Hacker News Reader

Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

Socialism requires that the government has more resources and thus more power. Therefore socialist governments are more likely to become corrupted and mismanaged.

View on HN

How is this any different from capitalist oligarchies? In that case, the power and resources are not aggregated in a single government, but split over many private individuals.

It's a matter of degrees. At least in most capitalist countries the press, no matter how emasculated, still functions as a check on corruption to some degree.

Communist/socialist countries tend to control the press, and hush up exposés of corruption, which makes it much worse.

The Obama administration has secured 526 months of prison time for national security leakers, versus only 24 months total jail time for everyone else since the American Revolution.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/05/obama-has-sentenced-w...

Sure the press in the US is currently in a pretty bad state.

But after living in a communist country for the last five years I can tell you for a fact it can get much worse.

Capitalism has nothing to do with freedom of the press.

Why then is there no capitalist country that oppresses journalists to anything like the degree that all communist countries do?

Freedom of the press, along with trial by jury, is a quality of free (as in speech) societies.

Free Market Capitalism would be another one.

completely agree with this. Obviously nothing is certain but it's a strong factor and time brings this out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com