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Comment by assblaster | Hacker News Reader

100 years after Communism burst on the scene, we currently look at that development with disgust.

Right now most people have access to abundant food, cellphone in every pocket, access to a wealth of information, access to transportation, incredible medical advances.

I can't imagine that the progress we've made would be scorned. Like other market driven forces, bad players will not be rewarded as information about them increases.

However, if information is not increased because of something like a company buying a newspaper so investigative threats can be used against politicians to avoid information gathering, then we have problems. This is more crony capitalism than just capitalism.

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You are right that the world has gotten immensely better in recent decades, pulling hundreds of millions out of poverty.

If you compare real median wage growth in the West in the 60s and 70s with the last two decades though, it doesn't look so great. Maybe we can do better.

"What we have now is the bad kind of capitalism! There's a different, good kind of capitalism which in theory does all these great things!" is essentially the "communism works great in theory" argument.

100%, both systems are great theories. However, the last few hundred years of actually trying to implement capitalism has "most people have access to abundant food, cellphone in every pocket, access to a wealth of information, access to transportation, incredible medical advances.", if by "most people" you mean "possible a majority of people in the richest countries in the world". Unfortunately, the cost of that is that we've done irreparable damage to our environment, are causing the worst Great Extinction ever, and have caused a climate crisis that may cause us to go extinct.

Hundreds of millions of people have been brought out of poverty, outside the United States.

That's due to technology; not capitalism, they aren't the same thing.

A huge amount of R&D happens in academia which isn't capitalism; but then is monetised by capitalism (but doesn't reinvest it back into the academia)

Converting that R&D into actual products and services, I'd wager, is quite difficult without a profit incentive. It's like the difference between having a great idea for a startup and actually turning it into a functioning company.

Without invoking too many absolutes, there's so much bullshit involved in the latter that people doing the former aren't willing to put up with. It's mostly two different kinds of people with two different skillsets.

Doesn't capitalism either directly or indirectly fund that academic research? When I was in a university lab, all of my work was funded by private companies

Nearly every country on Earth that has bought into the Capitalist system has become far better off than they were 100 years ago, not just the richest countries in the world.

I agree that "No true Capitalism" is just as bad a fallacy as "No true Communism". But our real life imperfect Capitalism has still had incredible results whereas real life imperfect communism has lagged significantly and failed more brutally.

Woa who said anything about communism? All I suggested is that we should take care of our citizens. We could do this for example via Universal Basic Income, which is very much capitalist (unless you abide by the common American false notion that "helping people" = communism).

> most people have access to...

Why is "most" a good enough metric? If most people have homes but my commute to work is littered with tents of homeless people, is that adequate? Should politicians just throw in the towel then and call it a day because "most" people have houses?

I think we can do better.

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