If the Point of Capitalism Is to Escape Capitalism, Then Why Capitalism? | Hacker News Reader

If the Point of Capitalism Is to Escape Capitalism, Then Why Capitalism?

eand.co

32 pointsjonballant47 comments

Capitalism (especially the free market kind) has been most successful when it has been used as a pragmatic tool, instead of a dogmatic philosophy.

So basically, my answer to "Why Capitalism" is that "it works".

Capitalism cannot (rather, should not) provide you with a set of ideals or principles. Capitalism is a tool to achieve those set of ideals or principles, and should be used where appropriate in order to achieve those ideals and principles.

The ideals and principles have to come from elsewhere.

Elon Musk and Bezos believe in the principle of a backup planet, so they leverage capitalism to reach Mars. Bill Gates believes in book recommendations and charity, so he leverages it for that purpose. Someone who is closer to an employee believes in a building a good life for themselves and their family, and they use capitalism for that.

The article is like asking "What's the point of a hammer when once you've used it to hang a portrait you put it away?"

The conflation of slavery with capitalism is too easy a target, so I'll address a highlight:

"what’s striking about capitalism is that we’re all trying to escape it — even most of the capitalists — because it makes us so miserable, mean, and foolish."

Philanthropy is not "escaping" capitalism. Going to mars is not "escaping" capitalism. Achieving financial independence is not "escaping" capitalism. These are all choices that are enabled via the autonomy that capitalism grants. Yes, some people are consumed solely by the pursuit of money, but capitalism is about choice, not money.

Many choose to exercise their capitalism-granted autonomy by giving things to others. There is absolutely nothing contradictory about charity in a purely capitalistic system, and is in fact, given that charity by definition is voluntary, only possible sans coercion.

Charity makes sense in a capitalistic world, because some people get the "choice" of being poor in it.

in contrast to government-owns-the-means-of-production socialist systems, where nobody gets the choice to not be poor.

That's not true. The ruling elite make out quite well in such arrangements.

A worse system does not make another one better.

Does the lack of any better solution justify it?

Many people do. Many poor people make bad life decisions which lead them, unfortunately, into their poverty.

And many people choose to be born into poverty with never a chance to succeed.

Actually, if you think about it, capitalism (in the U.S. at least) really doesn't give you the choice to be poor, essentially requiring you to live at a relatively high standard.

The premise is a really strange one to set up. I think he tries to motivate it somewhat later on in the article:

> You can see it in stark, comic terms. What are Bezos and Musk doing? Trying to flee to Mars. What’s Gates doing? Recommending you books to read, and trying to save the world with charity. LOL — how ironic. These are different forms of freedom from capitalism

I would argue, that especially in case of Musk and Bezos capitalism is serving it's purpose. Some of us think space exploration makes sense, others would rather buy a yacht, help the third world, or just put it in a bank.

Musk or Bezos are not 'fleeing', they are diverting their own resources and that of shareholders into the goal of reaching, and colonizing Mars.

Something a government might never bother with.

> Something a government might never bother with.

Maybe because colonizing Mars is a massive waste of resources that could be better spent fixing the planet we already live on? Or do you think the solution to scarcity is to have billionaires play with their space toys?

> Maybe because colonizing Mars is a massive waste of resources that could be better spent fixing the planet we already live on

Right, you are making my point though, because you don't agree with how the money is spent. We have finite resources and infinite and different wishes. Capitalism tries to optimize between these.

Your view of how the government 'should' spend money is perhaps not mine, or my neighbours. Capitalism seems fairer and safer to me, than putting it all on government bureacracy.

Our species will have problems to overcome for as long as we exist. And doing what has never been done before will generally be ranked low by many, simply because we tend to be incapable of predicting the effects of that which has never been done. Consider the what the internet and all digital communications are today. At the most basic level an immense amount of time, energy, and money was spent being able to transmit a signal that could be reliably recognized as a 1 or 0 between two people connected by a line. In many ways it's nothing but an extremely fancy, extremely expensive, version of a tin cup telephone. Yet of course this technology, of being able to transmit a 1 or 0, would end up transforming practically every single facet of life for everybody on this planet. To have predicted such a thing would have, not that long ago, been seen as quite hyperbolic.

In my opinion colonizing Mars will begin to create a revolution in humanity in terms of resources, freedom, growth, and potential. I could get into why, but now isn't the place. The great thing is that capitalism enables people to decide for themselves what is likely to produce the greatest benefit and pursue that. Bill Gates seems to believe that solving malaria in Africa is going to be something that might help revolutionize society. And the great thing is that all of these actions are happening simultaneously, rather than mutually exclusively. And so indeed we'll get to see which efforts, if any, end up as tin cup telephones - and which end up as the next internet.

Point taken. However, I do like the idea of creating a second option, while trying to fix the old version. And I think we are doing just that.

NASA?

So this is what you write if you have zero understanding about the subject you are about to write?

The author gleefully mixes things together that have no connection and asserts that capitalism is a social system, when it's merely an economic and more importantly resource management system. Capitalism can't fix things that are outside of it's scope, and this is where most leftist intellectuals fail in their critique, capitalism can't fix abortion rights or same-sex marriage, because they are not economic or resource problems, they are social ones that will have to be addressed with a social system not an economic one. Capitalism might tell you how much resources it takes to do these things, but it can't take a stand on any of these things, because it has no connection to the issue.

Managing resources will always be handled by the system that is most optimized and efficient in a natural world, capitalism, as opposed to feudalism is more efficient in allocating resources, feudalism also had a social component where it differed from capitalism since it has no social dimension. What comes to tribalism, that is just purely a social system with nothing to do with economy and resource management.

Good luck to the author on his quest to mix things up and try to figure a solution to something that doesn't match reality.

There are a lot of other good points here. People bang on capitalism because it's easy -- and trendy.

One thing that most conversations miss is that capitalism isn't some optional thing you pick up and do like yoga.

Wiki defines capitalism as "an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit."

So what does "own" mean? How about "production" We can substitute in stuff that mostly works for us, but it falls apart. And it falls apart when try to remove capitalism.

Let's transfer everything to the state, all ownership. What happens? Money becomes useless and people hoard political capital. You gain a bunch of political support and you can build a new factory. You give out your political support to others so that they can "invest" it in other things.

You start collecting coins, or stamps. Suddenly you're trading your stamps with another guy for his political support for getting a new stoplight.

Capitalism isn't going anywhere. You can't kill it. The only thing you can do is acknowledge it and try to learn how to live with it. It will exist no matter what kind of social or government structure you want to implement. Always has, always will.

This is an important point because people who study capitalism are studying the way things are, ie existing systems. People who study other systems are studying the way things might be. Whatever the other system, there's always capitalism in there.

I'm not making a value judgment one way or another. Simply pointing out that there are two entirely different kinds of knowledge being discussed.

"You start collecting coins, or stamps. Suddenly you're trading your stamps with another guy for his political support for getting a new stoplight."

If there is no ownership there is no concept of 'your collection' or trading for that matter. There are stamps on a shelf in a room in a house you currently locate yourself. As there is no concept of ownership, there is no concept of stealing. The other guy can just 'take' your stamps. As they don't belong to you.

I do agree that capitalism is not something optional. But that is because the fundamental traits of ownership are ingrained in our culture and biology as people. We evolved to where we are now because of this. We didn't decide on capitalism. It is more an explanation and reasoning about our current society. Other societal structures like ant colonies or 'primitive' humans might be different. But you don't see them because they are not part of the global economy bubble and frankly they don't see us or care about the system we use to govern ourselves. They just live.

You own your opinions and decisions, right? Can those be removed from you? Your influence in the community?

You're correct on the stamps issue. I broadened the scope a bit just to drive the point home in a reasonable amount of text. If you own no physical objects, you can't accumulate or barter them.

But that doesn't mean you don't own anything. Or that scarcity goes anywhere. Or that you and other people can't pool/coordinate these non-tangible things you control to create and influence real, live, physical things. It's just easier to reason about when it's stamps. That's all. The beauty of money was that it allowed all of that pooling and coordination to happen in the abstract.

> The other guy can just 'take' your stamps. As they don't belong to you.

He could, but he won't—not unless he is so much stronger than you that he has no need to worry about reciprocation—because there are things that he thinks of as "his" and doesn't want you to take. It's easier to just tacitly agree, between the two of you, that some things are yours and some things are his, and any changes in that status ought to be worked out on mutually acceptable terms.

This is why private property is one aspect of natural law. The concept arises naturally wherever there exist scarce resources to be allocated for individual use. Societies which recognize this trend and align themselves with it consistently tend to prosper, while others which either ignore it or actively reject the concept of private property struggle to rise above mere subsistence.

Is China the counterpoint?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18084970

what's more, as was pointed-out on a recent episode of the EconTalk podcast, although our society as a whole is capitalist, internally almost all corporations are run as communist dictatorships

Heh,that's kind of funny. Though, the methods of enforcement don't translate well outside a company. A company either ostracizes you or kills you off, depending how you want to translate 'firing' outside of a company.

The advantage being that their problem set is smaller and more focused, and the bad decisions are generally contained in the business and don't tend to take down the entirety of society like actual communism and socialism.

Capitalism is generally great. There are places where it must be over-ruled, and there are places where many of the problems with it are due to poor attempts to regulate it.

It's been demonstrably good for human progress on the whole.

The point of capitalism is freedom -- not from capitalism, but freedom - period.

In a capitalist society you are, in general, free to do whatever you want. If what you're doing is something that society deems sufficiently valuable then you tend to be able to make a living doing just that, even if it's something nobody would have ever thought to have made a living doing before. Imagine you hate capitalism. If enough people agree with you you're free to make a living writing and talking all about the evils of capitalism, selling your books, articles, Che t-shirts, and so on. Imagine you think communism is the best economic system. In a capitalist society you're free to buy up thousands of acres of land, invite some people onto your land, and then try to start your communist utopia.

By contrast in other economic systems, what you can or can't do tends to be decided by outside forces and the government in particular. No government is ever going to pay you to speak negatively of their system of governance. And the notion of buying thousands of acres of land to start a capitalist utopia would just be nonsensical in e.g. a communistic society. Your freedom is greatly restricted, and society is directed not by the people within that society but by an elite few -- you end up with the same problems as capitalism, but with none of the benefits. And this reality is almost certainly why all social economic systems seem to converge towards authoritarianism and failure to produce. People want to be the masters of their own destiny. Capitalism isn't perfect there, but it's certainly far better than any alternative.

Please don't conflate capitalism with libertarianism. Only makes a discussion more confused.

So much talk about Capitalism, about the good old days (capitalism in the US is a very pre-1980's thing) or the current state of capitalism and where it's going -- when what we actually experience and take part in today is Corporatism. I don't see a million articles about rampant corporatism... or even a handful... but this thought that capitalism is around and is how we as a nation live our lives is everywhere.

"what’s striking about capitalism is that we’re all trying to escape it — even most of the capitalists — because it makes us so miserable, mean, and foolish."

No, capitalism makes us happy, nice, and smart. More importantly, capitalism makes us rich.

It's really easy to hate on capitalism because everything that's wrong in your life can be reasonably explained away with "if we didn't have capitalism this wouldn't be a problem." But the fact us, most of the things that capitalism does for you (the average reader of HN who most likely lives in a capitalist country) are invisible. You don't realize how much capitalism is responsible for everything in your life that isn't making you miserable. Things like:

- Affordable food from all over the world available in all varieties in all seasons, fresh and uncontaminated by toxins or spoilage - Abundant, cheap energy that lowers the cost of everything from raising children to acquiring knowledge to healthcare (not to mention travel and leisure) - Access to aspirin, toothbrushes, toilet paper, shaving cream, dental floss, tissues, towels, soap, and thousands of other daily necessities that allow us to live more hygienic and healthier lives - Higher level education (which would not be possible without a basic level of societal comfort) which unlocks advances in science, mathematics, medicine, economics and other areas that improve the human condition - Riches and wealth available to a wider net of people that have ever had it before, in a way that doesn't deprive or prevent more people from acquiring more wealth...this has of course downstream effects like reducing crime and increasing camaraderie and mutual respect (you gain more from trading with a rival than fighting with them and trying to take their resources)

Take away capitalism and what do you get? Well, you can easily visit Cuba or Venezuela right now to find out. You get:

- Kids with no shoes - Crumbling infrastructure - 'Free' healthcare with no aspirin - Violent revolution or suppression of revolutionary activity - A population of greedy individuals and families doing everything they can to protect their own resources and take others' (this isn't an indictment of these people, this is exactly what humans need to do when their livelihood is threatened) - People with no education because they're spending all their time scrambling to survive

If you want people who are really "miserable, mean, and foolish", take away capitalism and that's exactly what you'll get.

The point of capitalism isnt to escape it, it is instead an idealogy that has at its core the private ownership of capital - the means of production - where such production is rewarded by profit.

Nearly all countries today embrace it.

I think it important to not conflate it with the issues it can encourage if uncontrolled: greed, inequality, the abuse of labor, natural resources and the environment, unsafe products and working conditions, and the unavailability of essential services and goods where unprofitable.

IMHO the premise is wrong. The capitalist isn't trying to gain freedom from capitalism, but from market.

I'd rather say that (for at least some of) the capitalists' the goal is control/dominate the market not escape it.

Anyway, the whole article is full of wrong/weird premises, ie. talking to Alexa = talking to capitalism; mission to Mars = escape from the capitalism, not apotheosis of it etc.

I said escape because at least I personally understand the target to be to free myself from any influence the market has on me.

The goal of capitalism isn't freedom from capitalism, the goal of capitalism is monopoly and monopsony?

Capitalism is not a system of ideas, nor is it a system that anyone chooses. It is not designed, voted on, decreed, or managed. It has no governing authority, no standards organization. It has no dogma, creed, commandments, or constitution.

Capitalism is the natural order of things within human societies above a certain size and complexity level. It's more like a force of nature than anything else. To establish any system other than capitalism takes great effort.

What we can do is regulate it. It might be impossible to prevent corruption entirely in government. But to criticize capitalism in its contemporary manifestation is to criticize blatant regulatory capture, corruption, and demagoguery. Those phenomena are themselves manifestations of capitalism, and it is telling that they arise in capitalist and non-capitalist societies alike.

We need to develop new and better systems for keeping people honest and for keeping institutions fair. Without this development, human nature, not the distribution of capital ownership, remains the greatest threat to humanity.

Since I've been downvoted, I might as well clarify: this article exemplifies what I'm talking about!

First the author writes:

What is [the slave owner] really after? He’s trying to earn is freedom from labour — not having to do work, hence the slaves. He’s also trying to win freedom from exploitation — he holds the whip, but is above the moral law. And from control, punishment, hierarchy — he has no boss to answer to.

That's perfectly reasonable! Note that capitalism has nothing to do with this. People have always sought this. It might as well be part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

But then they try to summarize themselves:

"Even the capitalist is really just trying win back his freedom from capitalism"

I guess that's true in this particular case, because for this particular capitalist the cause of their non-freedom is capitalism. But is it true in general? Absolutely not! Freedom from exploitation and the desire for control are universal human desires that extend beyond any particular economic system.

Once the false equivalence is broken, the article kinda stops making sense.

This got me to thinking about the minimum things need for capitalism.

0. some agreement to not use violence to take value

1. some way to Exchange Value

2. ways to Store Value

3. ways to Lend Value

Is lending a necessary condition, or a corollary?

true.

Hold up. I think everyone is getting caught up on the idea of "freedom". Capitalism does not grant you any shred of personal freedom from the bottom of the chain to the tippy-top. The higher you get, the less personal freedom you have. Financial freedom, yea, but not Enlightenment era freedom. Being a titan in business has to be a fucking nightmare. Your responsibilities are astronomical. Everyone wants to slit your throat for your crown at the top. Back stabbers. Gold diggers. Cheats. Con artists. And just trying to be relevant and competitive. Oh, and phone calls. I can imagine anyone in the top 100 of forbes, that actually runs a business, does not get a decent night sleep most nights.

And I'm a capitalist myself. I'm happy with being a moderate fish in a small pond. Because more than this, fuck it, I'm going to go live in the woods and grow a beard that can be used as an axe to chop trees. But that means I'm a little tad-pole when I do that. That, I'm not really willing to go back to.

You're trying to be the biggest fish in the pond, in the biggest pond you can find. Biggest gorilla. Fiercest lion. Whatever your analogy. You get the point. Sure, folks tap-out and cash out, then become poets, sail around the world, tell people how they should live their lives, etc. Not that I blame them. The burnout being on their level...

Bit of a rant. Might as well follow it up with a bit more ranting.

I'm tired of people, like the dude in the article, "Well, Marx said...". Who the fuck cares? Let's face a fact of the matter. His ideas of how an economy should function never worked. Soviet Union? Venezuela? China abandoned it with Nixon's blessing. It's been tested time and time again on different sides of the planet. His ideas of how social structures should work has consistently resulted in strangling police states and high levels of corruption. NKVD? Stasi? China in general? Anyone sucking the sickle of communism isn't exactly going to win a humanitarian or economic award anytime soon. What's the practical definition of stupid? Seriously, wtf. Sure, communism may work in small doses, like I've heard that some <30 people communes have happy people in them. But the same is said about people who got suckered into cults too.

Why are people still stuck on a guy who was proven wrong many times? Not just a little wrong. But people have been slaughtered or starved to death in his teaching. In the millions. And yes, other teachings have done the same. I'm positive someone is going to say with avocado on their breath, "Yea, you just described religion too". Great. Stalin is now above Ghandi and Borlaug because of your religion comment. Assholes, of all shapes, colors and sizes, get thrown into the same shithole. Regardless who else is in their too.

I'm angry...

Phone typing, so probably typos and I don't feel like rereading this. Take as you will. Go find 2 cents in a parking lot somewhere.

The point of capitalism is to consolidate power around capital rather than a monarch, political party, government, nation or voting group. It's why capitalism can work in a democracy (US), communism (China) or monarchy (british empire). The point of capitalism isn't to escape it. Social or corporate advancement isn't capitalism. It's just everyday life. No more than a peasant in the soviet union progressing up the state ladder is communism. Capitalism is about who really runs things and who gets to have real power. In monarchy, it's obviously the king or queen. In communism, it's the politburo. In a military dictatorship, it's the general. In capitalism, it's the capital ( or those who control it ).

If the point of strawmans is to escape strawmans, then why strawmans?

Capitalism is not a choice.

Given the nature of the human mind and the material state of the world, the equilibrium state of human economies is capitalism.

To see what I mean, consider any complex system. There will be certain patterns and processes that naturally unfold in that system, while other patterns and processes do not manifest without external energy. The reason is because the former states are closer to the equilibrium state of the system while the latter are comparatively farther away.

Capitalism is like an equilibrium state, and all attempts to control capitalism require external energy. What is a concrete example of this?

Regulation has a tendency to be repealed if the public or government loses sight of why the regulation was passed in the first place. On the other hand, companies usually want regulations repealed by default. This tension between opposing forces must resolve itself, and it does in favor of companies because not only are they constantly applying pressure against regulations, but the public is often allured by the fact that many regulations lower potential levels of economic growth. Therefore it's more likely than not that regulations be repealed in the long run.

Perhaps, but this might have more to do with the the public's ability to govern themselves soundly.

Marx actually had quite a bit to say about the "reproduction" of capitalism depending on the indoctrination of new generations. We have been witnessing this play out over the last 40 or so years in the USA, starting with the revival of right wing political movements.

Head on over to a hard-right corner of the Internet, and feel your jaw drop in amazement as you realize that they simply do not share the reality that you inhabit. This is the result of a successful decades long brainwashing campaign.

This seems like a ridiculous assertion considering that humanity predates capitalism by about a hundred thousand years and civilization predates capitalism by about five thousand years.

"Given the nature of the human mind and the material state of the world"

The material state of the world my friend.

> Regulation has a tendency to be repealed if the public or government loses sight of why the regulation was passed in the first place. On the other hand, companies usually want regulations repealed by default. This tension between opposing forces must resolve itself, and it does in favor of companies because not only are they constantly applying pressure against regulations, but the public is often allured by the fact that many regulations lower potential levels of economic growth. Therefore it's more likely than not that regulations be repealed in the long run.

The evidence suggests the complete opposite: It is harder to repeal regulations (including bad ones) than to introduce them. By default, the number of regulations on the books will tend to increase over time. In particular [0]:

> America’s underlying regulatory problem long predates the 44th president. Between 1970 and 2008 the number of prescriptive words like “shall” or “must” in the code of federal regulations grew from 403,000 to nearly 963,000, or about 15,000 edicts a year, according to data compiled by the Mercatus Centre, a libertarian-leaning think-tank. Between 2008 and 2016, under Mr Obama, about the same number of new rules emerged annually.

> The unyielding growth of rules, then, has persisted through Republican and Democratic administrations (see chart). Several factors explain it. First, Congress has neither the staff nor the expertise to write complex, technical laws. So lawmakers happily let experts in government agencies fill in the blanks. What Congress does write itself, it writes sloppily. In 2015 the Supreme Court found “more than a few examples of inartful drafting” in the Affordable Care Act. One such error nearly saw the court strike down crucial parts of law; only semantic gymnastics saved it. The “Chevron deference”, a doctrine from a 1984 court ruling, gives agencies wide latitude to interpret laws when they are vaguely written. (Neil Gorsuch, Mr Trump’s nominee to the court, is not a fan.)

> Second, America’s division of powers makes it easy for interest groups to defend any one regulation, tax break or policy. That forces administrations to solve problems by taping yet more rules onto whatever exists already, rather than writing something simple from scratch. Over time, this gums up the system, resulting in what Steve Teles of Johns Hopkins University has dubbed a “kludgeocracy”. This explains, for instance, why over half of Americans have to pay a professional to fill out their tax return for them (in Britain, for comparison, most people need not even complete one).

[0] https://www.economist.com/united-states/2017/03/02/too-much-...

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