18 ms·

Literally the most overwhelming thought, reading this, is "man, capitalism is a mistake" The amounts of money circulating whilst some of us struggle to make re

Literally the most overwhelming thought, reading this, is "man, capitalism is a mistake" The amounts of money circulating whilst some of us struggle to make rent ... Nothing fair, or just, about this world we live in

mhb 4mo ago
Courtesy of TFA and capitalism: "In 1985, if you were a reasonably affluent American, the best computer that you could afford was the IBM PC AT. The PC AT would cost you about $6,000—$19,400 in 2026 dollars—and thus represented about a quarter of the median American’s annual income; and it ran on an Intel 80286 processor, capable of something like 900,000 instructions per second. Today, if you find yourself in a market stall in Nairobi or Lagos, you’ll be able to find a cheap smartphone—like the Tecno Spark Go, manufactured by China’s Transsion—for somewhere between $30 and $120. That phone will run on a processor capable of billions of calculations per second."
- hackyhacky 4mo ago
  This quote has nothing to do with capitalism. Please note that "commerce" and "capitalism" are not synonymous, and that the former does not imply the latter. Capitalism is in no way a prerequisite for technological development.
  - CamperBob2 4mo ago
    Capitalism is in no way a prerequisite for technological development. Really? Who else builds stuff?
    - hackyhacky 4mo ago
      > Really? Who else builds stuff? Said the Christian in pre-Englightenment Europe: "Well, of course Christianity is the one true religion. After all, the whole civilized world is Christian."
      - CamperBob2 4mo ago
        That doesn't answer my question.
        hackyhacky 4mo ago
        That's because your question is silly. I'll spell it out for you: Just because all modern states are capitalist does not mean that all states must be capitalist, as evidenced by the many erstwhile states that were not capitalist. Your failure to see beyond your immediate surroundings and ignoring the first sentence of my previous comment is perhaps the reason for your silly question.
        ivewonyoung 4mo ago
        > Just because all modern states are capitalist does not mean that all states must be capitalist, as evidenced by the many erstwhile states that were not capitalist However, I doubt anyone else would instead want to live in current day North Korea or pre-1990 eastern bloc countries, or in East vs West Germany.
        hackyhacky 4mo ago
        > However, I doubt anyone else would instead want to live in current day North Korea or pre-1990 eastern bloc countries, or in East vs West Germany. An astute observation, if your knowledge of history begins and ends with the 20th century.
        ivewonyoung 4mo ago
        So not a single country out of ~200, not one, emulated the alleged great successes and utopias of historic non-capitalist economies for a century plus. Which is why you're unable to name one in the 20th century. Hmm I wonder why. Maybe we can look at societies where the modern era hasn't touched, like some places in Africa. Why is the quality of life so great there that everyone wants to move from hypercapitalistic societies like the US to Africa instead of the other way around?
    - torben-friis 4mo ago
      >Who else builds stuff? The Chinese, famously?
      - ivewonyoung 4mo ago
        China is a great example of a counter point to the argument. They only started making things once they realized capitalism was better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_and_opening_up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_and_opening_up > The reforms [starting in 1976] de-collectivized agriculture, abolished the people's communes, relaxed price controls, allowed foreign direct investment into China, and led to the creation of special economic zones, most prominently the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and the Shanghai Pudong New Area. Private enterprises were allowed to grow, while many state-owned enterprises were scaled down or privatized. Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange were established in 1990, allowing a capital market system
        hackyhacky 4mo ago
        > They only started making things once they realized capitalism was better. Free commerce is not the same as capitalism. A country where production, wages, and ownership are decided centrally can hardly be said to be unfettered capitalism.
        ivewonyoung 4mo ago
        > A country where production, wages, and ownership are decided centrally can hardly be said to be unfettered capitalism. The reforms in China I listed heavily cut down on that. Are you claiming that China is somehow less capitalistic now compared to 1976? By your metric the US isn't capitalistic because NASA and various govt agencies and entitlements worth trillions of dollars a year of taxes exist.
        hackyhacky 4mo ago
        Please avoid straw man arguments. I didn't say that China didn't use capitalism: I said that it didn't use unfettered capitalism. Its capitalism is strongly tinged by its authoritarian rule with the explicit goal of reducing poverty. The US, like China, continues to use a mixed approach to economic management in the form of regulated capitalism. The degree of regulation in the US has been declining since the 1950s, resulting in larger wealth inequalities and more poverty.
    - lkey 4mo ago
      You don't have to demonstrate this kind of ignorance of human history on main. Aren't you embarrassed? Do you value knowledge even a little bit? When did capitalism begin? How was 'stuff' created and distributed prior to that? How do other, distinct and contemporaneous modes of production create 'stuff'?
      - WalterBright 4mo ago
        Capitalism began when Thag, who was a good hunter, brought home two dinosaur steaks. His buddy Grog was a lousy hunter, but was good at making spears. Thag traded a dinosaur steak for a new spear.
        hackyhacky 4mo ago
        That's commerce, not capitalism. Capitalism began when Thag declared that he owns all the dinosaurs, and anyone who hunts a dinosaur must pay him 10 percent of the meat as a tribute, or else he will stab them with his spear.
        WalterBright 4mo ago
        Um, Grog had the spear.
        hackyhacky 4mo ago
        [flagged]
        lkey 4mo ago
        Really Walter? You know better than this. First, pedantically, we did not share time with 'dinosaurs' in the sense you imply. Secondly, pedantically, that kind of hunting was not the main source of calories for hunter-gatherers. It's more apt to imagine them as gatherers first and primarily. Thirdly, and also pedantically, you are not describing the system of capitalism that I, and most educated people talk about when they use the word. That system has only been with us in the main for, generously, 250 years. Critically, Thag and Grog both own the means of production for their spears and 'steaks' respectively. The necessary abstractions for capital accumulation, debt, and private ownership simply do not exist.
  - tick_tock_tick 4mo ago
    I mean we don't really have any counter examples even China didn't really start advancing in any meaningful way until they started moving towards capitalism.
    - hackyhacky 4mo ago
      We didn't have any examples of states without a divinely appointed absolute monarch until we did. Things can change. And as a matter of fact, there are many examples of non capitalist societies.
  - WalterBright 4mo ago
    > Capitalism is in no way a prerequisite for technological development. Communist countries copied technology, their inventions are very few. Capitalist countries routinely exhibit rapid technological development.
    - WalterBright 4mo ago
      I was just watching "Shock and Awe", a documentary on Amazon, about the development of electrical theory and products. It was driven largely by people who wanted to make money off of their inventions. None of the progress came from communist countries. Did you know that Gutenberg invented the printing press in order to make money? Did you know the Wright Bros invented the airplane in order to make money? And so on and so forth.
      - hackyhacky 4mo ago
        > It was driven largely by people who wanted to make money off of their inventions. I am getting a little tired of repeating myself, but you're evidently confused so I'll indulge you. The opposition to capitalist as a monetary system does not imply the opposition to the profit motive. As I've said several times, and which you continue to ignore, the exchange of goods and services in the form of commerce requires the profit motive. Conflating my position with communism is a straw man.
        WalterBright 4mo ago
        Well, you do repeat Marxist tenets, like the class struggle and the labor theory of value.
        hackyhacky 4mo ago
        Just because they are Marxist tenets doesn't mean they aren't true. Feel free to refute them if you feel otherwise.
        4mo ago
  - sophrosyne42 4mo ago
    "Capitalism" is an ever shifting ambiguity that exists to be a scapegoat to attack but is completely meaningless in its concrete usage by the attackers. But "capitalism" in its historical and practical meaning means nothing other than commerce, i.e. the society based exchange, the system of production based on exchange. It was only through capitalist accounting methods that businesses were able to conduct commerce in such a way as to contrast costs and proceeds, and therefore create the optimizations that lead to mass computer production or, what is the same, cheap computers for the masses.
    - hackyhacky 4mo ago
      > But "capitalism" in its historical and practical meaning means nothing other than commerce, i.e. the society based exchange, the system of production based on exchange Completely wrong. Many of my comments here distinguish commerce from capitalism. Commerce, ie the exchange of goods and services, has existed longer than civilization. Even some animals do it. Capitalism is specifically the substitution of labor with ownership as a means of profiting. This produces an imbalanced market: some people compete for resources by selling their labor, while others compete simply by owning capital: the means of production. The problem is that the latter mode allows unlimited accumulation of wealth, while the former is limited by time and effort. Imagine if Elon Musk was working a salaried job that paid $60000 per hour. How long would he have to work in order to earn his current fortune?
      - sophrosyne42 4mo ago
        Every socialist tries to make this distinction and falls to their own guillotine. You do realize that "substitute with" is merely a synonym for "exchange"? The exchange of labor, to be sure, has existed nearly as long as civilization itself, perhaps longer, as all people cooperate by exchange through the division of labor right down to the family, and it is exchange whether the articles to be exchanged are money or physical things or even intangible, ephemeral things like love, pride, loyalty, or otherwise. Since human society is human cooperation by the division of labor, by your definition capitalism is nearly synonymous with human society itself. Fine by me.
- richforrester 4mo ago
  That has little to do with what I said. A third of the world lives in poverty. That's the fault of capitalism.
  - CamperBob2 4mo ago
    Really? What other systems are better at lifting people out of poverty (without killing a few tens of millions in the process?) There are so many other places where this sort of low-effort high-school edgelording fits in better than here.
    - hackyhacky 4mo ago
      > There are so many other places where this sort of low-effort high-school edgelording fits in better than here. A good sign of low-effort edgelording is championing an obviously broken system by using a straw man to disparage the alternatives.
      - CamperBob2 4mo ago
        [dead]
  - rationalist 4mo ago
    > A third of the world lives in poverty. That's the fault of capitalism. So what you're saying is that capitalism lifted about two thirds of the world out of poverty. Thanks to capitalism, I don't have to toil in the fields.
    - hackyhacky 4mo ago
      > Thanks to capitalism, I don't have to toil in the fields. No, that's thanks to commerce not to capitalism. Capitalism benefits those those who hold capital, which is not me. The fact that there are more than enough resources for no one to live in poverty should suggest to you that something is wrong with the distribution system. "It's true, Mr/Ms Rationalist, that our patented Miracle Medical Snakeoil caused a third of your leg to become necrotic and fall off, but be glad for the two thirds that did not fall off!"
KnuthIsGod 4mo ago
China going capitalist ( while remaining authoritarian ) has helped lift 800 million out of desperate poverty. I hope that India too can emulate this in my lifetime. I was born in Kerala and would love to see Indians live in a country that is as wealthy per capita ( PPP adjusted ) as Singapore or failing that even as wealthy as the USA. Capitalism has it's problems. But you struggling with rent is entirely your self-inflicted problem...
- hackyhacky 4mo ago
  > But you struggling with rent is entirely your problem... Who said anything about struggling with rent? Sounds like you a grasping for a straw man. > I hope that India too can emulate this in my lifetime I, too, hope the best things for the people of China and of India. But India, by any metric, is already a capitalist economy, where its wealth is concentrated in the hands of a very few. To the extent that China has been successful is distributing its wealth among many people, I'd say it's the authoritarianism, rather than the capitalism, that has been instrumental. The state sets agendas, quotas, and salaries specifically to produce that outcome. Top-down government control is not a feature of unbridled capitalism. So we have two large industrializing economies, both capitalist. One (the authoritarian one) has succeeded in drastically reducing poverty; the other has not. And yet you think that capitalism is the driver of equality? Capitalism produces wealth. You need some other system to distribute that wealth fairly.
  - F3nd0 4mo ago
    > Who said anything about struggling with rent? The person they replied to, in the very comment they replied to…? > > > The amounts of money circulating whilst some of us struggle to make rent ...
  - WalterBright 4mo ago
    > capitalism is the driver of equality? Nope. It is the driver of opportunity, though. It's up to individuals to take advantage of the opportunity, or not.
    - 4mo ago
WalterBright 4mo ago
> Nothing fair, or just, about this world we live in We all make different choices, and so have different consequences. For example, I squandered the proceeds of a business deal on a new car. If I'd bought MSFT instead, I could have bought 100 new cars.
- pjc50 4mo ago
  If I'd simply written the correct numbers on last week's lottery ticket, I could do that. (hindsight stock picking is terrible!)
- account42 4mo ago
  So what you're saying is that we all just need to become better gamblers? That doesn't exactly scream functional society to me. Besides, this can't work for everyone - if you get 100 cars without an equivalent amount of more work put in then someone else has to do that work without being properly compensated for it.
  - sokoloff 4mo ago
    It shifts the gains away from the marginal investor in Microsoft who was only willing to pay a penny less for those shares (probably an eighth of a dollar when this anecdote happened). Instead of them getting the 100 cars, the buyer who was willing to hit the ask earlier gets them. That profit comes from owning a piece of a productive company, productive companies often spring from early-stage losses that require investment money from somewhere, seed stage money comes from the high likelihood that later stage money will come in if the venture appears successful.
    - hackyhacky 4mo ago
      Your comment does not address the (imho reasonable) criticism that the described system incentivizes gambling as the key to wealth, rather than labor. There are many problems with a gambling based economy, not least among them that over a long enough time line, all the money ends in very few hands.
Linosaurus 4mo ago
> , is "man, capitalism is a mistake" Man, we need a better term for this criticism. The US right now is more harsh to live in than the US pre-Reagan, which was more harsh than many countries with a strong welfare state, but all of them are capitalistic.
- account42 4mo ago
  Perhaps the term you are looking for is corporate feudalism.
  - strangegecko 4mo ago
    Maybe, but you have very similar dynamics in China or other countries. At the root the problem is one of power dynamics, inequality, authoritarianism (whether legitimized by money or politics or both). Or said otherwise, an erosion of democratic and egalitarian ideals.
- everforward 4mo ago
  “Late-stage capitalism” is the normal term for expressing a belief that capitalism tends to eat itself over a long enough time horizon.
sophrosyne42 4mo ago
> The amounts of money circulating whilst some of us struggle to make rent ... It may be expressed in terms of money, but these are assets and capital. You wouldn't find a fab a very comfortable or satisfying place to live. The reason the numbers get so big is the gargantuan accumulated savings that are prepared to fund the similarly gargantuan ventures. The large numbers are supported by maintaining and sustaining the capitalized value by profitable investment and depreciation. When you talk about rent, while it may be expressed in the same unit (money), the economic function played is very different. Here, it is consumption rather than saving/investment. If the dollar equivalent of all those assets went towards paying rent, while it would secure housing for some time, it would eventually become completely exhausted, and so too would housing security. Large pools of assets are simply not a way to get stable housing, it would only consume the large savings society has accumulated to be able to undergo those big ventures. It would be short-sighted and harm us in the future. The cause and solution to rental instability is to be found in housing, building, and land policy that restricts the production of housing.
- svachalek 4mo ago
  That's right. Housing is not an asset to society or the economy, it's a drain that wastes money on preserving human life. Unlike valuable uses of capital like options trading and cryptocurrency.
  - sophrosyne42 4mo ago
    Despite your reply obviously not being good faith, I will correct errors for others. > Housing is not an asset to society or the economy, it's a drain that wastes money on preserving human life. You are equivocating between asset in the sense of 'generally useful thing', and the sense I used above which is a capital good. Housing is obviously a useful thing and necessary, just as all other consumptive goods like food, clothing, etc. That makes it an 'asset' in the former sense to people (there is no such thing as useful to the economy, which is just an abstraction). But housing, food, and clothing are not assets in the latter sense. I.e., paying for housing is a consumptive act and not a productive act. There is nothing good or bad about either, the distinction is simply a distinction of economic function. Eating is important, but eating uses up resources; it is consumption. Cooking is important, but it is not eating, you don't get anything out of it until you eat; it is production. Both rely on each other, neither can be given up completely without harm. Thus, a proper balance must be struck, because it would be foolish and self-destructive to only consume. If there was only consumption, then this would simply sacrifice your future and you would not be able to survive after you have used up what was produced before. The question is about whether you want a stable, regular, and lasting way to be able to have valuable things like housing, food, and clothing. To do that, you have to refrain from consuming your entire stock of assets, you have to refrain from using up all the resources you have. But that is what you would to if you took all the capital that companies have saved up and consumed it. The purpose of my original post was to point out that you can't look at production as if it were consumption, they have different roles and if you mistake production as an opportunity to consume, it is self-destructive. Replying by ignoring this distinction and instead making a strawman will not prevent your perspective from being self destructive.
tensor 4mo ago
No, capitalism isn't a mistake, unregulated capitalism is a mistake. The solution is simple, don't let companies merge/acquire after a certain size. Capitalism works when there is a healthy competitive market. It doesn't work when there are 1-3 big companies all fixing prices.

mhb 4mo ago

Courtesy of TFA and capitalism: "In 1985, if you were a reasonably affluent American, the best computer that you could afford was the IBM PC AT. The PC AT would cost you about $6,000—$19,400 in 2026 dollars—and thus represented about a quarter of the median American’s annual income; and it ran on an Intel 80286 processor, capable of something like 900,000 instructions per second. Today, if you find yourself in a market stall in Nairobi or Lagos, you’ll be able to find a cheap smartphone—like the Tecno Spark Go, manufactured by China’s Transsion—for somewhere between $30 and $120. That phone will run on a processor capable of billions of calculations per second."

hackyhacky 4mo ago
This quote has nothing to do with capitalism. Please note that "commerce" and "capitalism" are not synonymous, and that the former does not imply the latter. Capitalism is in no way a prerequisite for technological development.
- CamperBob2 4mo ago
  Capitalism is in no way a prerequisite for technological development. Really? Who else builds stuff?
  - hackyhacky 4mo ago
    > Really? Who else builds stuff? Said the Christian in pre-Englightenment Europe: "Well, of course Christianity is the one true religion. After all, the whole civilized world is Christian."
    - CamperBob2 4mo ago
      That doesn't answer my question.
      - hackyhacky 4mo ago
        That's because your question is silly. I'll spell it out for you: Just because all modern states are capitalist does not mean that all states must be capitalist, as evidenced by the many erstwhile states that were not capitalist. Your failure to see beyond your immediate surroundings and ignoring the first sentence of my previous comment is perhaps the reason for your silly question.
        ivewonyoung 4mo ago
        > Just because all modern states are capitalist does not mean that all states must be capitalist, as evidenced by the many erstwhile states that were not capitalist However, I doubt anyone else would instead want to live in current day North Korea or pre-1990 eastern bloc countries, or in East vs West Germany.
        hackyhacky 4mo ago
        > However, I doubt anyone else would instead want to live in current day North Korea or pre-1990 eastern bloc countries, or in East vs West Germany. An astute observation, if your knowledge of history begins and ends with the 20th century.
        ivewonyoung 4mo ago
        So not a single country out of ~200, not one, emulated the alleged great successes and utopias of historic non-capitalist economies for a century plus. Which is why you're unable to name one in the 20th century. Hmm I wonder why. Maybe we can look at societies where the modern era hasn't touched, like some places in Africa. Why is the quality of life so great there that everyone wants to move from hypercapitalistic societies like the US to Africa instead of the other way around?
  - torben-friis 4mo ago
    >Who else builds stuff? The Chinese, famously?
    - ivewonyoung 4mo ago
      China is a great example of a counter point to the argument. They only started making things once they realized capitalism was better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_and_opening_up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_and_opening_up > The reforms [starting in 1976] de-collectivized agriculture, abolished the people's communes, relaxed price controls, allowed foreign direct investment into China, and led to the creation of special economic zones, most prominently the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and the Shanghai Pudong New Area. Private enterprises were allowed to grow, while many state-owned enterprises were scaled down or privatized. Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange were established in 1990, allowing a capital market system
      - hackyhacky 4mo ago
        > They only started making things once they realized capitalism was better. Free commerce is not the same as capitalism. A country where production, wages, and ownership are decided centrally can hardly be said to be unfettered capitalism.
        ivewonyoung 4mo ago
        > A country where production, wages, and ownership are decided centrally can hardly be said to be unfettered capitalism. The reforms in China I listed heavily cut down on that. Are you claiming that China is somehow less capitalistic now compared to 1976? By your metric the US isn't capitalistic because NASA and various govt agencies and entitlements worth trillions of dollars a year of taxes exist.
        hackyhacky 4mo ago
        Please avoid straw man arguments. I didn't say that China didn't use capitalism: I said that it didn't use unfettered capitalism. Its capitalism is strongly tinged by its authoritarian rule with the explicit goal of reducing poverty. The US, like China, continues to use a mixed approach to economic management in the form of regulated capitalism. The degree of regulation in the US has been declining since the 1950s, resulting in larger wealth inequalities and more poverty.
  - lkey 4mo ago
    You don't have to demonstrate this kind of ignorance of human history on main. Aren't you embarrassed? Do you value knowledge even a little bit? When did capitalism begin? How was 'stuff' created and distributed prior to that? How do other, distinct and contemporaneous modes of production create 'stuff'?
    - WalterBright 4mo ago
      Capitalism began when Thag, who was a good hunter, brought home two dinosaur steaks. His buddy Grog was a lousy hunter, but was good at making spears. Thag traded a dinosaur steak for a new spear.
      - hackyhacky 4mo ago
        That's commerce, not capitalism. Capitalism began when Thag declared that he owns all the dinosaurs, and anyone who hunts a dinosaur must pay him 10 percent of the meat as a tribute, or else he will stab them with his spear.
        WalterBright 4mo ago
        Um, Grog had the spear.
        hackyhacky 4mo ago
        [flagged]
      - lkey 4mo ago
        Really Walter? You know better than this. First, pedantically, we did not share time with 'dinosaurs' in the sense you imply. Secondly, pedantically, that kind of hunting was not the main source of calories for hunter-gatherers. It's more apt to imagine them as gatherers first and primarily. Thirdly, and also pedantically, you are not describing the system of capitalism that I, and most educated people talk about when they use the word. That system has only been with us in the main for, generously, 250 years. Critically, Thag and Grog both own the means of production for their spears and 'steaks' respectively. The necessary abstractions for capital accumulation, debt, and private ownership simply do not exist.
- tick_tock_tick 4mo ago
  I mean we don't really have any counter examples even China didn't really start advancing in any meaningful way until they started moving towards capitalism.
  - hackyhacky 4mo ago
    We didn't have any examples of states without a divinely appointed absolute monarch until we did. Things can change. And as a matter of fact, there are many examples of non capitalist societies.
- WalterBright 4mo ago
  > Capitalism is in no way a prerequisite for technological development. Communist countries copied technology, their inventions are very few. Capitalist countries routinely exhibit rapid technological development.
  - WalterBright 4mo ago
    I was just watching "Shock and Awe", a documentary on Amazon, about the development of electrical theory and products. It was driven largely by people who wanted to make money off of their inventions. None of the progress came from communist countries. Did you know that Gutenberg invented the printing press in order to make money? Did you know the Wright Bros invented the airplane in order to make money? And so on and so forth.
    - hackyhacky 4mo ago
      > It was driven largely by people who wanted to make money off of their inventions. I am getting a little tired of repeating myself, but you're evidently confused so I'll indulge you. The opposition to capitalist as a monetary system does not imply the opposition to the profit motive. As I've said several times, and which you continue to ignore, the exchange of goods and services in the form of commerce requires the profit motive. Conflating my position with communism is a straw man.
      - WalterBright 4mo ago
        Well, you do repeat Marxist tenets, like the class struggle and the labor theory of value.
        hackyhacky 4mo ago
        Just because they are Marxist tenets doesn't mean they aren't true. Feel free to refute them if you feel otherwise.
        4mo ago
- sophrosyne42 4mo ago
  "Capitalism" is an ever shifting ambiguity that exists to be a scapegoat to attack but is completely meaningless in its concrete usage by the attackers. But "capitalism" in its historical and practical meaning means nothing other than commerce, i.e. the society based exchange, the system of production based on exchange. It was only through capitalist accounting methods that businesses were able to conduct commerce in such a way as to contrast costs and proceeds, and therefore create the optimizations that lead to mass computer production or, what is the same, cheap computers for the masses.
  - hackyhacky 4mo ago
    > But "capitalism" in its historical and practical meaning means nothing other than commerce, i.e. the society based exchange, the system of production based on exchange Completely wrong. Many of my comments here distinguish commerce from capitalism. Commerce, ie the exchange of goods and services, has existed longer than civilization. Even some animals do it. Capitalism is specifically the substitution of labor with ownership as a means of profiting. This produces an imbalanced market: some people compete for resources by selling their labor, while others compete simply by owning capital: the means of production. The problem is that the latter mode allows unlimited accumulation of wealth, while the former is limited by time and effort. Imagine if Elon Musk was working a salaried job that paid $60000 per hour. How long would he have to work in order to earn his current fortune?
    - sophrosyne42 4mo ago
      Every socialist tries to make this distinction and falls to their own guillotine. You do realize that "substitute with" is merely a synonym for "exchange"? The exchange of labor, to be sure, has existed nearly as long as civilization itself, perhaps longer, as all people cooperate by exchange through the division of labor right down to the family, and it is exchange whether the articles to be exchanged are money or physical things or even intangible, ephemeral things like love, pride, loyalty, or otherwise. Since human society is human cooperation by the division of labor, by your definition capitalism is nearly synonymous with human society itself. Fine by me.
richforrester 4mo ago
That has little to do with what I said. A third of the world lives in poverty. That's the fault of capitalism.
- CamperBob2 4mo ago
  Really? What other systems are better at lifting people out of poverty (without killing a few tens of millions in the process?) There are so many other places where this sort of low-effort high-school edgelording fits in better than here.
  - hackyhacky 4mo ago
    > There are so many other places where this sort of low-effort high-school edgelording fits in better than here. A good sign of low-effort edgelording is championing an obviously broken system by using a straw man to disparage the alternatives.
    - CamperBob2 4mo ago
      [dead]
- rationalist 4mo ago
  > A third of the world lives in poverty. That's the fault of capitalism. So what you're saying is that capitalism lifted about two thirds of the world out of poverty. Thanks to capitalism, I don't have to toil in the fields.
  - hackyhacky 4mo ago
    > Thanks to capitalism, I don't have to toil in the fields. No, that's thanks to commerce not to capitalism. Capitalism benefits those those who hold capital, which is not me. The fact that there are more than enough resources for no one to live in poverty should suggest to you that something is wrong with the distribution system. "It's true, Mr/Ms Rationalist, that our patented Miracle Medical Snakeoil caused a third of your leg to become necrotic and fall off, but be glad for the two thirds that did not fall off!"

KnuthIsGod 4mo ago

China going capitalist ( while remaining authoritarian ) has helped lift 800 million out of desperate poverty. I hope that India too can emulate this in my lifetime. I was born in Kerala and would love to see Indians live in a country that is as wealthy per capita ( PPP adjusted ) as Singapore or failing that even as wealthy as the USA. Capitalism has it's problems. But you struggling with rent is entirely your self-inflicted problem...

hackyhacky 4mo ago
> But you struggling with rent is entirely your problem... Who said anything about struggling with rent? Sounds like you a grasping for a straw man. > I hope that India too can emulate this in my lifetime I, too, hope the best things for the people of China and of India. But India, by any metric, is already a capitalist economy, where its wealth is concentrated in the hands of a very few. To the extent that China has been successful is distributing its wealth among many people, I'd say it's the authoritarianism, rather than the capitalism, that has been instrumental. The state sets agendas, quotas, and salaries specifically to produce that outcome. Top-down government control is not a feature of unbridled capitalism. So we have two large industrializing economies, both capitalist. One (the authoritarian one) has succeeded in drastically reducing poverty; the other has not. And yet you think that capitalism is the driver of equality? Capitalism produces wealth. You need some other system to distribute that wealth fairly.
- F3nd0 4mo ago
  > Who said anything about struggling with rent? The person they replied to, in the very comment they replied to…? > > > The amounts of money circulating whilst some of us struggle to make rent ...
- WalterBright 4mo ago
  > capitalism is the driver of equality? Nope. It is the driver of opportunity, though. It's up to individuals to take advantage of the opportunity, or not.
  - 4mo ago

WalterBright 4mo ago

> Nothing fair, or just, about this world we live in We all make different choices, and so have different consequences. For example, I squandered the proceeds of a business deal on a new car. If I'd bought MSFT instead, I could have bought 100 new cars.

pjc50 4mo ago
If I'd simply written the correct numbers on last week's lottery ticket, I could do that. (hindsight stock picking is terrible!)
account42 4mo ago
So what you're saying is that we all just need to become better gamblers? That doesn't exactly scream functional society to me. Besides, this can't work for everyone - if you get 100 cars without an equivalent amount of more work put in then someone else has to do that work without being properly compensated for it.
- sokoloff 4mo ago
  It shifts the gains away from the marginal investor in Microsoft who was only willing to pay a penny less for those shares (probably an eighth of a dollar when this anecdote happened). Instead of them getting the 100 cars, the buyer who was willing to hit the ask earlier gets them. That profit comes from owning a piece of a productive company, productive companies often spring from early-stage losses that require investment money from somewhere, seed stage money comes from the high likelihood that later stage money will come in if the venture appears successful.
  - hackyhacky 4mo ago
    Your comment does not address the (imho reasonable) criticism that the described system incentivizes gambling as the key to wealth, rather than labor. There are many problems with a gambling based economy, not least among them that over a long enough time line, all the money ends in very few hands.

Linosaurus 4mo ago

> , is "man, capitalism is a mistake" Man, we need a better term for this criticism. The US right now is more harsh to live in than the US pre-Reagan, which was more harsh than many countries with a strong welfare state, but all of them are capitalistic.

account42 4mo ago
Perhaps the term you are looking for is corporate feudalism.
- strangegecko 4mo ago
  Maybe, but you have very similar dynamics in China or other countries. At the root the problem is one of power dynamics, inequality, authoritarianism (whether legitimized by money or politics or both). Or said otherwise, an erosion of democratic and egalitarian ideals.
everforward 4mo ago
“Late-stage capitalism” is the normal term for expressing a belief that capitalism tends to eat itself over a long enough time horizon.

sophrosyne42 4mo ago

> The amounts of money circulating whilst some of us struggle to make rent ... It may be expressed in terms of money, but these are assets and capital. You wouldn't find a fab a very comfortable or satisfying place to live. The reason the numbers get so big is the gargantuan accumulated savings that are prepared to fund the similarly gargantuan ventures. The large numbers are supported by maintaining and sustaining the capitalized value by profitable investment and depreciation. When you talk about rent, while it may be expressed in the same unit (money), the economic function played is very different. Here, it is consumption rather than saving/investment. If the dollar equivalent of all those assets went towards paying rent, while it would secure housing for some time, it would eventually become completely exhausted, and so too would housing security. Large pools of assets are simply not a way to get stable housing, it would only consume the large savings society has accumulated to be able to undergo those big ventures. It would be short-sighted and harm us in the future. The cause and solution to rental instability is to be found in housing, building, and land policy that restricts the production of housing.

svachalek 4mo ago
That's right. Housing is not an asset to society or the economy, it's a drain that wastes money on preserving human life. Unlike valuable uses of capital like options trading and cryptocurrency.
- sophrosyne42 4mo ago
  Despite your reply obviously not being good faith, I will correct errors for others. > Housing is not an asset to society or the economy, it's a drain that wastes money on preserving human life. You are equivocating between asset in the sense of 'generally useful thing', and the sense I used above which is a capital good. Housing is obviously a useful thing and necessary, just as all other consumptive goods like food, clothing, etc. That makes it an 'asset' in the former sense to people (there is no such thing as useful to the economy, which is just an abstraction). But housing, food, and clothing are not assets in the latter sense. I.e., paying for housing is a consumptive act and not a productive act. There is nothing good or bad about either, the distinction is simply a distinction of economic function. Eating is important, but eating uses up resources; it is consumption. Cooking is important, but it is not eating, you don't get anything out of it until you eat; it is production. Both rely on each other, neither can be given up completely without harm. Thus, a proper balance must be struck, because it would be foolish and self-destructive to only consume. If there was only consumption, then this would simply sacrifice your future and you would not be able to survive after you have used up what was produced before. The question is about whether you want a stable, regular, and lasting way to be able to have valuable things like housing, food, and clothing. To do that, you have to refrain from consuming your entire stock of assets, you have to refrain from using up all the resources you have. But that is what you would to if you took all the capital that companies have saved up and consumed it. The purpose of my original post was to point out that you can't look at production as if it were consumption, they have different roles and if you mistake production as an opportunity to consume, it is self-destructive. Replying by ignoring this distinction and instead making a strawman will not prevent your perspective from being self destructive.

tensor 4mo ago

No, capitalism isn't a mistake, unregulated capitalism is a mistake. The solution is simple, don't let companies merge/acquire after a certain size. Capitalism works when there is a healthy competitive market. It doesn't work when there are 1-3 big companies all fixing prices.