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Human social structures concentrate power, not capitalism. It's all still there under socialism.

by kyleyeats 3y ago

brigadier132 3y ago
Exactly, the same power hungry people will play the game under the rules of any system.
- alwayslikethis 3y ago
  Moreover, capitalism is the least game-able of all systems, because it presumes that everyone is trying to game it. In practice there will be some structural inefficiencies and failures, but at least it starts from somewhere that is difficult to game.
  - BoiledCabbage 3y ago
    No capitalism in itself is not the least game-able. It entirely depends on what flavor of it is in discussion. Free-market capitalism is inherently power centralizing. As a result, you need to ensure government is enforcing market competition. Every actor is looking for a way to avoid market competition. Every time you hear a company discuss building a moat, that is a company that doesn't want to compete in a market and is actively working against the benefits of capitalism. Every time you see a monopoly, it is again a marketplace working against the benefits of capitalism (i.e. market competition). At all times the government must strongly and actively maintain market competition or capitalism simply eats itself.
    - fsckboy 3y ago
      > Free-market capitalism is inherently power centralizing I understand the argument you're making, but I don't think these are the words to use to do it, makes it more confusing, and you're glossing over some thorny issues. One could just as easily and more accurately say "power is inherently power centralizing". I assume you are equating "free-markets" with "laissez-faire" markets which I don't think is accurate, else why would we separate the two concepts? Better to use the term "perfect market capitalism" (essentially markets where no player has the power to affect prices) and then specify market imperfections and failures as the cause of "inherent flaws" and worthy of regulation. markets don't eat themselves, participants with power eat them. But we also need to understand the difficulty of regulation. Keeping this brief thru a lot of hand waving and overgeneralization, Microsoft monopolized the personal computer market in the 1990's, and made buckets of money doing it, but they were not able to then leverage that into enduring monopolies in (the internet and) cell phones and cloud services, which together supplanted the personal computer as "what was popular" for personal information and communication. Would an evolving government regulatory regime applied to Microsoft have been able to create a better outcome in the same time frame without stifling industry than did what Schumpeter called the "creative destruction" of progress through free market forces? (yes I could word that more and better, but I want to hit reply and be done, so hopefully my point is not lost.) When you talk about "free markets" failing, you feed the idea that socialism is a good idea, which is a serious baby/bathwater problem. Better that people learn more about perfect markets.
      - BoiledCabbage 3y ago
        Thanks for the reply - Although I think you still may be missing my key point. I'll be brief, hopefully it comes across not as rude but as more direct. "Power is inherently power centralizing" - we both agree that that is the fundamental issue. "Laissez-faire" in any practical sense is worthless. No-one should reasonably in this day an age be advocating for essentially anarcho-capitalism or an adjacent laissez-faire derivative thereof. People do, I think it's incredibly naive - but you appear to be in agreement so we'll move on. We expect any form of state sponsored capitalism to enforce it's main benefits (of which I argue one of the most important keys is actual market competition). > market's don't eat themselves, participants with power eat them. Yes and the default state of any market is for there to be power imbalances. (it's almost impossible to have markets without them). And since power imbalances are in practice inherent in markets, and participants are what constitute a market, it is correct to say that "markets eat themselves". To contradict this is to either find a market without power imbalances (essentially only exists in theory), or find a market without participants (clearly a market not relevant for our purposes). Since participants in markets are continuously trying to consume the market there must be a continuous countervailing force to prevent this. That is my thesis. > When you talk about "free markets" failing, you feed the idea that socialism is a good idea, which is a serious baby/bathwater problem. This is a terrible line of reasoning. It is essentially a head-in-the-sand defense. Essentially saying we shouldn't talk about the failure of free markets because by acknowledging their shortcomings when people look at all the different possible ways to improve it and one of the says they run across might be socialism. As a result we shouldn't discuss the failures of free markets. The rest of our post is well reasoned even though I disagree - this is not, so I won't spent much more time on it. In no point did I mention socialism, and avoiding discussing failings of a system because people might look to others is a weak way of defending its merits. > Better that people learn more about perfect markets. Perfect markets generally are not the state of markets. "Perfect Market Capitalism" is like the "Efficient Market Hypothesis" - its a simplification that makes reasoning much easier, and there are cases where you can apply it. But in practice there is clear, continuous evidence that it does not hold, and ignoring the messy bits is where the system falls apart. Finally, regarding your PC example I'll saying the following: Ensuring companies are forced to engage in "fair market competition" (avoiding the no true scotsman of perfect market capitalism) by preventing the societal marketplace harming impacts of monopolies, oligopolies, network lock-ins and similar is essential for a healthy society. Any market with power imbalances will tend towards solidification. We cannot avoid imperfect markets, there will always be transaction costs, barriers to entry, natural network effects. And when there aren't, participants in a market will find ways to introduce them for their benefit. Imperfect markets get more imperfect over time due to the actions of their participants. It is inherent in markets. So we have two options, immediately address the most imbalanced cases. Or ignore them and hope that the market will become less relevant before the leader has a chance to leverage their position of power. The latter approach is wrong. "Tech" is the only field that moves fast enough for this to even be possible, and you can see from how centralized tech is that even in tech it more often fails than succeeds. Or put another way about regulation: yes you want term limits even if it means a great politician can only have two terms in office instead five, even if they could've done great things in those 5 terms. Because the risks of no term limits is much worse for society. Same reason you want to regulate market dominating companies, even if they could've done great things in that market dominating position, because the risks it brings to a net negative on society are to large. A simple start is break up market dominant companies and prevent market capturing merges. But fundamentally society must always be vigilant in preventing markets from centralizing power, or from preventing any system from centralizing power. Capitalism (and most systems) centralize power by default. So society must always have a counterbalancing force to get the most benefit from capitalism. Free purely unregulated markets are bad because they centralize power to avoid competition. The goal of society should not be free markets. The main benefit of free markets are market competition. The goal of society should be to maximize market competition (which is different than striving for the impossible goal of perfect markets). And external force needs to act to balance to consolidating nature of free markets to maximize market competition and maximize benefit to society.
  - PathOfEclipse 3y ago
    I believe capitalism is the best economic system we've invented and likely will invent, but, you give it too much credit. American capitalism has worked largely because it was underpinned by a foundation of Christian morality. With that foundation crumbling, capitalism will fail, like any other system would when managed by a largely corrupt and immoral society. We are seeing it happen in real time. Our president is a crook. We have plenty of evidence that he influenced-peddled to foreign countries for millions. Our media lie to us constantly. Most of the government, including the DOJ, FBI, and CIA, are run by corrupt, partisan, and evil people who are largely unaccountable to the public. Our judicial benches are filled with partisan activists who largely ignore the law and the constitution as they make whatever rulings they can to promote their ideologies or world views. Capitalism will not save us from any of this, especially as long as so much of the public keep voting into office people who actively support this kind of corruption.
    - nvm0n2 3y ago
      But other than the media none of those people or agencies are capitalist. They're all parts of the state.
    - wellanyway 3y ago
      > christian morality Give me a break.
  - pcthrowaway 3y ago
    That's like saying fully decentralized blockchains are the least game-able of financial systems, because they presume everyone is trying to game them.
    - alwayslikethis 3y ago
      Isn't it? If one bank tries to send fake transactions, it can have real effects. If some crypto nodes try to send fake transactions, it mostly just doesn't work unless you have a 51% majority. But at that point the system is mostly worthless anyways.
      - pcthrowaway 3y ago
        With decentralized applications at least, there are always bugs and people lose their life savings due to poor mechanics or faulty code, and there's no recourse. See rekt.news for an idea of how 'ungameable' these financial products are. With a federally insured bank, securities, or other regulated financial products there's a watchdog ensuring compliance and regulations, transactions are largely traceable and auditable, and if someone finds a way to game the system there's a legal entity with a massive presence that will come down on you anyway. There are advantages to both, and centralized finance is certainly 'gameable' in ways also, but I definitely wouldn't say that it's more gameable than decentralized finance.
- legitster 3y ago
  Well, if you divide your power hungry people into enough different lanes, and they spend their time duking it out with each other, and they end up having to compete among the citizenry for support, funding, etc than that seems like a pretty good system.
  - textide 3y ago
    Of course the angelic souls who suddenly find themselves in charge of arranging such a system would have to be chosen somehow. Or would they just need to be ambitious creatures that take the reins and become benevolent dictators? Knowledge of human nature has to be a prerequisite here, does it not?
    - legitster 3y ago
      Well, in almost every functional democracy in the world, at some point the founders of it decided on a way to split up power. In the US, that meant 3 different branches of federal government, individual state governments, separation of church and state, and giving every citizen the right to establish a corporation and engage in trade (aka capitalism). So three separate estates, and subdivisions within each one. So we were lucky to have enough angelic (enough) souls who did arrange such a system (flawed as it is). Contrast this to something like China where there is a single party and a single government with no checks or balances. And such as there is some free enterprise, it is not a universal protected right and even the richest citizens have no ability to affect politics. It does not seem like a favorable alternative.
      - dsego 3y ago
        > citizens have no ability to affect politics. Theoretically at least you could join the party and become politically active in your local branch, no?
        legitster 3y ago
        Sure, but that's kind of my point. If all of the psychopaths only have one place in society to get power, it's not going to end up a good society.
celtoid 3y ago
Capitalism is just another form of concentrating power. It would seem the problem with all systems is in distribution of power.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  People who say things like you say don't usually seem to have a very good definition of "capitalism". For me, the word means that I can trade what I own to other people who want it and are offering me something I want in return. It means that, if I scrape and save, I'm allowed to turn around and invest those savings in another endeavor of my own and that whatever profits I make from it are mine to keep. I know it's not a very eloquent definition, but I think it's rather objective, and I think it describes the western world today, more or less. Is this what you mean by it? Do you mean something else? I don't see how it concentrates power. There are people who do capitalism poorly, and then they whine about how it was unfair to them.
  - CraigJPerry 3y ago
    is that not just a no true scotsman argument? what you describe doesn’t exist anywhere at scale, humans have never found a way to do this idea at scale. Same faulty logic affected the communists too.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
      Your comment is incoherent. What specifically are you saying that we don't do at scale? (I never mentioned "scale", but apparently it is important to you, so...) People trade things at scale all the time. Some trades are apparently valued in the millions and billions of dollars. Some people have savings that are large fortunes, and they often invest them. You must be talking about something I am not, but it's difficult to figure out what the words even mean to you.
      - CraigJPerry 3y ago
        Your definition of capitalism is incomplete. You’ve described the essence of capitalism - as you see it - and people not adhering to your choice subset don’t ‘have a very good definition of "capitalism"‘ You’ve made a no true scotsman argument because all these other capitalist systems with their wage labour grievances and their accelerating inequalities tearing at the coherence of societies’ fabric are not _really_ what’s at the core of capitalism and if they just did it better then it’d be awesome. The scale part comes in because what you describe - capitalism without wage labour - exists all over the world today, but only in the small. You cannot grow it to a country sized system.
pphysch 3y ago
Knowing this, we ought to design an economic system accordingly! The inevitable concentration of power should be out in the open, broadly consented to, and held accountable. We could call it "government". Instead, in the most "anarchic" corners of capitalism we have "shadow governments" where power is tightly concentrated and undemocratic, but it's okay because "if you can't see it, it doesn't exist". Insurance giants, tech giants, finance giants, etc. Edward Bernays was writing about this exact phenomenon 100 years ago (Propaganda).
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  It's almost like the best solutions are somewhere in the middle between the two extreme ends.
earthboundkid 3y ago
That's why you need to have an ideology of democratization that ruthlessly crushes the spirit of those who try to excel. :-) Or give them some harmless sandbox to play in, like sports or art.
legitster 3y ago
If anything, capitalism provides an alternate path for people craving money and power. If the estates remain sufficiently separated, they will tend towards balancing each other out and creating more stable governments.
- systemvoltage 3y ago
  Yep, I can (as well as Bill Gates) has access to chatGPT for $20/month. Same for airline travel (with a difference of a comfy chair). Capitalism tends to edge towards maximality through high margin, high volume. Followed closely by low margin, high volume. And small ventures at low margin, low volume. All can coexist to improve the society. Often, capitalism is discussed in the context of cronyism.
UtopiaPunk 3y ago
Human social structures don't have to concentrate power, though. At its best, that's the goal of the socialist project. Noam Chomsky makes the spicy take of calling the USSR "state capitalism" for precisly the reason that it is a concentration of power. He argues that the USSR largely just replaced capitalists with the state, but the power imbalance was not significantly changed.
- Gibbon1 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - UtopiaPunk 3y ago
    It's a sweeping take to say that everything Chomsky has said is wrong or immoral. Fwiw, for anyone reading along, Chomsky didn't coin the term "state capitalism" and he was not the first to apply it to the USSR. Lenin himself actually uses the term to describe the USSR, seeing it as a necessary transitional step from (normal) capitalism to a socialist system: "Reality tells us that state capitalism would be a step forward. If in a small space of time we could achieve state capitalism, that would be a victory." And I'm of the opinion that the beginnings of the USSR, led by Lenin, were much more idealistic than what it would quickly become. Generally, it's the anarchists and libertarian sociliasts who are using the term disparagingly against a USSR that does not live up to their ideals. And, of course, Noam Chomksy is using the term "state capitalism" to describe a USSR that is much later in its history, or a USSR that is a thing of the past. The Wikipedia article of the term State Capitalism is pretty interesting, imo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism
    - PathOfEclipse 3y ago
      > It's a sweeping take to say that everything Chomsky has said is wrong or immoral. A statement can be both sweeping and largely true. We need to stop giving academics undeserved moral authority. Chomsky is a prime example of someone who speaks far beyond the boundaries of what he understands and advocates for immoral, destructive, and harmful policies and ideas. > Fwiw, for anyone reading along, Chomsky didn't coin the term "state capitalism" and he was not the first to apply it to the USSR. Lenin himself actually uses the term to describe the USSR, seeing it as a necessary transitional step from (normal) capitalism to a socialist system: This isn't surprising. as Marx defined it himself, socialism is communism as enforced by the government, meaning, the government seizes control of everything and runs everything. So "state capitalism" just means the existing businesses are now repossessed by the state. > And I'm of the opinion that the beginnings of the USSR, led by Lenin, were much more idealistic than what it would quickly become. Idealism is irrelevant. Marxism is a tool for causing people to be discontent and eventually revolt in a bloody revolution, and, so The USSR got exactly this, and so did China. In fact, Mao specifically used the "idealists", his Red Guard, to further his agenda, and, once he took power, he simply killed or imprisoned them all. Marxism is an entirely failed ideology, as is socialism. All it can do is destroy; it has no vision for building anything of value. That we have to relearn this lesson is a damning indictment to our inability to transmit true knowledge and morality effectively to the rising generations.
1letterunixname 3y ago
Power isn't the problem. It's an amoral, nebulous concept. There are no actual -isms in the world.* These are utopian fantasies supported as tribal, jingoist footballs not worth arguing about. Governments are varying degrees of: 1. Influence corruption of the rich directing elected (or military junta) officials 2. Proportion of embezzlement-adjacent and actual embezzlement corruption of officials spending money on their own needs and wants 3. Overall functionality and responsiveness of police and justice extending protections or harm balancing individual and collective interests, including positive and negative rights to liberties, property, trade, and taxation 4. Distribution of competency across government departments The problem in the US specifically is that money concentrates power because elected officials are beholding to campaign financing. As a consequent, primarily celebrities and public figures are the only ones who are "electable" in 2 flavors of corporate-owned, tribal factions. As John McCain discovered, there is absolutely no will to fix it from within the system. As such, it can only be resolved outside of it through applying great, sustained pressure in a nonviolent manner. * Communism was attempted but never implemented anywhere because it's either a utopian delusion or was sidetracked by totalitarianism and/or inadequate leadership. Capitalism doesn't exist anywhere except in a libertarian's mind. There is no "pure" "socialism" anywhere. Every political jurisdiction implements a special snowflake blend of regulations, corruption, freedoms, autonomy, and force.
- batmansmom1 3y ago
  Can you explain what you mean by John McCain discovering there is no will to fix it? Have always admired him but I'm unaware of his efforts to change, outside of voting for ACA and admitting Obama is a decent man.
wahnfrieden 3y ago
Not under anarchism, and not under human relations as a necessity, as Wengrow/Graeber for instance have done work to show
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  I don't think anarchism is realistic in any long term sense. Someone will always come around and consolidate power by forming(and forcing people into) a government.
  - TotalCrackpot 3y ago
    Zapatistas have around 30 years and they seem to be very close to Anarchism, Rojava has 10 years of democratic confederalism which is Libertarian socialism and let's say fairly close to Anarchism.
    - confd 3y ago
      Ten. Thirty. Those are meager numbers.
      - jamiepenney 3y ago
        Gotta start somewhere, capitalism in it's current form has only been around for a few hundred years at best. Too many people have bought into Fukuyama's The End of History imo.
      - wahnfrieden 3y ago
        Anarchism as a thought has only existed for about 150 years, capitalism for maybe 500 years and still took a couple hundred to get going, so I don’t know what your standard is except to doubt that anything can come after it
confd 3y ago
Good point. If not for power/authority how else do people think that their ideals will be successfully implemented?
totetsu 3y ago
Is it a human thing, or a mathematical game theory thing. If you have a group of agents with diverse motivations, power will become concentrated in many conditions.

Human social structures concentrate power, not capitalism. It's all still there under socialism.

brigadier132 3y ago

Exactly, the same power hungry people will play the game under the rules of any system.

alwayslikethis 3y ago
Moreover, capitalism is the least game-able of all systems, because it presumes that everyone is trying to game it. In practice there will be some structural inefficiencies and failures, but at least it starts from somewhere that is difficult to game.
- BoiledCabbage 3y ago
  No capitalism in itself is not the least game-able. It entirely depends on what flavor of it is in discussion. Free-market capitalism is inherently power centralizing. As a result, you need to ensure government is enforcing market competition. Every actor is looking for a way to avoid market competition. Every time you hear a company discuss building a moat, that is a company that doesn't want to compete in a market and is actively working against the benefits of capitalism. Every time you see a monopoly, it is again a marketplace working against the benefits of capitalism (i.e. market competition). At all times the government must strongly and actively maintain market competition or capitalism simply eats itself.
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    > Free-market capitalism is inherently power centralizing I understand the argument you're making, but I don't think these are the words to use to do it, makes it more confusing, and you're glossing over some thorny issues. One could just as easily and more accurately say "power is inherently power centralizing". I assume you are equating "free-markets" with "laissez-faire" markets which I don't think is accurate, else why would we separate the two concepts? Better to use the term "perfect market capitalism" (essentially markets where no player has the power to affect prices) and then specify market imperfections and failures as the cause of "inherent flaws" and worthy of regulation. markets don't eat themselves, participants with power eat them. But we also need to understand the difficulty of regulation. Keeping this brief thru a lot of hand waving and overgeneralization, Microsoft monopolized the personal computer market in the 1990's, and made buckets of money doing it, but they were not able to then leverage that into enduring monopolies in (the internet and) cell phones and cloud services, which together supplanted the personal computer as "what was popular" for personal information and communication. Would an evolving government regulatory regime applied to Microsoft have been able to create a better outcome in the same time frame without stifling industry than did what Schumpeter called the "creative destruction" of progress through free market forces? (yes I could word that more and better, but I want to hit reply and be done, so hopefully my point is not lost.) When you talk about "free markets" failing, you feed the idea that socialism is a good idea, which is a serious baby/bathwater problem. Better that people learn more about perfect markets.
    - BoiledCabbage 3y ago
      Thanks for the reply - Although I think you still may be missing my key point. I'll be brief, hopefully it comes across not as rude but as more direct. "Power is inherently power centralizing" - we both agree that that is the fundamental issue. "Laissez-faire" in any practical sense is worthless. No-one should reasonably in this day an age be advocating for essentially anarcho-capitalism or an adjacent laissez-faire derivative thereof. People do, I think it's incredibly naive - but you appear to be in agreement so we'll move on. We expect any form of state sponsored capitalism to enforce it's main benefits (of which I argue one of the most important keys is actual market competition). > market's don't eat themselves, participants with power eat them. Yes and the default state of any market is for there to be power imbalances. (it's almost impossible to have markets without them). And since power imbalances are in practice inherent in markets, and participants are what constitute a market, it is correct to say that "markets eat themselves". To contradict this is to either find a market without power imbalances (essentially only exists in theory), or find a market without participants (clearly a market not relevant for our purposes). Since participants in markets are continuously trying to consume the market there must be a continuous countervailing force to prevent this. That is my thesis. > When you talk about "free markets" failing, you feed the idea that socialism is a good idea, which is a serious baby/bathwater problem. This is a terrible line of reasoning. It is essentially a head-in-the-sand defense. Essentially saying we shouldn't talk about the failure of free markets because by acknowledging their shortcomings when people look at all the different possible ways to improve it and one of the says they run across might be socialism. As a result we shouldn't discuss the failures of free markets. The rest of our post is well reasoned even though I disagree - this is not, so I won't spent much more time on it. In no point did I mention socialism, and avoiding discussing failings of a system because people might look to others is a weak way of defending its merits. > Better that people learn more about perfect markets. Perfect markets generally are not the state of markets. "Perfect Market Capitalism" is like the "Efficient Market Hypothesis" - its a simplification that makes reasoning much easier, and there are cases where you can apply it. But in practice there is clear, continuous evidence that it does not hold, and ignoring the messy bits is where the system falls apart. Finally, regarding your PC example I'll saying the following: Ensuring companies are forced to engage in "fair market competition" (avoiding the no true scotsman of perfect market capitalism) by preventing the societal marketplace harming impacts of monopolies, oligopolies, network lock-ins and similar is essential for a healthy society. Any market with power imbalances will tend towards solidification. We cannot avoid imperfect markets, there will always be transaction costs, barriers to entry, natural network effects. And when there aren't, participants in a market will find ways to introduce them for their benefit. Imperfect markets get more imperfect over time due to the actions of their participants. It is inherent in markets. So we have two options, immediately address the most imbalanced cases. Or ignore them and hope that the market will become less relevant before the leader has a chance to leverage their position of power. The latter approach is wrong. "Tech" is the only field that moves fast enough for this to even be possible, and you can see from how centralized tech is that even in tech it more often fails than succeeds. Or put another way about regulation: yes you want term limits even if it means a great politician can only have two terms in office instead five, even if they could've done great things in those 5 terms. Because the risks of no term limits is much worse for society. Same reason you want to regulate market dominating companies, even if they could've done great things in that market dominating position, because the risks it brings to a net negative on society are to large. A simple start is break up market dominant companies and prevent market capturing merges. But fundamentally society must always be vigilant in preventing markets from centralizing power, or from preventing any system from centralizing power. Capitalism (and most systems) centralize power by default. So society must always have a counterbalancing force to get the most benefit from capitalism. Free purely unregulated markets are bad because they centralize power to avoid competition. The goal of society should not be free markets. The main benefit of free markets are market competition. The goal of society should be to maximize market competition (which is different than striving for the impossible goal of perfect markets). And external force needs to act to balance to consolidating nature of free markets to maximize market competition and maximize benefit to society.
- PathOfEclipse 3y ago
  I believe capitalism is the best economic system we've invented and likely will invent, but, you give it too much credit. American capitalism has worked largely because it was underpinned by a foundation of Christian morality. With that foundation crumbling, capitalism will fail, like any other system would when managed by a largely corrupt and immoral society. We are seeing it happen in real time. Our president is a crook. We have plenty of evidence that he influenced-peddled to foreign countries for millions. Our media lie to us constantly. Most of the government, including the DOJ, FBI, and CIA, are run by corrupt, partisan, and evil people who are largely unaccountable to the public. Our judicial benches are filled with partisan activists who largely ignore the law and the constitution as they make whatever rulings they can to promote their ideologies or world views. Capitalism will not save us from any of this, especially as long as so much of the public keep voting into office people who actively support this kind of corruption.
  - nvm0n2 3y ago
    But other than the media none of those people or agencies are capitalist. They're all parts of the state.
  - wellanyway 3y ago
    > christian morality Give me a break.
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  That's like saying fully decentralized blockchains are the least game-able of financial systems, because they presume everyone is trying to game them.
  - alwayslikethis 3y ago
    Isn't it? If one bank tries to send fake transactions, it can have real effects. If some crypto nodes try to send fake transactions, it mostly just doesn't work unless you have a 51% majority. But at that point the system is mostly worthless anyways.
    - pcthrowaway 3y ago
      With decentralized applications at least, there are always bugs and people lose their life savings due to poor mechanics or faulty code, and there's no recourse. See rekt.news for an idea of how 'ungameable' these financial products are. With a federally insured bank, securities, or other regulated financial products there's a watchdog ensuring compliance and regulations, transactions are largely traceable and auditable, and if someone finds a way to game the system there's a legal entity with a massive presence that will come down on you anyway. There are advantages to both, and centralized finance is certainly 'gameable' in ways also, but I definitely wouldn't say that it's more gameable than decentralized finance.
legitster 3y ago
Well, if you divide your power hungry people into enough different lanes, and they spend their time duking it out with each other, and they end up having to compete among the citizenry for support, funding, etc than that seems like a pretty good system.
- textide 3y ago
  Of course the angelic souls who suddenly find themselves in charge of arranging such a system would have to be chosen somehow. Or would they just need to be ambitious creatures that take the reins and become benevolent dictators? Knowledge of human nature has to be a prerequisite here, does it not?
  - legitster 3y ago
    Well, in almost every functional democracy in the world, at some point the founders of it decided on a way to split up power. In the US, that meant 3 different branches of federal government, individual state governments, separation of church and state, and giving every citizen the right to establish a corporation and engage in trade (aka capitalism). So three separate estates, and subdivisions within each one. So we were lucky to have enough angelic (enough) souls who did arrange such a system (flawed as it is). Contrast this to something like China where there is a single party and a single government with no checks or balances. And such as there is some free enterprise, it is not a universal protected right and even the richest citizens have no ability to affect politics. It does not seem like a favorable alternative.
    - dsego 3y ago
      > citizens have no ability to affect politics. Theoretically at least you could join the party and become politically active in your local branch, no?
      - legitster 3y ago
        Sure, but that's kind of my point. If all of the psychopaths only have one place in society to get power, it's not going to end up a good society.

celtoid 3y ago

Capitalism is just another form of concentrating power. It would seem the problem with all systems is in distribution of power.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
People who say things like you say don't usually seem to have a very good definition of "capitalism". For me, the word means that I can trade what I own to other people who want it and are offering me something I want in return. It means that, if I scrape and save, I'm allowed to turn around and invest those savings in another endeavor of my own and that whatever profits I make from it are mine to keep. I know it's not a very eloquent definition, but I think it's rather objective, and I think it describes the western world today, more or less. Is this what you mean by it? Do you mean something else? I don't see how it concentrates power. There are people who do capitalism poorly, and then they whine about how it was unfair to them.
- CraigJPerry 3y ago
  is that not just a no true scotsman argument? what you describe doesn’t exist anywhere at scale, humans have never found a way to do this idea at scale. Same faulty logic affected the communists too.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    Your comment is incoherent. What specifically are you saying that we don't do at scale? (I never mentioned "scale", but apparently it is important to you, so...) People trade things at scale all the time. Some trades are apparently valued in the millions and billions of dollars. Some people have savings that are large fortunes, and they often invest them. You must be talking about something I am not, but it's difficult to figure out what the words even mean to you.
    - CraigJPerry 3y ago
      Your definition of capitalism is incomplete. You’ve described the essence of capitalism - as you see it - and people not adhering to your choice subset don’t ‘have a very good definition of "capitalism"‘ You’ve made a no true scotsman argument because all these other capitalist systems with their wage labour grievances and their accelerating inequalities tearing at the coherence of societies’ fabric are not _really_ what’s at the core of capitalism and if they just did it better then it’d be awesome. The scale part comes in because what you describe - capitalism without wage labour - exists all over the world today, but only in the small. You cannot grow it to a country sized system.

pphysch 3y ago

Knowing this, we ought to design an economic system accordingly! The inevitable concentration of power should be out in the open, broadly consented to, and held accountable. We could call it "government". Instead, in the most "anarchic" corners of capitalism we have "shadow governments" where power is tightly concentrated and undemocratic, but it's okay because "if you can't see it, it doesn't exist". Insurance giants, tech giants, finance giants, etc. Edward Bernays was writing about this exact phenomenon 100 years ago (Propaganda).

ajmurmann 3y ago
It's almost like the best solutions are somewhere in the middle between the two extreme ends.

earthboundkid 3y ago

That's why you need to have an ideology of democratization that ruthlessly crushes the spirit of those who try to excel. :-) Or give them some harmless sandbox to play in, like sports or art.

legitster 3y ago

If anything, capitalism provides an alternate path for people craving money and power. If the estates remain sufficiently separated, they will tend towards balancing each other out and creating more stable governments.

systemvoltage 3y ago
Yep, I can (as well as Bill Gates) has access to chatGPT for $20/month. Same for airline travel (with a difference of a comfy chair). Capitalism tends to edge towards maximality through high margin, high volume. Followed closely by low margin, high volume. And small ventures at low margin, low volume. All can coexist to improve the society. Often, capitalism is discussed in the context of cronyism.

UtopiaPunk 3y ago

Human social structures don't have to concentrate power, though. At its best, that's the goal of the socialist project. Noam Chomsky makes the spicy take of calling the USSR "state capitalism" for precisly the reason that it is a concentration of power. He argues that the USSR largely just replaced capitalists with the state, but the power imbalance was not significantly changed.

Gibbon1 3y ago
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- UtopiaPunk 3y ago
  It's a sweeping take to say that everything Chomsky has said is wrong or immoral. Fwiw, for anyone reading along, Chomsky didn't coin the term "state capitalism" and he was not the first to apply it to the USSR. Lenin himself actually uses the term to describe the USSR, seeing it as a necessary transitional step from (normal) capitalism to a socialist system: "Reality tells us that state capitalism would be a step forward. If in a small space of time we could achieve state capitalism, that would be a victory." And I'm of the opinion that the beginnings of the USSR, led by Lenin, were much more idealistic than what it would quickly become. Generally, it's the anarchists and libertarian sociliasts who are using the term disparagingly against a USSR that does not live up to their ideals. And, of course, Noam Chomksy is using the term "state capitalism" to describe a USSR that is much later in its history, or a USSR that is a thing of the past. The Wikipedia article of the term State Capitalism is pretty interesting, imo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism
  - PathOfEclipse 3y ago
    > It's a sweeping take to say that everything Chomsky has said is wrong or immoral. A statement can be both sweeping and largely true. We need to stop giving academics undeserved moral authority. Chomsky is a prime example of someone who speaks far beyond the boundaries of what he understands and advocates for immoral, destructive, and harmful policies and ideas. > Fwiw, for anyone reading along, Chomsky didn't coin the term "state capitalism" and he was not the first to apply it to the USSR. Lenin himself actually uses the term to describe the USSR, seeing it as a necessary transitional step from (normal) capitalism to a socialist system: This isn't surprising. as Marx defined it himself, socialism is communism as enforced by the government, meaning, the government seizes control of everything and runs everything. So "state capitalism" just means the existing businesses are now repossessed by the state. > And I'm of the opinion that the beginnings of the USSR, led by Lenin, were much more idealistic than what it would quickly become. Idealism is irrelevant. Marxism is a tool for causing people to be discontent and eventually revolt in a bloody revolution, and, so The USSR got exactly this, and so did China. In fact, Mao specifically used the "idealists", his Red Guard, to further his agenda, and, once he took power, he simply killed or imprisoned them all. Marxism is an entirely failed ideology, as is socialism. All it can do is destroy; it has no vision for building anything of value. That we have to relearn this lesson is a damning indictment to our inability to transmit true knowledge and morality effectively to the rising generations.

1letterunixname 3y ago

Power isn't the problem. It's an amoral, nebulous concept. There are no actual -isms in the world.* These are utopian fantasies supported as tribal, jingoist footballs not worth arguing about. Governments are varying degrees of: 1. Influence corruption of the rich directing elected (or military junta) officials 2. Proportion of embezzlement-adjacent and actual embezzlement corruption of officials spending money on their own needs and wants 3. Overall functionality and responsiveness of police and justice extending protections or harm balancing individual and collective interests, including positive and negative rights to liberties, property, trade, and taxation 4. Distribution of competency across government departments The problem in the US specifically is that money concentrates power because elected officials are beholding to campaign financing. As a consequent, primarily celebrities and public figures are the only ones who are "electable" in 2 flavors of corporate-owned, tribal factions. As John McCain discovered, there is absolutely no will to fix it from within the system. As such, it can only be resolved outside of it through applying great, sustained pressure in a nonviolent manner. * Communism was attempted but never implemented anywhere because it's either a utopian delusion or was sidetracked by totalitarianism and/or inadequate leadership. Capitalism doesn't exist anywhere except in a libertarian's mind. There is no "pure" "socialism" anywhere. Every political jurisdiction implements a special snowflake blend of regulations, corruption, freedoms, autonomy, and force.

batmansmom1 3y ago
Can you explain what you mean by John McCain discovering there is no will to fix it? Have always admired him but I'm unaware of his efforts to change, outside of voting for ACA and admitting Obama is a decent man.

wahnfrieden 3y ago

Not under anarchism, and not under human relations as a necessity, as Wengrow/Graeber for instance have done work to show

HDThoreaun 3y ago
I don't think anarchism is realistic in any long term sense. Someone will always come around and consolidate power by forming(and forcing people into) a government.
- TotalCrackpot 3y ago
  Zapatistas have around 30 years and they seem to be very close to Anarchism, Rojava has 10 years of democratic confederalism which is Libertarian socialism and let's say fairly close to Anarchism.
  - confd 3y ago
    Ten. Thirty. Those are meager numbers.
    - jamiepenney 3y ago
      Gotta start somewhere, capitalism in it's current form has only been around for a few hundred years at best. Too many people have bought into Fukuyama's The End of History imo.
    - wahnfrieden 3y ago
      Anarchism as a thought has only existed for about 150 years, capitalism for maybe 500 years and still took a couple hundred to get going, so I don’t know what your standard is except to doubt that anything can come after it

confd 3y ago

Good point. If not for power/authority how else do people think that their ideals will be successfully implemented?

totetsu 3y ago

Is it a human thing, or a mathematical game theory thing. If you have a group of agents with diverse motivations, power will become concentrated in many conditions.