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Comment by lazyier | Hacker News Reader

Dude. Just open your eyes and look around you. Go to a super market. Look at the shelves.

Go to github.com. Look at all the different software languages, operating systems, shells, web servers, and so on and so forth.

Tool manufacturers. Housing choices.

All that stuff only can possibly exist in a capitalistic system. There is no other way. People have tried. We have massive amount of historical precedent on this sort of thing. At this point it should be self-evident.

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I've gone to a supermarket before. In fact when I was young I was forced by the system to work as a cashier at one, and to this day, a decade and a half later, I can't think of a worse feeling than sitting 8 hours a day doing absolutely nothing. It was a small town, so there weren't many customers, and all I could think while I looked at the shelves full of useless products was that I'd much rather be doing anything even slightly intellectual stimulating. This was around the time when I started getting into programming, so you can imagine how miserable I was that I couldn't spend that time learning / producing.

It's easy to see this from the perspective of the customer only, but think of how many lives and brilliant minds are being wasted away in the system.

The only one of these that has anything directly to do with capitalism is tool manufacturers. Fortunately, that's a great example! Let's dig in a little.

Go to Home Depot. Lots of tool brands to choose from, right? Ridgid, Milwaukee, Ryobi, Makita, maybe a couple of Hiltis over in the contractor section. Amazing variety thanks to capitalism, right?

Wrong. The first three brands I listed all belong to the same company, TTI. The only significant difference among them is in build quality, and it's minor; other than that, all that changes is the injection molds for the shell, and the price - which varies out of all proportion to the quality of the product.

That's not a true choice. That's an illusion of choice, deliberately promulgated by a near monopoly in order to gain access to as many market segments as possible, and exploit each to the maximal possible extent - by pretending to compete with itself, TTI makes a lot more money than if it didn't, because that means it can sell three kinds of differently shaped boxes of 18650 cells, and in the modern consumer/prosumer power tool business, that's where all the margin is.

That's great for TTI! For everyone else, not so much, because only the Milwaukee line doesn't actively suck, and even then you're better off spending more for Makita, precisely because that's not a zombie brand, and is still competing.

So, TTI's a great example of capitalism, sure. Is it a good thing? One of the major complaints about Soviet communism, after all, was precisely the lack of consumer choice that it imposed. If that's really the crux of the problem, then why isn't it a problem when capitalism produces the same outcome? Is it only a failure when the Reds do it, but an example of freedom and apple pie when the same exact thing happens under capitalism? Why?

I think many of your examples are illusions of choice. Most brands in the super market roll up to a handful of players, the "choice" for many items ultimately lines the same pockets.

Housing choices? Is that the choice to buy / rent vs live on the street? Capitalism has given us the homeless crisis which was non-existing just 70 years ago.

> I think many of your examples are illusions of choice. Most brands in the super market roll up to a handful of players, the "choice" for many items ultimately lines the same pockets.

So don't buy the big brands. Buy local.

Are you telling me that there is no possible way that you can go to a farmers market and buy food? That the only choice you have is one of Conagra's food brands?

That you can't go one the one of probably hundreds of grocery stores and restaurants that are probably within driving distance of your house?

This is what I mean by 'Open Your Eyes'. Like just go outside and look around! If you live is in a developed western country and you are complaining about lack of choices it's very likely that the problem is you and your own choices.

> Housing choices? Is that the choice to buy / rent vs live on the street?

Since when in human history has people never had to work for housing?

There is only a thin band of habitat in the earth that humans can survive and thrive without housing and technology and work. Too hot and we die. Too cold and we die. Not wet enough and we starve. Not dry enough and we starve.

To spread across the rest of the planet we had to work our asses off.

If you think life is harder for a 20-something having to deal with the indignity of living in a un-hip part of town because they can't afford a nicer place... then it is for a frontier family that has to grow their own food and build their own house from supplies they had to drag behind mules from hundreds of miles away? If so, I have some bad news for you.

"Having to work" is not evidence that capitalism is terrible. You are going to work no matter what. Whether it's socialism or capitalism or if you live in some monastery somewhere. It's not optional. It's never going to be optional.

So you get a bunch of meaningless choices for consumer goods?

Great.

Meaning(value) is subjective, under capitalism, what's demanded by people is what's produced. Sure speculation can mislead people into valuing the wrong thing but that's hardly a problem inherent with capitalism itself.

Whenever I analyze arguments against the free market, it almost always seems that the person speaking thinks the market should give people what the person speaking thinks they ought to want.

Meaning is subjective no matter the economic system. Trillions of dollars spent in advertising also misleads people into valuing the wrong things. I see this as a problem of capitalism.

People valuing different things differently is a result of culture. Advertising influences culture, to some extent, but it only wishes it was as powerful as people assume it to be.

Most notably, people are not "misled" into valuing the "wrong" things. You just have a different opinion of what people should value based on your own culture, values, etc. It doesn't mean they're wrong, brainwashed, or anything of the kind.

No, what's produced is what the system wants people to think they want. Nobody wants 100 slightly different brands of the same thing. That said, I'll concede that sometimes we don't know what we want (the iPhone for example was a net positive).

You'd be surprised. I live in a country with only a couple brands per product (talking groceries here) and it is abysmal.

Even if they make all the different kinds of, say, cheese (and they don't), the quality is terrible, because they don't have those 99 competitors.

I'm in a similar situation, though to be completely honest I don't mind it much. I lived in a big city with significantly more choices and while it was undeniably better, I don't really miss it.

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