism is that it narrowly tries to optimize "profit" above all and at all cost. The problem with that is there are essential human needs that should be taken care of without trying to optimize profits but currently it doesn't work and people suffer needlessly. I'm not necessarily advocating for completely getting rid of capitalism or switching to socialism, but the capitalism model certainly needs some adjustments to account for essential human needs (health, food, shelter etc), the environment and so forth.

GoodJokes 5y ago

The trouble with capitalism is the exploitation of workers and the alienation that causes in their life and society. Just like, can hackernews please read some real political science so we don’t have to keep reading these armchair over-confident blog posts.