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Work is natural in that as hunter/gatherers we would hunt and gather food for ourselves and community. But you would be mistaken if you thought that hunter/gat

Work is natural in that as hunter/gatherers we would hunt and gather food for ourselves and community. But you would be mistaken if you thought that hunter/gathers didn’t have a lot of “leisure” time. I do agree that some of the anti work sentiment is silly and doesn’t seem to note that, at the very least, you need to work for yourself. And I find the communist angle to be abhorrent. But clearly, whatever we have going on now is not working. But I wouldn’t call our current system capitalism either. It’s more like some bastardized, corrupted form of capitalism at this point that rewards the people that have already succeeded and makes it hard for people at the bottom to succeed. Maybe more simply, I see capitalism without much meritocracy.

eropple 5y ago
I would be interested in hearing of a "capitalist" system in which this "bastardized, corrupted form" is not an inevitable end case. Why would "capitalists" want meritocracy? They already have the means of production. We've seen this before with other power structures: people want their kids to succeed them, even if by any objective measure somebody else "deserves" it more. Why would that change with suits rather than crowns? The way to keep "capitalists" from doing intrinsically capitalist things is to have a strong regulatory force with an engaged body politic that refuses to allow that regulatory force to be suborned by capturing interests, such that you can harness the positives of a competitive economy without grinding humans to dust within its gears. But that is in itself difficult when the fundamental mode of teaching in a society centers around creating technicians for the industries owned by those capitalists, no? A steadily and strongly mixed economy that commits to ensuring that everyone has their basic needs met (so as not to create wage-slave conditions; nobody would work as a janitor for peanuts were there other options, so make other options to push the floor upward until it finds a better equilibrium!) plus a willingness to shatter giant companies is the way you make something that superficially at least smells like "capitalism" into a thing, but that adds to the mix all the things that make people start screaming about socialism.
- mindslight 5y ago
  The answer you're looking for is Austrian economics. Stop printing trillions of dollars and giving them to Wall Street. Have positive interest rates (5-10%) that encourage loans to be paid off, rather than servicing never ending life debt. End the asset bubble, and let natural technological price deflation take its course across all sectors. I'm not going to assert that if this were to happen, that it would certainly solve our problems (with its corollary of closing my eyes to the problems if they don't go away). But our current economy emphasizes centralized planning over distributed capital, without even getting the benefits of central planning - government spending for people is Evil, while prolifigate government spending for corporations is routine. And the current policies (busted inflation metrics, "full employment" mandate) guarantees this will only get worse. Politically this criticism has been taken off the table - the red team pretends to be fiscally conservative while giving away trillions in corporate welfare, while the blue team advocates for even more government spending to mitigate the damage caused. This managed zeitgeist may be a result of the inevitability in your comment, but there is indeed a framework that doesn't just conclude "welp, that's capitalism".
gruez 5y ago
> Work is natural in that as hunter/gatherers we would hunt and gather food for ourselves and community. But you would be mistaken if you thought that hunter/gathers didn’t have a lot of “leisure” time. Did they? IIRC there was a recent HN post about this, and in the comments someone mentioned that the comparison was flawed because they compared the modern 8 hour workday, to how much time hunter-gatherers spent gathering food. They didn't account for the time for making/maintaining apparel, preserving food, or making repairs to shelter.
- Turing_Machine 5y ago
  Indeed. While it may be true that hunter-gatherers had a lot of leisure time, it's also true that hunter-gatherers typically didn't have much beyond a spear, a knife, a loin cloth, a cooking pot, a subsistence amount of food and maybe some sort of hut with a fire pit. Making enough money for that level of existence wouldn't take much time even today. It would be easy enough to do the experiment (and some have). Just pay a bush pilot to drop you off somewhere in the Alaskan wilderness and hunt and gather to your heart's content. Alaska has regulations that allow subsistence hunting, so you could even do it legally (you might have to fill out a few forms...). However, we seem to like having things like electricity, running water, central heat, desktop supercomputers, global computer networks, airlines, interstate highways, modern medicine, more than one change of clothing...

eropple 5y ago

I would be interested in hearing of a "capitalist" system in which this "bastardized, corrupted form" is not an inevitable end case. Why would "capitalists" want meritocracy? They already have the means of production. We've seen this before with other power structures: people want their kids to succeed them, even if by any objective measure somebody else "deserves" it more. Why would that change with suits rather than crowns? The way to keep "capitalists" from doing intrinsically capitalist things is to have a strong regulatory force with an engaged body politic that refuses to allow that regulatory force to be suborned by capturing interests, such that you can harness the positives of a competitive economy without grinding humans to dust within its gears. But that is in itself difficult when the fundamental mode of teaching in a society centers around creating technicians for the industries owned by those capitalists, no? A steadily and strongly mixed economy that commits to ensuring that everyone has their basic needs met (so as not to create wage-slave conditions; nobody would work as a janitor for peanuts were there other options, so make other options to push the floor upward until it finds a better equilibrium!) plus a willingness to shatter giant companies is the way you make something that superficially at least smells like "capitalism" into a thing, but that adds to the mix all the things that make people start screaming about socialism.

mindslight 5y ago
The answer you're looking for is Austrian economics. Stop printing trillions of dollars and giving them to Wall Street. Have positive interest rates (5-10%) that encourage loans to be paid off, rather than servicing never ending life debt. End the asset bubble, and let natural technological price deflation take its course across all sectors. I'm not going to assert that if this were to happen, that it would certainly solve our problems (with its corollary of closing my eyes to the problems if they don't go away). But our current economy emphasizes centralized planning over distributed capital, without even getting the benefits of central planning - government spending for people is Evil, while prolifigate government spending for corporations is routine. And the current policies (busted inflation metrics, "full employment" mandate) guarantees this will only get worse. Politically this criticism has been taken off the table - the red team pretends to be fiscally conservative while giving away trillions in corporate welfare, while the blue team advocates for even more government spending to mitigate the damage caused. This managed zeitgeist may be a result of the inevitability in your comment, but there is indeed a framework that doesn't just conclude "welp, that's capitalism".

gruez 5y ago

> Work is natural in that as hunter/gatherers we would hunt and gather food for ourselves and community. But you would be mistaken if you thought that hunter/gathers didn’t have a lot of “leisure” time. Did they? IIRC there was a recent HN post about this, and in the comments someone mentioned that the comparison was flawed because they compared the modern 8 hour workday, to how much time hunter-gatherers spent gathering food. They didn't account for the time for making/maintaining apparel, preserving food, or making repairs to shelter.

Turing_Machine 5y ago
Indeed. While it may be true that hunter-gatherers had a lot of leisure time, it's also true that hunter-gatherers typically didn't have much beyond a spear, a knife, a loin cloth, a cooking pot, a subsistence amount of food and maybe some sort of hut with a fire pit. Making enough money for that level of existence wouldn't take much time even today. It would be easy enough to do the experiment (and some have). Just pay a bush pilot to drop you off somewhere in the Alaskan wilderness and hunt and gather to your heart's content. Alaska has regulations that allow subsistence hunting, so you could even do it legally (you might have to fill out a few forms...). However, we seem to like having things like electricity, running water, central heat, desktop supercomputers, global computer networks, airlines, interstate highways, modern medicine, more than one change of clothing...