4 ms·

i find quite ironic whenever i see a highly upvoted comment here complaining about capitalism because for sure i don't see yc existing in any other type of econ

i find quite ironic whenever i see a highly upvoted comment here complaining about capitalism because for sure i don't see yc existing in any other type of economy.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
This only holds if your thinking on the subject of economic systems is only as deep as choosing your character’s class in an RPG game. There’s no need for us to make every last industry a state owned enterprise and no one who’s spent longer than an hour or so contemplating such things thinks that way. I have no desire to not have a variety of companies producing things like cars, electronics, software, video games, just to name a few. Competition does drive innovation, that is still true, and having such firms vying for a limited amount of resources dispatched by individuals makes a lot of sense. Markets have their place. However markets also have limits. A power company competing for your business is largely a farce, since the power lines to your home will not change. A cable company in America is almost certainly a functional monopoly, and that fact is reflected in their quality of service. Infrastructure of all sorts makes for piss-put markets because true competition is all but impossible, and even if it does kind of work, it’s inefficient. A customer must become knowledgeable in some way to have a ghost of a clue what they’re buying, or trust entirely dubious information from marketing. And, even if somehow everything is working up to this point, corporations are, above all, cost cutters and if you put one in charge of an area where it feels as though customers have few if any choices and the friction to change is high, they will immediately begin degrading their quality of services to save money in the budget. And this is only from first principles, we have so many other things that could be discussed from mass market manipulation to the generous subsidies of a stunning variety that basically every business at scale enjoys to the rapacious compensation schemes that have become entirely too commonplace in the executive room, etc etc etc. To put it short: I have no issue at all with capitalism operating in non-essential to life industries. My issue is all the ways it’s infiltrated the essential ones and made them demonstrably worse, less efficient, and more expensive for every consumer.
- catlifeonmars 2y ago
  I would argue that subsidization and monopolistic markets are an inevitable outcome of capitalism. The competitive landscape where consumers vote for the best products with their purchasing decisions is simply not a sustainable equilibrium. The ability to accumulate capital (I.e. “capitalism”) leads to regulatory protectionism through lobbying, bribery, etcetera.
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    I would argue that markets are a necessary step towards capitalism but it's also crucial to remember that markets can also exist outside of capitalism. The accumulation of money in a society with insufficient defenses will trend towards money being a stand-in for power and influence, but it still requires the permission and legal leeway of the system in order to actually turn it corrupt; politicians have to both be permitted to, and be personally willing to accept the checks to do the corruption in the first place. The biggest and most salient critique of liberal capitalism as we now exist under is that it requires far too many of the "right people" to be in positions of power; it presumes good faith where it shouldn't, and fails to reckon with bad actors as what they are far too often, the modern American Republican party being an excellent example (but far from the only one).
    - catlifeonmars 2y ago
      100%. Markets are a really useful tool for distributing goods and services to people and allocating resources. In the US, IMO the problem is that markets are the primary tool for a huge number of services; take utilities for one. There is a saying that when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
meiraleal 2y ago
You wouldn’t see YC existing on a world full capitalist :) It depende heavily on open source, the biggest and most succeassful socialist experiment so far
- mandibles 2y ago
  Open source is a purely voluntary system. So it's not socialist, which requires state coercion to force people to "share."

i find quite ironic whenever i see a highly upvoted comment here complaining about capitalism because for sure i don't see yc existing in any other type of economy.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

This only holds if your thinking on the subject of economic systems is only as deep as choosing your character’s class in an RPG game. There’s no need for us to make every last industry a state owned enterprise and no one who’s spent longer than an hour or so contemplating such things thinks that way. I have no desire to not have a variety of companies producing things like cars, electronics, software, video games, just to name a few. Competition does drive innovation, that is still true, and having such firms vying for a limited amount of resources dispatched by individuals makes a lot of sense. Markets have their place. However markets also have limits. A power company competing for your business is largely a farce, since the power lines to your home will not change. A cable company in America is almost certainly a functional monopoly, and that fact is reflected in their quality of service. Infrastructure of all sorts makes for piss-put markets because true competition is all but impossible, and even if it does kind of work, it’s inefficient. A customer must become knowledgeable in some way to have a ghost of a clue what they’re buying, or trust entirely dubious information from marketing. And, even if somehow everything is working up to this point, corporations are, above all, cost cutters and if you put one in charge of an area where it feels as though customers have few if any choices and the friction to change is high, they will immediately begin degrading their quality of services to save money in the budget. And this is only from first principles, we have so many other things that could be discussed from mass market manipulation to the generous subsidies of a stunning variety that basically every business at scale enjoys to the rapacious compensation schemes that have become entirely too commonplace in the executive room, etc etc etc. To put it short: I have no issue at all with capitalism operating in non-essential to life industries. My issue is all the ways it’s infiltrated the essential ones and made them demonstrably worse, less efficient, and more expensive for every consumer.

catlifeonmars 2y ago
I would argue that subsidization and monopolistic markets are an inevitable outcome of capitalism. The competitive landscape where consumers vote for the best products with their purchasing decisions is simply not a sustainable equilibrium. The ability to accumulate capital (I.e. “capitalism”) leads to regulatory protectionism through lobbying, bribery, etcetera.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  I would argue that markets are a necessary step towards capitalism but it's also crucial to remember that markets can also exist outside of capitalism. The accumulation of money in a society with insufficient defenses will trend towards money being a stand-in for power and influence, but it still requires the permission and legal leeway of the system in order to actually turn it corrupt; politicians have to both be permitted to, and be personally willing to accept the checks to do the corruption in the first place. The biggest and most salient critique of liberal capitalism as we now exist under is that it requires far too many of the "right people" to be in positions of power; it presumes good faith where it shouldn't, and fails to reckon with bad actors as what they are far too often, the modern American Republican party being an excellent example (but far from the only one).
  - catlifeonmars 2y ago
    100%. Markets are a really useful tool for distributing goods and services to people and allocating resources. In the US, IMO the problem is that markets are the primary tool for a huge number of services; take utilities for one. There is a saying that when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

meiraleal 2y ago

You wouldn’t see YC existing on a world full capitalist :) It depende heavily on open source, the biggest and most succeassful socialist experiment so far

mandibles 2y ago
Open source is a purely voluntary system. So it's not socialist, which requires state coercion to force people to "share."