6 ms·

Just as light bends under the influence of gravity....Looks like rule of law also bends under the influence of capitalism...

seibelj 5y ago
In the Soviet Union the high level apparatchiks lived in better housing, away from the common people. There will always be elite people. At least in capitalism you become rich by providing value to other people. In socialism you become elite by stealing from your comrades and forcefully eliminating the competition.
- eesmith 5y ago
  What value did John T. Walton provide that was worth US$18.2 billion? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_T._Walton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_T._Walton
  - sdoering 5y ago
    As much as I agree with your sentiment, I think you could just as easily quote from the first paragraph of the linked Wikipedia article to find a counter point to your (seemingly) rhetoric question: > Walton cofounded the Children's Scholarship Fund, providing tuition scholarships for disadvantaged youth.
    - oblio 5y ago
      That's not worth $18.2tn, knowing charity it was probably worth a few tens of millions, at best, and was used for tax write-offs. Plus knowing rich people, he evaded/avoided taxes (probably hundreds of millions, if not billions) that regular Joes making $36.4k a year would never be able to.
    - lovich 5y ago
      He did that with money he already had, unless he somehow managed to turn a profit off a charity which would be a different concern
  - settrans 5y ago
    That's obviously not how property rights work. Sam Walton was entitled to bequeath his wealth to his heirs however he saw fit, subject to any applicable estate and inheritance taxes.
    - 8note 5y ago
      On death, what right do you retain to that property? Under a more capitalist system, your children could not inherit, and instead have to start from the bottom like everyone else.
      - LudwigNagasena 5y ago
        That’s not capitalism. That’s some kind of meritocratic (anti?-)utopia. Capitalism is when you can do with your property whatever you want including giving it away to whomever you want.
        oblio 5y ago
        Capitalism ideally means ideal free markets, free of distortion. Starting with market distorting money from birth by definition... distorts markets.
        LudwigNagasena 5y ago
        A mere change in market equilibrium doesn’t constitute a market distortion.
        oblio 5y ago
        You can label anything "a mere change in market equilibrium", apparently even someone inheriting more money than the GDP of an average sized country ...
        LudwigNagasena 5y ago
        The magnitude doesn't matter, it is a qualitatively different phenomenon. This provides a definition of a market distortions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_distortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_distortion This may help understand why it is defined this particular way and why it excludes inheritance and other wealth transfers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorems_of_welfare_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorems_of_welfar... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency
  - LudwigNagasena 5y ago
    Kids have obvious value to their parents. That’s like one of the most basic evolutionary instincts.
    - eesmith 5y ago
      Sure. But then you have to argue that John T. Walton provided $18 billion of value to his parents. And if Sam Walton were taxed at 100% for all wealth over $100 million, so John Walton were only worth $20 million, then would John have provided less value to his parents? My parents spend several $100,000 on my upbringing. Does that represent my value to my parents? The children from the world's poorest families also provide value to their parents. From this I conclude that "obvious value" of evolution and capitalism's "monetary value" aren't the same.
      - LudwigNagasena 5y ago
        Value is subjective and dependence on your circumstances.
        eesmith 5y ago
        The current circumstances are from seibelj's comment "you become rich by providing value to other people", where "value" is specifically something which provides economic wealth. Gaining wealth by being the child of a wealthy person is not something specific to capitalism, certainly happened in feudal monarchies, and almost certainly also happened with the children of high level apparatchiks in the Soviet Union.
- sdoering 5y ago
  While I agree with the Soviet part (or any political system for that matter) I doubt the pro capitalist generalization would stand to scrutiny: > At least in capitalism you become rich by providing value to other people. One could easily find examples that counter these points. I doubt pyramid schemes (think Madoff's schemes) or crypto scams are the only counter-examples possible. These more often than not come from an imbalance of information. People (or the market) could make better decisions with all information being accessible at the time of the decision. But all too often one side has more information than the other. Giving this side an edge. > In socialism you become elite by stealing from your comrades and forcefully eliminating the competition. In capitalism it is basically the same as long as you can get away with it. I know it isn't a popular opinion, but without regulation capitalism is in now way better than other systems. Their excesses would all need to be reigned in. Because no unregulated system would be acting in the common good. The system may be organized in a way to slightly enable more or less perdonsl freedom. Or more or less societal freedom. But in the end - for average Joe - uncontrolled capitalism boils down to the working and living conditions of the early industrialisation or (in case of socialism) towards the living and working conditions of late soviet times.
  - adhesive_wombat 5y ago
    It can be trivially shown to be not true by considering that some people are a toxic drain on a company, costing them immense amounts of money, torpedoing productivity, ruining morale and yet continue to draw a salary for years and years.
  - drekipus 5y ago
    Yes, the point of capitalism is that people can do that, but shouldn't. And it should work in tandem with whatever social system that's set up, (justice, laws, morals, ethics, etc) Pyramid schemes steal a great amount of wealth, and should be regulated. Regulated capitalism is the good thing. The thing is, pyramid schemes aren't run by the state (or shouldn't be) and you don't have a gun to your head forcing you to participate. I almost feel like "unregulated capitalism" is just a straw man argument that others get tricked into trying to defend.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 8note 5y ago
  I'm sure plenty of Soviets became rich by providing value to other people today. The main way to become elite regardless is to be born that way, capitalism or not. The rest is noise
- babyshake 5y ago
  > At least in capitalism you become rich by providing value to other people. You become rich by capturing value. Often times, as Silicon Valley and its investors like to remind the world, a lot of value is also being provided so it is indeed a win-win. But you don't become rich by providing value.
  - csallen 5y ago
    True. However, there are two points worth making: 1. The purpose of many laws and regulations that support capitalism is to make it very difficult to capture value without creating it. (When compared to a world without these laws.) 2. It's generally much easier to capture value that you create than to capture value that others create. The result is that there's a massive incentive to create value for others, and a great deal of rich people and organizations are creating value, even if it's not all of them. IMO this is under-appreciated and taken for granted in the modern era, as if it couldn't be any other way.
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      > It's generally much easier to capture value that you create than to capture value that others create. I think that's probably true in general, but that over the course of ~100 years of capitalism the edge cases where this isn't true have been exploited sufficiently that it's starting to become a big problem. The clearest illustration of this being real estate. There are a lot of people getting rich by doing nothing other than buying and holding onto to real estate, often at the expense of others being able to make use of that resource.
      - csallen 5y ago
        Homes are interesting to think about. Arguably, every time something is bought in the physical world, it comes at the expense of others being able to make use of that resource, not just homes. So I wouldn't say this is relevant to what makes the housing market exploitative. For example, if I buy a standing desk, I've taken it off the market and you can't buy that exact desk I bought anymore, until I want it sell it. And just like I use my desk most of the time, most property that's purchased is either lived in or rented out. Sure, some properties sit empty, but I think it's the vast minority, I'd guess < 15%. The owners don't get rich by merely holding. They have to actually sell before they make money, which means others are making use of the resource both before the sale (via renting) and at the point of the sale (via becoming the new owners). Plus, many owners do create value via renovations, which makes the property better. But at the very least, you're on the hook as an owner to repair and maintain the quality of the property so it doesn't lose value. You're a steward. That's expensive, and it does create/preserve value. When it comes time to sell, the vast majority of the sale price is just recouping the original amount you paid, anyway. Still, when we look at the profits on top of that, it is true that much of it doesn't come from people working to create value. Houses tend to appreciate in value due to demand outstripping supply, because more people are moving to (or being born into) a location than there are houses being built there. However, I wouldn't call this exploitation. When this dynamic is at hand, everyone sells their homes for a profit by default, no nefarious or exploitative deeds required. Even if you're buying up properties for the express purpose of selling them later, you're not selling them for any more than they would've eventually been sold by the people you bought from. Sure, people are creating rich here without creating value, but they're not doing nefarious things. If there's any villain here, imo it's restricting the housing supply, which fucks with the market's ability to provide more supply and keep prices affordable. IMO there are better examples of nefarious things happening under capitalism. Usually they're monopolistic and anti-competitive: unfair practices to limit supply, to keep competitors out of the market, etc. Buying up patents (artificial monopolies) and then jacking up prices on a drug, for example. Non-competes or unethical collusion between companies to not hire each other's employees. Stuff like that. But it's worth noting that all of this is decided uncapitalistic, because it's anti-competitive. So even these aren't great examples. I'd say the worst aspects of capitalism that are actually capitalistic are… 1. Creating negative public externalities, e.g. polluting rivers to create your products, then reaping the profits privately but making the costs public. There is always incentive to minimize costs in a capitalistic system, and so it's a natural challenge for governments to identify these externalities and make companies pay. 2. Accruing too much power as a result of having money. Basically, the influence of money on the political and legal system. More money should get you a better life in terms of access to more goods and services, but it shouldn't allow you to lobby for laws, win elections, or win court cases. This is a hard problem to solve, however, and therefore a natural disadvantage of capitalism. 3. Serving the rich. It generally pays more to create products and services for rich people, because they have more money to spend. That's just how the physics of capitalism work out. The result is that poor neighborhoods, cities, and countries have worse infrastructure, fewer stores, etc. Innovative companies simply have less incentive to sell there. I think this is intrinsic to capitalism, and it's a problem, because it means the rich get richer.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  It's a common refrain that people get rich by providing value to others, and I used to think that way as well. Unfortunately I don't think it really stands scrutiny. First of all, there's no proper idea of what value is. It's a super deep conversation so I'll just leave that headline for now. Second, even without a clear explanation of what value is, we can distinguish between value created and value captured. You can easily come up with cases where multiple people have done more or less the same thing but one guy gets more out of it than others. Is that the system we want? Third, even without an explanation of what value is, we can see that there are people who provide no value but get paid a heck of a lot. Heirs, scam artists of various sorts. Not just straight give-you-nothing for something thieves, but also plenty of way overpaid people who live in the space between totally honest trading and totally dishonest thievery.
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    Value is a self defining concept. It's what an individual want. The value of a society is the weighted sum of values based on individual power. Amazon is creating a lot of small value to a lot of people by delivering goods next day. People on wall street are creating a lot of value for wealthy and powerful people. An engineer can automate a lot of value creation that was previously done by a large number of people, allowing companies to have a shot at making a lot of money, hence why they're paid more. Some of those powerful and wealthy people got rich by providing value, some of them got rich by exploiting the government's centralised power, its corruption and the possibility of stealing value from all the taxpayers. A scam is a crime on par with stealing or charging taxes. Stealing doesn't create value, it just transfer wealth.
    - Retric 5y ago
      Value isn’t what people want. People want drinking water more than just about anything else, but that’s cheap to provide so the cost stays low. Gold on the other hand is rarely something people consider or want, but it’s rare therefore it has high material value.
      - 5y ago
- watwut 5y ago
  > In the Soviet Union the high level apparatchiks lived in better housing, away from the common people. Tho, after USSR fell, inequality in Russia went up by a lot. And it gave rise to what are now oligarch - the mix of very powerful mafia and business with very little constraints on them at the time. And that situation made Russians appreciate Putin, going full circle back to authoritarianism and imperialism.
- sumedh 5y ago
  > At least in capitalism you become rich by providing value to other people. Or you inherit your wealth and politicians. Or you break the rules to get to the top and then pay a small fine if you get caught.
drekipus 5y ago
I get so tired of comments like this, such low effort brain drainage.. Yes yes we know the glorious Soviet society that was the pinnacle of fair and just. It's almost like justice and rule of law are separated from the economy and wealth. "But it is not so" - well it should be so, don't ask for further coupling of economic systems. For law and justice to be fair, liberties need to be given. Not taken.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  > Yes yes we know the glorious Soviet society that was the pinnacle of fair and just. The opposite of end-stage capitalism isn't Stalinism. It's very American to view the opposite of "capitalism" as the Soviet Union, but the truth is there's a whole spectrum in between socialism and capitalism, totalitarianism and libertarianism. In my opinion this criticism is just as low-effort. > It's almost like justice and rule of law are separated from the economy and wealth. I respectfully disagree. Societies with less inequality tend to be more peaceful. Economic policy and social policy are very much intertwined. > For law and justice to be fair, liberties need to be given. Not taken. Law and justice is by definition the restriction of liberties to support a functioning society - not the giving of liberties. You begin with the full universe of liberties and law/order is all about choosing which ones are sacrificed by whom to optimize along a certain axis.
  - drekipus 5y ago
    > Societies with less inequality tend to be more peaceful. Yes absolutely, but that's not what we're talking about. We are talking about "justice". > Economic policy and social policy are very much intertwined. Cause and effect, yes, but economic policies don't (or shouldn't) affect the notion of justice. Laws should not be written as "if you own X amount or produce y units" as they were in the Soviet union. >Law and justice is by definition the restriction of liberties I don't agree but I can see the argument. If I were to never throw rubbish over my neighbours fence, then whether or not the law is there doesn't affect my liberty. Neither if there was a law forbidding the dumping of oils in the water supply.. this isn't a "restriction of liberties" but rather the guarantee of protection to the water: or I would put it as "giving liberty to me and others of the quality of the water" I understand that this is all subjective and slippery arguments so I'll digress from that.. what else are we meant to do in HN comment sections.. But I do hold to my judgement of "little to no brain use" for anyone who tries to support communism or similar measures. People need to be free, free to succeed (and unfortunately, free to fail). Laws and justice should protect people from each other, not enforce someone's failure to understand mathematics or entropy.

seibelj 5y ago

In the Soviet Union the high level apparatchiks lived in better housing, away from the common people. There will always be elite people. At least in capitalism you become rich by providing value to other people. In socialism you become elite by stealing from your comrades and forcefully eliminating the competition.

eesmith 5y ago
What value did John T. Walton provide that was worth US$18.2 billion? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_T._Walton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_T._Walton
- sdoering 5y ago
  As much as I agree with your sentiment, I think you could just as easily quote from the first paragraph of the linked Wikipedia article to find a counter point to your (seemingly) rhetoric question: > Walton cofounded the Children's Scholarship Fund, providing tuition scholarships for disadvantaged youth.
  - oblio 5y ago
    That's not worth $18.2tn, knowing charity it was probably worth a few tens of millions, at best, and was used for tax write-offs. Plus knowing rich people, he evaded/avoided taxes (probably hundreds of millions, if not billions) that regular Joes making $36.4k a year would never be able to.
  - lovich 5y ago
    He did that with money he already had, unless he somehow managed to turn a profit off a charity which would be a different concern
- settrans 5y ago
  That's obviously not how property rights work. Sam Walton was entitled to bequeath his wealth to his heirs however he saw fit, subject to any applicable estate and inheritance taxes.
  - 8note 5y ago
    On death, what right do you retain to that property? Under a more capitalist system, your children could not inherit, and instead have to start from the bottom like everyone else.
    - LudwigNagasena 5y ago
      That’s not capitalism. That’s some kind of meritocratic (anti?-)utopia. Capitalism is when you can do with your property whatever you want including giving it away to whomever you want.
      - oblio 5y ago
        Capitalism ideally means ideal free markets, free of distortion. Starting with market distorting money from birth by definition... distorts markets.
        LudwigNagasena 5y ago
        A mere change in market equilibrium doesn’t constitute a market distortion.
        oblio 5y ago
        You can label anything "a mere change in market equilibrium", apparently even someone inheriting more money than the GDP of an average sized country ...
        LudwigNagasena 5y ago
        The magnitude doesn't matter, it is a qualitatively different phenomenon. This provides a definition of a market distortions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_distortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_distortion This may help understand why it is defined this particular way and why it excludes inheritance and other wealth transfers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorems_of_welfare_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorems_of_welfar... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency
- LudwigNagasena 5y ago
  Kids have obvious value to their parents. That’s like one of the most basic evolutionary instincts.
  - eesmith 5y ago
    Sure. But then you have to argue that John T. Walton provided $18 billion of value to his parents. And if Sam Walton were taxed at 100% for all wealth over $100 million, so John Walton were only worth $20 million, then would John have provided less value to his parents? My parents spend several $100,000 on my upbringing. Does that represent my value to my parents? The children from the world's poorest families also provide value to their parents. From this I conclude that "obvious value" of evolution and capitalism's "monetary value" aren't the same.
    - LudwigNagasena 5y ago
      Value is subjective and dependence on your circumstances.
      - eesmith 5y ago
        The current circumstances are from seibelj's comment "you become rich by providing value to other people", where "value" is specifically something which provides economic wealth. Gaining wealth by being the child of a wealthy person is not something specific to capitalism, certainly happened in feudal monarchies, and almost certainly also happened with the children of high level apparatchiks in the Soviet Union.
sdoering 5y ago
While I agree with the Soviet part (or any political system for that matter) I doubt the pro capitalist generalization would stand to scrutiny: > At least in capitalism you become rich by providing value to other people. One could easily find examples that counter these points. I doubt pyramid schemes (think Madoff's schemes) or crypto scams are the only counter-examples possible. These more often than not come from an imbalance of information. People (or the market) could make better decisions with all information being accessible at the time of the decision. But all too often one side has more information than the other. Giving this side an edge. > In socialism you become elite by stealing from your comrades and forcefully eliminating the competition. In capitalism it is basically the same as long as you can get away with it. I know it isn't a popular opinion, but without regulation capitalism is in now way better than other systems. Their excesses would all need to be reigned in. Because no unregulated system would be acting in the common good. The system may be organized in a way to slightly enable more or less perdonsl freedom. Or more or less societal freedom. But in the end - for average Joe - uncontrolled capitalism boils down to the working and living conditions of the early industrialisation or (in case of socialism) towards the living and working conditions of late soviet times.
- adhesive_wombat 5y ago
  It can be trivially shown to be not true by considering that some people are a toxic drain on a company, costing them immense amounts of money, torpedoing productivity, ruining morale and yet continue to draw a salary for years and years.
- drekipus 5y ago
  Yes, the point of capitalism is that people can do that, but shouldn't. And it should work in tandem with whatever social system that's set up, (justice, laws, morals, ethics, etc) Pyramid schemes steal a great amount of wealth, and should be regulated. Regulated capitalism is the good thing. The thing is, pyramid schemes aren't run by the state (or shouldn't be) and you don't have a gun to your head forcing you to participate. I almost feel like "unregulated capitalism" is just a straw man argument that others get tricked into trying to defend.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
8note 5y ago
I'm sure plenty of Soviets became rich by providing value to other people today. The main way to become elite regardless is to be born that way, capitalism or not. The rest is noise
babyshake 5y ago
> At least in capitalism you become rich by providing value to other people. You become rich by capturing value. Often times, as Silicon Valley and its investors like to remind the world, a lot of value is also being provided so it is indeed a win-win. But you don't become rich by providing value.
- csallen 5y ago
  True. However, there are two points worth making: 1. The purpose of many laws and regulations that support capitalism is to make it very difficult to capture value without creating it. (When compared to a world without these laws.) 2. It's generally much easier to capture value that you create than to capture value that others create. The result is that there's a massive incentive to create value for others, and a great deal of rich people and organizations are creating value, even if it's not all of them. IMO this is under-appreciated and taken for granted in the modern era, as if it couldn't be any other way.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    > It's generally much easier to capture value that you create than to capture value that others create. I think that's probably true in general, but that over the course of ~100 years of capitalism the edge cases where this isn't true have been exploited sufficiently that it's starting to become a big problem. The clearest illustration of this being real estate. There are a lot of people getting rich by doing nothing other than buying and holding onto to real estate, often at the expense of others being able to make use of that resource.
    - csallen 5y ago
      Homes are interesting to think about. Arguably, every time something is bought in the physical world, it comes at the expense of others being able to make use of that resource, not just homes. So I wouldn't say this is relevant to what makes the housing market exploitative. For example, if I buy a standing desk, I've taken it off the market and you can't buy that exact desk I bought anymore, until I want it sell it. And just like I use my desk most of the time, most property that's purchased is either lived in or rented out. Sure, some properties sit empty, but I think it's the vast minority, I'd guess < 15%. The owners don't get rich by merely holding. They have to actually sell before they make money, which means others are making use of the resource both before the sale (via renting) and at the point of the sale (via becoming the new owners). Plus, many owners do create value via renovations, which makes the property better. But at the very least, you're on the hook as an owner to repair and maintain the quality of the property so it doesn't lose value. You're a steward. That's expensive, and it does create/preserve value. When it comes time to sell, the vast majority of the sale price is just recouping the original amount you paid, anyway. Still, when we look at the profits on top of that, it is true that much of it doesn't come from people working to create value. Houses tend to appreciate in value due to demand outstripping supply, because more people are moving to (or being born into) a location than there are houses being built there. However, I wouldn't call this exploitation. When this dynamic is at hand, everyone sells their homes for a profit by default, no nefarious or exploitative deeds required. Even if you're buying up properties for the express purpose of selling them later, you're not selling them for any more than they would've eventually been sold by the people you bought from. Sure, people are creating rich here without creating value, but they're not doing nefarious things. If there's any villain here, imo it's restricting the housing supply, which fucks with the market's ability to provide more supply and keep prices affordable. IMO there are better examples of nefarious things happening under capitalism. Usually they're monopolistic and anti-competitive: unfair practices to limit supply, to keep competitors out of the market, etc. Buying up patents (artificial monopolies) and then jacking up prices on a drug, for example. Non-competes or unethical collusion between companies to not hire each other's employees. Stuff like that. But it's worth noting that all of this is decided uncapitalistic, because it's anti-competitive. So even these aren't great examples. I'd say the worst aspects of capitalism that are actually capitalistic are… 1. Creating negative public externalities, e.g. polluting rivers to create your products, then reaping the profits privately but making the costs public. There is always incentive to minimize costs in a capitalistic system, and so it's a natural challenge for governments to identify these externalities and make companies pay. 2. Accruing too much power as a result of having money. Basically, the influence of money on the political and legal system. More money should get you a better life in terms of access to more goods and services, but it shouldn't allow you to lobby for laws, win elections, or win court cases. This is a hard problem to solve, however, and therefore a natural disadvantage of capitalism. 3. Serving the rich. It generally pays more to create products and services for rich people, because they have more money to spend. That's just how the physics of capitalism work out. The result is that poor neighborhoods, cities, and countries have worse infrastructure, fewer stores, etc. Innovative companies simply have less incentive to sell there. I think this is intrinsic to capitalism, and it's a problem, because it means the rich get richer.
lordnacho 5y ago
It's a common refrain that people get rich by providing value to others, and I used to think that way as well. Unfortunately I don't think it really stands scrutiny. First of all, there's no proper idea of what value is. It's a super deep conversation so I'll just leave that headline for now. Second, even without a clear explanation of what value is, we can distinguish between value created and value captured. You can easily come up with cases where multiple people have done more or less the same thing but one guy gets more out of it than others. Is that the system we want? Third, even without an explanation of what value is, we can see that there are people who provide no value but get paid a heck of a lot. Heirs, scam artists of various sorts. Not just straight give-you-nothing for something thieves, but also plenty of way overpaid people who live in the space between totally honest trading and totally dishonest thievery.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  Value is a self defining concept. It's what an individual want. The value of a society is the weighted sum of values based on individual power. Amazon is creating a lot of small value to a lot of people by delivering goods next day. People on wall street are creating a lot of value for wealthy and powerful people. An engineer can automate a lot of value creation that was previously done by a large number of people, allowing companies to have a shot at making a lot of money, hence why they're paid more. Some of those powerful and wealthy people got rich by providing value, some of them got rich by exploiting the government's centralised power, its corruption and the possibility of stealing value from all the taxpayers. A scam is a crime on par with stealing or charging taxes. Stealing doesn't create value, it just transfer wealth.
  - Retric 5y ago
    Value isn’t what people want. People want drinking water more than just about anything else, but that’s cheap to provide so the cost stays low. Gold on the other hand is rarely something people consider or want, but it’s rare therefore it has high material value.
    - 5y ago
watwut 5y ago
> In the Soviet Union the high level apparatchiks lived in better housing, away from the common people. Tho, after USSR fell, inequality in Russia went up by a lot. And it gave rise to what are now oligarch - the mix of very powerful mafia and business with very little constraints on them at the time. And that situation made Russians appreciate Putin, going full circle back to authoritarianism and imperialism.
sumedh 5y ago
> At least in capitalism you become rich by providing value to other people. Or you inherit your wealth and politicians. Or you break the rules to get to the top and then pay a small fine if you get caught.

drekipus 5y ago

I get so tired of comments like this, such low effort brain drainage.. Yes yes we know the glorious Soviet society that was the pinnacle of fair and just. It's almost like justice and rule of law are separated from the economy and wealth. "But it is not so" - well it should be so, don't ask for further coupling of economic systems. For law and justice to be fair, liberties need to be given. Not taken.

arcticbull 5y ago
> Yes yes we know the glorious Soviet society that was the pinnacle of fair and just. The opposite of end-stage capitalism isn't Stalinism. It's very American to view the opposite of "capitalism" as the Soviet Union, but the truth is there's a whole spectrum in between socialism and capitalism, totalitarianism and libertarianism. In my opinion this criticism is just as low-effort. > It's almost like justice and rule of law are separated from the economy and wealth. I respectfully disagree. Societies with less inequality tend to be more peaceful. Economic policy and social policy are very much intertwined. > For law and justice to be fair, liberties need to be given. Not taken. Law and justice is by definition the restriction of liberties to support a functioning society - not the giving of liberties. You begin with the full universe of liberties and law/order is all about choosing which ones are sacrificed by whom to optimize along a certain axis.
- drekipus 5y ago
  > Societies with less inequality tend to be more peaceful. Yes absolutely, but that's not what we're talking about. We are talking about "justice". > Economic policy and social policy are very much intertwined. Cause and effect, yes, but economic policies don't (or shouldn't) affect the notion of justice. Laws should not be written as "if you own X amount or produce y units" as they were in the Soviet union. >Law and justice is by definition the restriction of liberties I don't agree but I can see the argument. If I were to never throw rubbish over my neighbours fence, then whether or not the law is there doesn't affect my liberty. Neither if there was a law forbidding the dumping of oils in the water supply.. this isn't a "restriction of liberties" but rather the guarantee of protection to the water: or I would put it as "giving liberty to me and others of the quality of the water" I understand that this is all subjective and slippery arguments so I'll digress from that.. what else are we meant to do in HN comment sections.. But I do hold to my judgement of "little to no brain use" for anyone who tries to support communism or similar measures. People need to be free, free to succeed (and unfortunately, free to fail). Laws and justice should protect people from each other, not enforce someone's failure to understand mathematics or entropy.