5 ms·

The thing about capitalism, and our dismal history with capitalism-at-large, the "assume the other party is a shitbag" idea is so fundamentally ingrained in our

by crusso 12y ago

The thing about capitalism, and our dismal history with capitalism-at-large, the "assume the other party is a shitbag" idea is so fundamentally ingrained in our cultural What's that got to do with Capitalism? Correct me if I'm making a straw man, but the alternative to capitalism is to remove negotiation from individual interactions by implementing more State-heavy mechanisms like Communism. Isn't creating a crap-ton of government bureaucracy, rules and regulations to tell people exactly how to live and interact with each other institutionalizing the idea that people are shitbags and shouldn't be allowed the freedom to behave freely? I liked your original HN post and tend to be similarly disappointed in the lack of giving some people like Musk his due for trying to do the right thing... not to mention the nit-picking posts that assume that Musk and his people are too mentally deficient to properly allow use of their patents.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
21echoes 12y ago
There are plenty of alternatives to Capitalism that do not involve State-heavy mechanisms. For instance, in Communism, despite your assertion to the contrary, there is actually no state at all.
- cgh 12y ago
  Can you name a historical example where such a system has been successfully implemented?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - 21echoes 12y ago
    All cultures prior to the invention of the modern state. Basically all current "native" cultures, including but in no sense limited to: the Bemba, the Nuer, the Iroquois, Polynesians, Melanesians, etc. etc. etc. Almost all day to day interactions (familial, friendly, etc.). And that's also honestly not relevant to the discussion at hand. OP stated "the alternative to capitalism is to remove negotiation from individual interactions by implementing more State-heavy mechanisms like Communism" and asked if (s)he was making a straw man. I responded that (s)he was on many levels -- there are plenty of alternatives to Capitalism other than Communism, and Communism is also the opposite of a "state-heavy mechanism" given that it literally has no state.
    - ahomescu1 12y ago
      > All cultures prior to the invention of the modern state. Basically all current "native" cultures, including but in no sense limited to: the Bemba, the Nuer, the Iroquois, Polynesians, Melanesians, etc. etc. etc. Almost all day to day interactions (familial, friendly, etc.). Do those scale to populations of millions?
- crusso 12y ago
  Just because Marx and Engels put that in their manifesto doesn't mean that any system that has the features of Communism would even theoretically be possible without force (a state).
  - 21echoes 12y ago
    I don't think "theoretically" is the right word to use here -- it is literally the theory of Communism that it is without a state. Semantic quibbling aside, there are, as stated in my other comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7887756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7887756), plenty of decidedly non-"theoretical" cultures which have very Communist features and no entity which fits most conceptions of a state (certainly not your original stated concept of a state as something with a "crap-ton of government bureaucracy, rules and regulations to tell people exactly how to live") Additionally, there is plenty of theory about how one would have a system that has the features of Communism without a state: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism being the most direct and pure version. Frankly, asserting flippantly to the contrary makes your whole line of reasoning in these threads very hard to take seriously. There are piles upon piles of books, research, etc. about the intersection of the market and the state, and none of them really try to say, as you have, that without a state there must be private property. Indeed, most works in the space (including the original Locke, etc.) assert precisely the contrary -- that one of the main reasons the state exists is to enforce private property. More broadly, of course, it really depends on how you define "state". Are all systems of non-interpersonal power a "state"? Is even organized interpersonal power a state? Is it even at all possible for there to be no state? etc.
deciplex 12y ago
Honestly, what does regulation have to do with capitalism - where did this meme start and how can I kill it? Capital markets are a tool for allocating resources. They're pretty good at it in that they tend to work better than e.g. palace economies and mostly everything else humans have tried. But there is absolutely nothing to the way that capital markets work that suggests regulation somehow breaks it or whatever other brain-damaged Koch-inspired bullshit they're selling on Fox News nowadays. It's like looking at a hammer lying on a table, stating 'that is for pounding nails', then leaving the room and expecting the hammer to pound nails for you.
- wyager 12y ago
  > But there is absolutely nothing to the way that capital markets work that suggests regulation somehow breaks it I don't think anyone is claiming that regulation necessarily breaks capitalism. It just tends to. Most regulations have very obvious innovation-stifling or friction-causing side effects that are deleterious to the free market.
  - deciplex 12y ago
    The American government does this, but it mostly does it on behalf of the same folks trumpeting, to the masses, the virtues of capitalism as an ideology and end in itself. Anarcho-capitalism, really, or nearly so, although the ruling class itself is certainly not anarcho-capitalist of course. The ruling class has a clear interest in subverting free markets to keep the established players in power and any rivals out, and right now in America they are pretty much getting everything they could possibly want. But contract enforcement, private property, impartial justice systems, and yes even intellectual property, copyright, and wealth redistribution, all contribute to more effective capital markets, and they are all borne of government regulation and laws. That the American government happens to be so thoroughly corrupt that it can't do a single thing right, doesn't change that.
    - crusso 12y ago
      You know, I don't think that you and I are in that much disagreement on some of the basics. I think we'd both agree that Capitalism can be good. Government serves a purpose in maintaining the framework of items you listed. We also agree that the corrupt ruling class combination of the Government and Capitalists (along with way too much of the media these days, I'd add) is a disaster. Where I'd imagine that we differ is that I think that the pendulum has swung way too far in the direction of the State. With a debt that is now bigger than our GDP and the last hundred years of mostly one-way growth of government and its agencies, the Government is a huge black hole for money that encourages, institutionalizes, and legalizes ever-increasing degrees of corruption. The best way forward that I see is to cut back the size and scope of Government. Get it back to doing the basics that it was commissioned to do (The Constitution) and not much else unless there's enough impetus for those functions that would drive Constitutional Amendments. If the incentive to sway law-making power would be reduced, much of the cronyism that exists today would disappear. The ruling class would be significantly diminished. Sure, Wal Mart might have more economic power, but its lobbying and legislative power would be drastically reduced. At the end of the day, I have a choice to shop at Wal Mart or to not shop at Wal Mart. I don't have a choice regarding paying taxes to feed the behemoth of a Government that does not provide expected reasonable value for those taxes... not to mention the negatives of crippling public education, moving to a lowest-common-denominator-but-still-expensive healthcare system, etc.
adam704 12y ago
Much of the "invisible hand" idea about how free markets run, and more specifically how they run efficiently, relies on the axiom that people in the market will act rationally towards their own self-interest. As with the Tragedy of the Commons, a capitalist model (generally at least) assumes that people will act towards their own self-interest even when those actions work to the detriment of the group. People that fit that description are certainly selfish (if rightfully so) and in that sense may qualify as "shitbags."

by crusso 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

21echoes 12y ago

There are plenty of alternatives to Capitalism that do not involve State-heavy mechanisms. For instance, in Communism, despite your assertion to the contrary, there is actually no state at all.

cgh 12y ago
Can you name a historical example where such a system has been successfully implemented?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- 21echoes 12y ago
  All cultures prior to the invention of the modern state. Basically all current "native" cultures, including but in no sense limited to: the Bemba, the Nuer, the Iroquois, Polynesians, Melanesians, etc. etc. etc. Almost all day to day interactions (familial, friendly, etc.). And that's also honestly not relevant to the discussion at hand. OP stated "the alternative to capitalism is to remove negotiation from individual interactions by implementing more State-heavy mechanisms like Communism" and asked if (s)he was making a straw man. I responded that (s)he was on many levels -- there are plenty of alternatives to Capitalism other than Communism, and Communism is also the opposite of a "state-heavy mechanism" given that it literally has no state.
  - ahomescu1 12y ago
    > All cultures prior to the invention of the modern state. Basically all current "native" cultures, including but in no sense limited to: the Bemba, the Nuer, the Iroquois, Polynesians, Melanesians, etc. etc. etc. Almost all day to day interactions (familial, friendly, etc.). Do those scale to populations of millions?
crusso 12y ago
Just because Marx and Engels put that in their manifesto doesn't mean that any system that has the features of Communism would even theoretically be possible without force (a state).
- 21echoes 12y ago
  I don't think "theoretically" is the right word to use here -- it is literally the theory of Communism that it is without a state. Semantic quibbling aside, there are, as stated in my other comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7887756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7887756), plenty of decidedly non-"theoretical" cultures which have very Communist features and no entity which fits most conceptions of a state (certainly not your original stated concept of a state as something with a "crap-ton of government bureaucracy, rules and regulations to tell people exactly how to live") Additionally, there is plenty of theory about how one would have a system that has the features of Communism without a state: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism being the most direct and pure version. Frankly, asserting flippantly to the contrary makes your whole line of reasoning in these threads very hard to take seriously. There are piles upon piles of books, research, etc. about the intersection of the market and the state, and none of them really try to say, as you have, that without a state there must be private property. Indeed, most works in the space (including the original Locke, etc.) assert precisely the contrary -- that one of the main reasons the state exists is to enforce private property. More broadly, of course, it really depends on how you define "state". Are all systems of non-interpersonal power a "state"? Is even organized interpersonal power a state? Is it even at all possible for there to be no state? etc.

deciplex 12y ago

Honestly, what does regulation have to do with capitalism - where did this meme start and how can I kill it? Capital markets are a tool for allocating resources. They're pretty good at it in that they tend to work better than e.g. palace economies and mostly everything else humans have tried. But there is absolutely nothing to the way that capital markets work that suggests regulation somehow breaks it or whatever other brain-damaged Koch-inspired bullshit they're selling on Fox News nowadays. It's like looking at a hammer lying on a table, stating 'that is for pounding nails', then leaving the room and expecting the hammer to pound nails for you.

wyager 12y ago
> But there is absolutely nothing to the way that capital markets work that suggests regulation somehow breaks it I don't think anyone is claiming that regulation necessarily breaks capitalism. It just tends to. Most regulations have very obvious innovation-stifling or friction-causing side effects that are deleterious to the free market.
- deciplex 12y ago
  The American government does this, but it mostly does it on behalf of the same folks trumpeting, to the masses, the virtues of capitalism as an ideology and end in itself. Anarcho-capitalism, really, or nearly so, although the ruling class itself is certainly not anarcho-capitalist of course. The ruling class has a clear interest in subverting free markets to keep the established players in power and any rivals out, and right now in America they are pretty much getting everything they could possibly want. But contract enforcement, private property, impartial justice systems, and yes even intellectual property, copyright, and wealth redistribution, all contribute to more effective capital markets, and they are all borne of government regulation and laws. That the American government happens to be so thoroughly corrupt that it can't do a single thing right, doesn't change that.
  - crusso 12y ago
    You know, I don't think that you and I are in that much disagreement on some of the basics. I think we'd both agree that Capitalism can be good. Government serves a purpose in maintaining the framework of items you listed. We also agree that the corrupt ruling class combination of the Government and Capitalists (along with way too much of the media these days, I'd add) is a disaster. Where I'd imagine that we differ is that I think that the pendulum has swung way too far in the direction of the State. With a debt that is now bigger than our GDP and the last hundred years of mostly one-way growth of government and its agencies, the Government is a huge black hole for money that encourages, institutionalizes, and legalizes ever-increasing degrees of corruption. The best way forward that I see is to cut back the size and scope of Government. Get it back to doing the basics that it was commissioned to do (The Constitution) and not much else unless there's enough impetus for those functions that would drive Constitutional Amendments. If the incentive to sway law-making power would be reduced, much of the cronyism that exists today would disappear. The ruling class would be significantly diminished. Sure, Wal Mart might have more economic power, but its lobbying and legislative power would be drastically reduced. At the end of the day, I have a choice to shop at Wal Mart or to not shop at Wal Mart. I don't have a choice regarding paying taxes to feed the behemoth of a Government that does not provide expected reasonable value for those taxes... not to mention the negatives of crippling public education, moving to a lowest-common-denominator-but-still-expensive healthcare system, etc.

adam704 12y ago

Much of the "invisible hand" idea about how free markets run, and more specifically how they run efficiently, relies on the axiom that people in the market will act rationally towards their own self-interest. As with the Tragedy of the Commons, a capitalist model (generally at least) assumes that people will act towards their own self-interest even when those actions work to the detriment of the group. People that fit that description are certainly selfish (if rightfully so) and in that sense may qualify as "shitbags."