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Lied to by whom? My life experience? Growth for who? I’m myself capitalist, that doesn’t make me blind from externalities resulting from that system, and the wa
by dgellow 1mo ago
Lied to by whom? My life experience? Growth for who? I’m myself capitalist, that doesn’t make me blind from externalities resulting from that system, and the way it is poised to degenerate if not regulated.
If you think capitalism means growth with no externalities you’re not ready to discuss that topic
- alchemist1e9 1mo agonon-capitalist systems have even worse externalities historically. democracy to introduce regulations is healthy. state participation is unhealthy and destructive. I fully understand and you can read my sibling reply for more context.
- senordevnyc 1mo agoFWIW, I also think we should have sensible regulations, because the externalities are very real and damaging, etc. That said, I find a concerning and increasing number of people are fully focused on the negative externalities, and blind to the benefits. Ironically, most of those people are very wealthy beneficiaries of capitalism, from a global and historical perspective. I doubt that the billions of people who have been lifted out of abject poverty in the last few decades would fail to see that capitalism is a net benefit to humanity. But I suspect this comment will be heavily downvoted by those rich folks here on HN just because I mentioned something positive about capitalism, and that's gauche now. It's pretty perplexing, are people really so blind about the incredibly privileged place in history we occupy? It seems so. Now, if we exterminate ourselves with AI or climate change ends up putting humanity as a whole in a worse position than we were in pre-Industrial Revolution (both of which I doubt tbh), I'd change my view on whether capitalism is a net benefit.