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Comment by jblow | Hacker News Reader

If this is your thesis you’ll have to explain how e.g. Communism totally did not have this problem.

Why? He never said anything at all about Communism or any other ideology being superior in particular. Looks a bit like you're itching for a fight that no one is actually giving to you.

To say that capitalism is empty doesn't necessarily mean you are anti-capitalist. E.g. many people find their job fundamentally empty, and they find meaning elsewhere, for example in their family. But they don't quit their job- it enables them to enjoy their family. Similarly, you can view capitalism as a fundamentally empty, but extremely useful system that enables us to find meaning elsewhere.

I don't see how that follows but I'll answer anyway. One main difference is that the economic gains in a hypothetical alternate economic system could be distributed to you, your peers, and the needy in a more humane fashion instead of the majority of the gains concentrating to the elite.

What is this hypothetical system like, and how is it different from the ones that have been tried, whose proponents would describe in a way similar to what you just said, but have been shown to have the same emptiness problem you attribute to capitalism (as well as some others, like mass murder and economic collapse)?

Showing that system X has characteristic Y in no way requires showing that systems P, Q, R, S do not have characteristic Y. They may or may not.

No he doesn't. Invoking that Communism has problems does not magic away the problems that Capitalism currently has. The two don't bear any relationship.

It does in this case because it's the same problem in both systems.

He ascribed a problem to capitalism that is also a well-known problem of non-capitalism. The same thing happens in both places (actually worse under communism), so the blame is clearly misplaced.

False dichotomy much? The world isn't divided into some platonic form of "communism" and "capitalism." These are just labels we attach to a whole bunch of social and economic dynamics.

Names for colors or kinds of automobile are also just labels we attach to whole spectra of related things, but the words still have meaning and we are able to use them productively.

Responding to a comment like “this red color is agitating” with “you don’t get to complain about red unless you accept all the ways that yellow is bad” isn’t using terms productively.

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