Hacker News Reader

Also, there's an argument to be made that America is not actually truly capitalist.

The government intervenes in the market all the time, especially now. Nothing big is allowed to fail. $Trillions to keep the party going.

That's not capitalism.

Even Buffett is sitting this "recovery" out because he can see the lack of a free market.

View on HN

"No True Scotsman"

That is not how you use the No True Scotsman fallacy. US is not the world economy, US economy is not defining characteristics of capitalism.

Isn't this the same rhetorical move that communists/socialists get accused of all the time? How can you claim that the most ideologically capitalist country on the planet isn't actually capitalist?

To be fair, a lot of the criticism of communism/socialism really is misguided :). But is US the most ideologically capitalist country on the planet? Or is that is just election campaign populism? Few examples: US has high barriers to enter certain markets in the form of bureaucracy and incumbent market manipulation. US has low overall taxation - 25% of GDP, (which is good) but the taxes come disproportionally from the poor. Then the portion of transfers back to the people is lover than average causing effects like #27 place in social mobility.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com