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Comment by emt02 | Hacker News Reader

Personally I don't think we can accept Capitalism and global markets to be more powerful than any individual nation.

Especially given the current trend in automation, the risk that a relatively small group of capitalists will slowly take full control of almost all the means of production is real.

Another huge problem of having a world run by corporations is the environmental situation. Personally I cannot accept a world where profit is considered more important than the environment to such an extent.

I don't know what the solution to this problem may be. Alternatives to capitalism have been proposed in the past, and are continuously studied now, but shifting to another economical system would not be easy, if possible at all at this point.

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> I cannot accept a world where profit is considered more important than the environment to such an extent.

Are you sure that government operations produce less pollution?

Anyhow, the way to deal with pollution in a market based economy is to tax it.

> Are you sure that government operations produce less pollution?

No, I'm not sure. But we're talking about private companies now, not governments. Governments and companies in the end are two faces of the same coin: the first aim at power, the latter aim at profit (with some exceptions of course).

Moreover, many proposed alternatives to capitalism consider the governments (as we know them today) harmful and unnecessary. I'm not saying I agree, just wanted to point out that removing capitalism does not automatically mean to give more power to governments.

> Anyhow, the way to deal with pollution in a market based economy is to tax it.

Sure, but that doesn't solve the problem, it just reduces its impact. And in a world that runs on profit, limiting your local companies may in the end give an advantage to the foreign ones, so this solution may not always be practicable, unless a truly global coordinated action gets taken.

> Sure, but that doesn't solve the problem, it just reduces its impact.

There's no reason it cannot reduce pollution to tolerable levels.

> removing capitalism does not automatically mean to give more power to governments

Yes, it does. Who/what else is going to prevent people from trading for a profit?

> Yes, it does. Who/what else is going to prevent people from trading for a profit?

There are several social and economical theories that consider a central government, and thus the state, unnecessary. Historically the anarchism movement is maybe the most known, but recently other schools of thoughts are getting relatively important, such as communalism and democratic confederalism (mostly relevant in the context of the revolution in northern Syria).

Even communism in its final form (i.e. past the dictatorship of proletariat transitioning phase) should be a stateless and classless society, however historically "communist" states failed to get past this transitioning phase (due to a refusal to give up power by the State, I guess) and ended up in a State Capitalism system, as in the USSR and in China.

However, to be honest I don't know this topic in detail enough to teach anyone, so I can only suggest you to look for more info in case you're interested.

Those ideas have been around a long time, and no such society has ever managed to be constructed, either voluntarily or forcibly. I'm pretty sure they are completely unworkable. It's like expecting people to not have sex.

"It's like expecting people to not have sex."

Thats easy, with a bit of surgery ...

I guess you're talking about the oldest of those ideas, namely anarchism and communism.

Regarding anarchism, it's known that the reason it didn't work out in the attempts so far has not been an inherent flaw in the system, but external ingerence.

In the two cases that are most known to the public, i.e. anarchist Catalogna and Free territories of Ukraine, the reason why the revolution finally failed has been in both cases the intervention of Soviet Russia, that in the first case supported an antagonist faction (i.e. communists front in the Spanish Civil War) and in the second case it invaded the free territories.

I think in general it's not possible to disregard some ideologies on the basis that they never managed to be implemented, without looking at the context. In today's world, which is dominated by capital, it would be even harder to establish a non-capitalist society, but that doesn't mean that such a society would be less fair, free or just than capitalism.

You want to avoid making the mistake of communism - ignoring what's the natural evolution of the system made of humans. Hierarchical government seems to be exactly that, as are e.g. property rights. These don't come from ideologies, but how humans self-assemble to coordinate at scale.

Even if it were true (and personally I'm not sure of that) that humans naturally tend to form hierarchical structures of power, that's not a good reason not to try to overcome this "natural" condition to create a more just society.

And I'm not sure if it's worth trying to overcome it.

Two reasons why hierarchical structures show up:

1. If you want to even have someone looking at the "big picture", due to limits of human cognition, you have to build a hierarchy.

2. Hierarchy shows up as a natural solution to coordination problems. Consider e.g. various forms of the tragedy of commons. The solution to that[0] is that all actors involved agree to be governed by an independent one. This is something that humans end up rediscovering all the time.

Basically, hierarchical governance is what lets humanity build societies larger than couple dozen people.

[0] - in larger systems, i.e. beyond few people who know each other personally and can mutually agree not to be assholes to one another; we have a strongly developed social skills to handle such issues in small groups.

I think you made some good points, but what I would like to point out is that, even if hierarchy was completely inevitable in some context, we should still struggle to get a just kind of hiearchy.

(A part of) the world already did some good progress on this front with the gradual switch from absolute monarchies to democracies, and I hope it will eventually be able to continue on the path towards a more just world.

That I can agree with. I mean, hierarchy solves problems, therefore is useful. Having a fair world for everyone is a goal, so adjusting hierarchies to help reach that goal is something we should work on.

Put another way, humans develop hierarchical governance as soon as their group grows beyond a couple dozen. Even if you look at corporations, internally they're structured like governments.

Most corporations are structured like ultra-authoritarian dictatorships. I'm not sure you want to use them as examplars of human governance.

Why not? They're perfect examples of efficient governance. We don't like to have that efficient governments, because in politics-land, this often involves bloodshed and suffering.

I'm deeply skeptical that capitalism is a sensible long-term way to run our world. When everything can be made about money, everything is made about money. It doesn't matter how much we've taxed a corporation (especially in the recent environment of skyrocketing corporate profits), if the environment is ruined we're all in trouble.

Capitalism drives the conversion of everything into money, so it's no surprise to me when anything from votes to the air we breathe are turned into money.

The extremely capitalistic US has a relatively clean environment. Compared to China because we are already rich and compared to Europe because we have much lower population density.

We generate a lot of carbon dioxide but the consequences of that are more long term, not experienced as contamination of things we interact with day to day.

This is an interesting point. Is this because industrial growth happened more quickly? In more concentrated areas?

It's because government isn't completely inert.

Even members of US Congress are extremely responsive to issues they think will get them kicked out of office.

Other systems not about money have been tried, and they are worse for the environment.

"Personally I don't think we can accept Capitalism and global markets to be more powerful than any individual nation"

Where to begin ... Well first of, capitalism and global markets are made by people.

Then there are very tiny individual nations, like Lichtenstein.

Why should they have more power than a voluntarily group(corporation) of much more people than that small state?!?

Or do you prefer statecorporations like in socialism?

Afaik, they polluted much more, produced less and with shitty work conditions.

> Where to begin ... Well first of, capitalism and global markets are made by people.

Rather, they are made by the capitalist class.

> Then there are very tiny individual nations, like Lichtenstein. > Why should they have more power than a voluntarily group(corporation) of much more people than that small state?!?

Because a corporation is not a voluntarily group of people, it is, well, a corporation! The workers have no control on it and its aim is to make the maximum profit, even when this means polluting oceans, exploiting people and doing any kind of unethical action.

> Or do you prefer statecorporations like in socialism?

Just because I recognize flaws in the capitalist system does not mean that I support other flawed systems.

I even clearly stated in my comment:

> I don't know what the solution to this problem may be. Alternatives to capitalism have been proposed in the past, and are continuously studied now, but shifting to another economical system would not be easy, if possible at all at this point.

"Rather, they are made by the capitalist class"

So who is part of that class? Everybody who has money on the stock market?

That would be anybody who has a bank account.

Giving a precise definition is hard, since it is easy to twist it and point out that pretty much everyone owns at least a bit of capital and could thus be considered part of the class.

However, the usual definition of the capitalist class is about owners of capital, or people who earn wealth from the work of others. This includes industrial capitalists, who own the means of production, the land owners and the financial capitalists.

The average Joe may have some little money on the stock market, but he doesn't have any influence in corporations or the global market, contrarily to what your previous comment hinted.

"people who earn wealth from the work of others"

Everbody who has money on the stock market, directly or indirectly, earns wealth from the work of others. But this is not a bad thing, as "the others" also benefit from the capital invested as they otherwise could not produce or earn.

And for sure you have influence even with little stock, by choosing where to invest and where not. And surely there are people with much more influence (money), thats the way it is, if not everbody is forced to have the same, no matter what they do (or their ancestors did)

As I said in my previous comment, it is easy to twist a definition as you just did, to claim that the penny stock owned by the average Joe is even comparable to the stock controlled by the actual capitalist class.

I think that everyone can understand the difference here, even though the line between proletariat and capitalist class may be a little more blurry than it was 50 years ago.

A good definition is not easy to "twist" (i call it arguing btw), but a blurry, vague and oversimplifying definition like yours of capitalist, is just useless.

You might as well say "rich" and "poor". Which is more fitting and more to the root problem.

I'm just a random person on the internet that read some books on the topic, but a very quick google search would get you to a lot of information about the definition of capital and capitalist class.

The division of the society in capitalist and working class is a well studied topic, it's not like I invented it at the moment.

But your argument about holding penny stocks making people comparable to capitalists makes me think that you're just attempting to mislead instead of keeping a meaningful discussion.

And by the way, rich and poor is a consequence and not the cause.

"The division of the society in capitalist and working class is a well studied topic"

Yes, studied and defined by those who later created a big slavesystem. And I read them, but don't like or agree to their definitions, nor alternatives.

And by the way, " rich and poor is a consequence and not the cause." I think not. So ?

And I also think that creating arbitary classes is not helping the (old) discussion or society at all and rather increases tensions, than solving them. I think history proves me right.

> Yes, studied and defined by those who later created a big slavesystem. And I read them, but don't like or agree to their definitions, nor alternatives.

This is just plain misleading. Marxism/Leninism is not the only school of thought against capitalism, or that distinguishes between proletariat and capitalist class in the capitalist systems.

And I would argue that

1. the "slavesystems" you're talking about (I guess you refer to soviet russia, china and other similar dictatorships) never applyed the Marx theory, but they rather implemented a state capitalism system (IMHO because the idea of dictatorship of proletariat as a means to reach communism is plain stupid).

2. even considering those cases, which I agree were fundamentally flawed and unjust, there's still debate about whether they caused more or less death and suffering than capitalism. I think this answer [0] on Quora gives a good summary of the main points in that regard.

[0] https://www.quora.com/What-has-killed-more-people-communism-...

1. I have an actual printed out manifest lying around here. It very clearly says dictatorship on many cases. And that there is a ruling party and the to be ruled.

2. I disagree, but this goes too far.

And about those other schools, yes there are nicer formulated ones. But in my opinion, they all go in the same direction. "Rich are evil" "poor are good" "poor must take from the evilrich and then is all good"

1. Have you actually read my comment? I explicitly said that I think that Marxist's view of dictatorship of proletariat as a means to reach communism is fundamentally flawed and wrong.

2. Well you're free to disagree, but the point remains that capitalism is comparable, if not worse, to other systems (namely state capitalism / "communism") in regard to responsibility for deaths and suffering.

About your final sentence, first of all you apparently have no clue of the ideologies you're talking about. Claiming anarchism (for instance, but the same can be said on communalism and many others) is the same of communism in regard of authoritarianism and human rights is plain misleading, as being anti-authoritarian is like the main point of anarchism.

And the point in anti-capitalism is not about being against people who are rich, but being against the fact that they are rich while other people are extremely poor. Nothing against people themselves (I think everyone would be happy to be rich), the problem is that the system is so fundamentally flawed that some few people can own more than billions of other people combined.

I answer here, as he reply button on the deepest level is gone.

"emt02 17 minutes ago [-]

1. Have you actually read my comment? I explicitly said that I think that Marxist's view of dictatorship of proletariat as a means to reach communism is fundamentally flawed and wrong"

Have you read yours?

"1. the "slavesystems" you're talking about (I guess you refer to soviet russia, china and other similar dictatorships) never applyed the Marx theory, but they rather implemented a state capitalism system "

You were refering to Marxism i answered to that.

And I did not.

"Claiming anarchism (for instance, but the same can be said on communalism and many others) is the same of communism in regard of authoritarianism"

By saying "same direction".

But staying on topic, yes in theory anarchy is about anti-authorian. But applied that never happened. I read some history(spain, hungary, etc.) and have quite some first hand experience, with so so called anarchist who act pretty much despotically if things get serious.

And I also can't imagine how you take things away from others (the capitalist) and not act authorian while doing so.

> So who is part of that class?

Easy! I know the answer to that one. All who do not have to work to come by. To me that means in most western nations the threshold is somewhere between 1 and 10 million USD in net worth.

When you have that much money your money makes money for you! You own some houses/land you rent out, or own (part of) some business that yield profits. Maybe you work, but it is by choice, not by necessity.

Thats a better definition. But still vague, as "not having to work" to have enough money is relative, as the standard becomes higher.

And even with 900000$ you can pretty much live like a king in a 3. world country for a long time.

Yes. Agreed, therefore my "to me that means" and "in western nations". And this is something that --in a democracy-- we can vote on: higher or lower capitalist-threshold? :)

While the exact threshold is up for debate, I think it is an otherwise easy to distinguish class difference.

"Because a corporation is not a voluntarily group of people, it is, well, a corporation! The workers have no control on it and its aim is to make the maximum profit, even when this means polluting oceans, exploiting people and doing any kind of unethical action."

And you do realise, that there are many different kinds of corporations? And even in the most shitty ones, people choose freely to be part of it (even if pushed by money pressure).

And again, you are totally free to gather fellow "workers" and start together a corporation of the type you like and produce what you want. And people are doing that btw. Just like <people> choose to put waste in the rivers, or not.

It is allways people doing things, good or bad, bound to a corporation or government or whatever other group. Just picking one type of organisation and blaming everything bad on it is extremely oversimplifying and I can't imagine how that could improve anything

> even if pushed by money pressure

That's the whole point. People do not voluntarily work for shitty wages at shitty jobs, they are forced by the need of money.

Workers in western countries are extremely lucky, since they live in very wealthy countries where even the shittiest job usually gives the possibility to live a decent life.

However, I'm not sure (to make an example which is extreme in the opposite way) congolese children do voluntarily work in cobalt mines, getting intoxicated and often dying just to be able not to starve in the short term.

Regarding the rest of your comment, I just have to say that:

1. yes, people can start their own ethical corporation, and some people actually did that. But they are pretty much irrilevant in the global market. Actually, I would argue that following ethics often puts a corporation in a less competitive position.

2. just because I could do that myself doesn't mean that's a good thing. I'm not saying that the capitalist class is evil and trying to destroy the world, I'm just saying that the system is flawed in allowing such a restricted pool of people to accumulate so much wealth, and to actually encourage the exploitation of people and resources in order to stay competitive.

"Actually, I would argue that following ethics often puts a corporation in a less competitive position"

True, because most PEOPLE don't care about exploitation. Or can't afford to care if they want to keep their living standard. Thats the problem. That's my whole point, corporations just produce what people want. And most want it cheap.

And yes, the system is flawed, because people are flawed. Change one, and you change the other. Hard? Now thats news ...

But I think many things are changing for the better. So we are on a good way.

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