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Comment by praptak | Hacker News Reader

"Capitalism produces corruption" is not the same as "there's something inherently capitalist about corruption".

I was responding that power produces corruption. There's no incorruptible alternative to capitalism because any alternative still gives people power to abuse.

I think there is still room to explore "less corruptible" alternatives. It is easy to fall into the "law of excluded middle" trap. If we are only willing to accept an incorruptible alternative to a current system then we are not likely to make progress.

If it's a matter of degree, it generally seems like alternatives to capitalism perform worse (world wars, Stalin murdering 16 million, Mao's five year plan). Capital is a rather decentralized form of power, and typically to make any of it, you must put your own assets, resources, or time at risk. Except in edge cases which might not really be capitalism (slavery, central banking e.g.) you also can't accrue more capital without at least exchanging for something someone else wants, making it non-zero-sum and distributive, which is not the case for say political power.

It's interesting you mention World Wars in reference to alternative systems. "Merchants of Death", in the case of the US and capitalism, instantly comes to mind.

Otherwise, there are many contemporary examples of concentration of capital. Whether it is distributive isn't the question, but more the trends of distribution.

It's also quite interesting you mention central banks here, considering the substantial evidence of bulge bracket banks acting as an antithesis to your statement about risk (i.e "too big to fail").

Central banking is not a necessary component of capitalism per se, it's just a feature of our current iteration.

> it generally seems like alternatives to capitalism perform worse (world wars, Stalin murdering 16 million, Mao's five year plan).

> Except in edge cases which might not really be capitalism

Oh well then those weren't real communism either. /s

You aren't wrong, but it's worth noting that the US protection of capitalism (more or less) was a pretty awful force throughout the 20th century.

absolutely. "War is a Racket" is on my desk right now. But literally everything was terrible in the 20th century. Still yet, as a proportion of world population things in the 20th century were arguably better than before, and the sins of state-sponsored capitalism were vastly vastly smaller in magnitude than state-sponsored "alternatives-to-capitalism", without even taking credit for the huge swaths of population whose quality of life has risen from subsistence due to it. Would you rather have one Stalin or five x (US invasions of Haiti, Nicaragua, and Iraq)? I know which I pick, every time.

Moreover, in its idealized form, capitalism has less of the state, whereas in its ideal form, marxism/communism has strong involvement of the state, versus classical socialism/anarchism in the Proudhon/Benjamin Tucker sense. There's even an essay by Tucker from the 19th century where he predicts the rise of leninism, gulags, venezuela-like conditions etc, as a natural consequence of Marxism, long before they even happen.

I mean, this is how we ended up where we are today: we've been iterating on the set of laws and regulations surrounding the economy finding the best tradeoffs and we're yet to find something perfect. The problem is that that discussion tends to get into rather technocratic, wonky territory pretty quickly and bores people a hell of a lot more than making crazy eyes at the audience and ranting about political revolutions.

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