Comment by ebcode | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ebcode | Hacker News Reader

Since nobody's touching this (comment-wise) w/ a ten-foot-pole, I'll put in my 2c just to say that this article illustrates well how large corporations squeeze the wealth out of small, already poor communities, leaving them worse for wear.

It was a big deal in my town when the city allowed the local Walmart to start selling grocery items. The concern was that the long-running local grocers wouldn't be able to compete.

I'm under the impression that the majority of commenters on HN are pro-Capitalist, and while these Capitalism-critical articles occasionally make it to the second or third pages of HN, nobody really wants to talk about the deletrious effects that Capitalism wreaks on the working poor. It's not just Walmart, the article also mentions McDonald's, as a provider of "cheap", "bad food", which is making people sick.

I know that a lot of people in tech are really, actually trying to make the world a better place; but... if we can't start discussing and unpacking some of our base assumptions about how the world actually works, we're just adding more fuel to the fire, feeding the beast, enriching the rich while impoverishing the poor.

I'm not starting a war... nor do I think that the other "ism", Socialism, however it might have been, or be, implemented, is the "one true economic theory" that will save the world from poverty. The world is not Black and White, no matter how many "Cops" episodes might portray otherwise.

I do think that we should question the status quo, and meaningfully consider, and attempt, alternatives to it.

My personal experience with pro-Capitalist folk is that they tend to view the world as a zero-sum-game, whereas I see it as a non-zero-sum-game. If there are any pro-Capitalists here who also see the world as a non-zero-sum-game, I would love to hear about your perspective. Hell, I'd love to hear your zero-sum-game perspectives as well, although I don't think they'll change my mind. But who knows?

People already in power have no incentive to change the rules of the game (as far as I can see). But people just now gaining power (e.g., people in tech), do have an opportunity to change some of those rules, and could very well "undo" some of the damage that has been done by the incumbents.

Again, just my 2c.

How did you come to the conclusion that HN is majority pro-capitalist? Did you look at the comment threads on political articles?

Recently there's been tons of favorable discussion about:

- the "right to repair" (I.e. regulators forcing a ban on non-repairable products)

- basic income (I.e wealth redistribution, to people who don't even need it)

- EU fines on FB buying Whatsapp (I.e. regulators enforcing vague laws, that, if interpreted consistently, would lead to a ban on all B2C acquisitions (obviously they're not intended to be enforced consistently))

- EU fining Google for entering the online shopping market(I.e. regulators forcing a company to modify what they display on their website)

- net neutrality (I.e regulators controlling the pricing model of ISPs)

Confusing matters is the fact that people have a fuzzy definition of capitalism (especially in the case of net neutrality, which is painted as a way to protect competition, but that's a more philosophical debate).

Basically, HN skews overwhelmingly liberal - like most liberals, they are not anti-business, but believe in a regulated free market with high taxes to pay for public services. (I.e. a mixed economy).

Likewise, who are these pro-capitalist folk who see the world as a zero-sum game? Care to share some actual quotes from these people? Every pro-capitalist thinker from Adam Smith to von Mises to Ayn Rand makes the case that capitalism is all about non-zero-sum transactions. (If a trade is entirely voluntary, both parties need to benefit or they went enter the trade). The supposed negatives of capitalism (like that in the article) are when one party either refuses to trade with another or exits an existing trade relationship (as Walmart exited the small town). That sucks for the people in the town, but Walmart aren't their slaves. Walmart is free to close their stores as they please and the townspeople are free to set up new retail stores to capture the new market.

More fundamentally, every society in the pre-capitalist era was essentially stagnant, with minimal growth, and required slavery to function. In the modern era, a simple glance at East and West Germany, or North and South Korea, makes clear which of capitalism or socialism is zero-sum. The only legitimate debate is between pure capitalism (as in 19th century America) and the mixed economy (as in modern Europe, and modern America, which only differs on the details). But almost no-one argues for pure capitalism. You talk like you're an open-minded rebel yet you seem to have missed the glaring fact that your views are entirely mainstream, on HN and elsewhere.

It's not zero-sumness that makes me distrustful of unregulated capitalism, but this quote from the article:

"with numerous studies recording how it sucks the energy out of a locality, overpowering the competition through sheer scale and forcing the closure of mom-and-pop stores"

I.e., bigger companies have advantage over smaller ones due to economies of scale, even without resorting to corrupting public officials. This means money and power get ever more concentrated, and power -is- a zero-sum game. And no-one wants to be at the mercy of multinational corporations - at least kings had to (at least pretend to) care about their subjects.

Not that it was intended, but I focused on two points of this post.

"I know that a lot of people in tech are really, actually trying to make the world a better place".

OP made some incorrect assumptions, but I think this one is right on.

Also,

"But people just now gaining power (e.g., people in tech), do have an opportunity to change some of those rules, and could very well "undo" some of the damage that has been done by the incumbents."

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