Comment by TangoTrotFox | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TangoTrotFox | Hacker News Reader

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Do you know how to cook well? Go to the front of your yard, set out a table, and start selling your food. It's now a count down until you're ticketed and/or arrested, and the police also decide to take any money in your wallet along with anything valuable at your stand as 'evidence'. This is really a very important example since selling food is probably the single easiest industry that can provide substantial revenue to anybody with a bit of skill.

Rules and regulations are not inherently bad, but as they grow out of control they rapidly transition from being a net positive to a net negative on society. Go try to navigate the thousands of relevant pages of legalese full of esoteric and counter-intuitive laws in e.g. California just to open a food stall. Your utility cleaning sink is only 9" deep? Time to shut you down, it needs to be 10"! In the current state of the US it's generally unlawful for a kid to go setup a lemonade stand in their front yard. The US has rapidly transitioned towards becoming quite anti-capitalist.

But of course this was not always the case. It's hard to pinpoint when exactly we started transitioning to the current era, probably around the 60s. And this is really the point. 'Not true communism' can not really pinpoint any era in communism as 'true communism' because the ideal and reality simply don't exist in the same plane. And while e.g. the 50s were not necessarily the penultimate example of what capitalism can yield, they were at least a really great example - as it was a time period that struck a balance between rules and regulations while not hampering individual entrepreneurship and innovation.

"The US has rapidly transitioned towards becoming quite anti-capitalist."

What you're describing is distinctly capitalist.

"Pure capitalism is defined as a system wherein all of the means of production (physical capital) are privately owned and run by the capitalist class for a profit, while most other people are workers who work for a salary or wage (and who do not own the capital or the product)."

This has nothing to do with how easy it is for someone to acquire capital in the ways you're describing. In fact that it is difficult to enter the capitalist class only emphasises that there is a difference between them and the worker class (i.e. capitalism).

No, it's not. As you can prove by a simple reduction to absurdity. Let's take a feudal system. But in this feudal system our lord will pass a law that effectively means exactly the king's 'chosen' is able to be a blacksmith. And this blacksmith then hands a good chunk of his profits right back to the lord in exchange for this monopoly. And then he does the exact same thing to create a puppet tavern, a puppet brothel, and so on. This is not a capitalist system by any imagining of the word.

The most underlying and critical point of capitalism is an individual's right of access to the market, both as a buyer and a seller. All this class distinction stuff are part of Marx's inane ramblings. They don't even make any sense. Traditionally the shop owner, shop visitors, as well as the shop workers have lived practically right next door to one another in mostly similar condition doing mostly similar things. And more importantly people can generally do as they feel. Want to open a shop? Then knock out the front wall of your home, put up a sign, and boom - you're now part of this magical "class" of business owners. Some people even just set up tables outside their house and sell whatever they happen to like making or growing. And this isn't some vague ideal. In many nations throughout the world today this is still very much the reality, and it's awesome.

This is really the unfortunate part. So many people try to come to conclusions about economic systems and what is right or wrong without having any experience outside of America or similar nations. It's like trying to judge the civility of society at large when you've only ever lived in e.g. Detroit, St. Louis, or Baltimore. Your opinions would be misinformed, at best.

You are correct that your feudal system is not a capitalist one, as the blacksmith does not own (he is not able to sell) his means of production.

The most underlying and critical point of capitalism is an individual's right of access to the market All this class distinction stuff are part of Marx's inane ramblings

This is not the case. The Wikipedia definition for capitalism is well cited.

Then knock out the front wall of your home, put up a sign, and boom - you're now part of this magical "class" of business owners.

Yes, there is absolutely the ability to move between classes. The use of classes in the context of this definition of capitalism is to give a broad overview of how a capitalist society is structured. In your example, owning the house and stock they sell would be considered "capital". If they were to employ an assistant, to tidy up or help sell stock (which the assistant doesn't own) then the assistant would not own their means of production. Making the assistant a "worker".

Some people even just set up tables outside their house and sell whatever they happen to like making or growing. And this isn't some vague ideal. In many nations throughout the world today this is still very much the reality, and it's awesome.

But it's not capitalism. Hence the definition I provided.

Returning to this bit:

All this class distinction stuff are part of Marx's inane ramblings.

I think shows your true colours. Economists might respectfully disagree with Marx or his ideas, but to call them inane is just ignorance.

The blacksmith would indeed own his 'means of production'. The one and only reason he would have difficulty selling it is because of rules and regulations. This was rather the whole point of the example. As rules and regulations make it more and more difficult to access the market as a seller you move further and further away from what capitalism is.

As for Marx, something doe eyed students of today often forget is that academia can and does often go extremely far astray, particularly on social issues where a dangerous hive mind frequently emerges. For instance in the early 20th century we in the US, and the academic establishment in particular, were the biggest drivers behind eugenics. We were literally the inspiration for Hitler who saw his own work as building off our 'progress.' His work ultimately being the one and only reason that eugenics in the US was scaled back and gradually became taboo.

The rise of Marxist ideology corresponded with an extremely sharp increase in the number of individuals pursuing the social sciences and liberal arts at the postgraduate level. Unfortunately these studies, in this quantity, do not really correspond to being able to contribute to society in any meaningful way. That's not to say the arts and humanities inherently do not contribute as they most certainly do. But society cannot support a billion philosophers anymore than it can support a billion neurosurgeons or plumbers. Thus enter Marxism which is little more than a fancification of striving to live as Marx did: drink and drug yourself to stupidity while writing whatever you want. Time to put food on the table? Just mooch off Engels and your brother-in-law.

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