Comment by _louisr_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _louisr_ | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

It's not hilarious to thank Capitalism for lifting people out of tragedy - It's what has happened. Coal power plants in low income countries; iPhone factories creating an economic explosion in China; T-Shirt factories in Bangladesh. All of these things are the result of Capitalism and the free market, and participating countries are doing well. They are accepting some environmental damage, though. Consider that the company making the most progress in sustainable energy is, well, a capitalist company.

Alternate systems have not worked out so well, as you know. Communist planned economies led to the starvation of tens of millions, and that number increases to hundreds of millions when you add the persecution, jailing, and sometimes immediate execution of citizens of Communists states that had a history of political activity of the wrong sort. Recall that in Soviet Russia it was beneficial for each individual to "inform" on their neighbours to the KGB, so that they could claim their apartment. And it's suspected that Vladmir Putin is actually the richest person in the world.

Colonialism and slavery are pretty rough, but they are not a product of capitalism as much as a product of human malevolence and brutality. I'm sure you would find evidence of colonialism and slavery in pre-civilization times and in non-capitalist societies, so that argument falls flat.

Also, regarding the 8 richest individuals - If the rest of the world is getting on OK, why should we not have a couple of super rich people around? Why is that inherently bad? Why do _you_ think you should have a say of where that money belongs, exactly?

Ah yes, Putin the famous Communist.

"...and that number increases to hundreds of millions when you add the persecution, jailing, and sometimes immediate execution of citizens of Communists states that had a history of political activity of the wrong sort..."

Why is that not a product of human malevolence and brutality?

I'm sure you would find evidence of persecution, jailing and sometimes execution of citizens in pre-civilization.

That was the product of necessary ideological conformity for their proposed system to work. Everyone who is not on board with the communist system could bring it down, so they shot dissenters. In Capitalism you can believe whatever you want to believe so long as you respect the rights of the individuals around you, and you don't incite violence, and a couple of other conditions.

Communism is about centralized control of a population. The central authority determines what you get, what you pay, what you do, and so on. Capitalism, by contrast, is a decentralized system. What you pay for something is little more than a product of the market. And you're free to do anything you want, so long as there is a demand for it.

Imagine I want to send a rocket to Mars. And then I go and check the prices and see these companies want hundreds of millions of dollars to launch one. That makes me confused. The materials to make that rocket cost at most on the order of tens of millions of dollars, and labor certainly doesn't explain the rest. I bet I could make one for less. And it turns out I can. Then a couple of decades later, I'm the biggest rocket supplier on the planet. In a communist system your only option there would be to try to appeal to the bureaucracy, and if you're lucky you might eventually, some years later, get a reply to your filing of form FNE-34821.43-z: 'We disagree. Thanks for your input, comrade.' Of course this probably isn't a fair comparison. In a communist system nobody would ever have the resources to even dream of being able to do something like launch rockets to Mars. Instead you'd have to beg old entrenched government bureaucrats to do it. I'm wouldn't hold my breath.

This notion of an economic system being driven by the people instead of being driven by the government is why in a capitalist system you're generally free to argue for a communist system - with some unfortunate exceptions, yet in a communist system arguing for capitalism is often enough to get you 'disappeared' - with some fortunate exceptions. Maybe even more visibly in a capitalist system you could even start a communistic system. Want to buy 5000 acres of land and start communitopia? Feel free to! Want to buy 5,000 acres of land and start capitalitopia in a communist nation? It's simply not possible.

Good points, but bad example. The Soviets invented spaceflight.

You bring up a good point, but I think this actually really nails the issue. The point is not that government bureaucracy cannot achieve great things. Our achievement of putting a man on the moon was supposed to be a product of the capitalist system. In reality it was mostly socialist in execution as a heavily publicly funded affair directed by a state level organization primarily with state employees to achieve a bureaucratically directed goal. The point is what happens when what the government thinks is good and what the people think is good differ?

And we also saw this exact scenario play out in space. We never really managed to bring space to into the capitalist system. And once the government 'won' the space race, their interests shifted from space. Not only did progress halt but we technologically regressed. We put a man on the moon in 1969. Today, half a century later, we're struggling just to try to send a man around the moon - let alone land on it. No human has left low earth orbit since 1972! But at the same time space has now been genuinely introduced into the capitalist system and so long as the people have a desire for more, the odds of us entering into another 50 year regression are rapidly approaching 0.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com