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Comment by ooobit2 | Hacker News Reader

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Why the only alternatives to capitalism that come to mind are always China and Gulags? Is there absolutely nothing else we can imagine?

(Maybe if we had some more leisure we could become more imaginative)

>Why the only alternatives to capitalism that come to mind are always China and Gulags? Is there absolutely nothing else we can imagine?

This is precisely Mark Fisher's argument in Capitalist Realism. Capitalist realism dictates that the majority of people have become incapable of imagining something outside of a kind of binary choice. There can't be an alternate future, because we can't imagine it in the first place. This was bessed summed up, rather ironically, by Thatcher: "there is no alternative".

Which is sad because unions and trust busting showed that regulated capitalism was better than the Ayn Rand flavor so popular now. (Yay child gig economy.)

Burning man. And temples/churches.

But yeah, those are the only places where markets are off-limits. If you try to make a totalizing system that forbids people the right to buy or sell (say, on your way to burning man or after church), you'd need gulags to control the social unrest. People like to buy stuff and sell stuff.

Churches are increasingly about merch.

> Why the only alternatives to capitalism that come to mind are always China and Gulags? Is there absolutely nothing else we can imagine?

The answer is that it's effective propaganda. Starvation and gulags are terrible evils. If you can plant the idea in someone's mind that they are what you get when a society questions capitalism, then you've created a zealous foot-soldier for capitalism who feels he's fighting for good against evil.

Someone who zealously fights starvation and gulags is fighting for good against evil, but those were mainly the result of particular alternatives to capitalism: radical Soviet-style central planning and dictatorship. That's not the only alternative: there are others, including many that haven't been thought of yet. Also, it's not like capitalism is over and we know how it ends. Maybe it too will find its way to starvation and gulags.

I believe that both capitalism and communism are broken because of broken brains of people who are "implementing" them. We need enlightened, self-organized people (no "leaders" or "representatives") as a starting point for any successful implementation of a Utopia (whatever -ism you like to call it). But no current system is going to support enlightenment of people because it would mean its end.

Self organizing doesn't work because everyone wants what's best for themselves. Every grassroots activity has figureheads and leaders. Hierarchy is literally older than civilisation and observed in most animal life.

While this is a familiar Peterson talking point, society has in many ways sublimated our nature for the broader collective good. Addressing the problems of capitalism would be another step in that progress.

Nah, I disagree. Capitalism is the most natural system because it accepts what we are - selfish beings in a competitive environment. If we didn't specialize and trade skills/products/services, we'd still be a hunter-gatherer species. The system is what kept us going, not what holds us back. It only looks like oppression in 2020 because of how easy the rest of life is.

There are a lot of good arguments and suggestive evidence that the exact opposite is true: that we were competitive in our environment not because we were selfish, but because we were social, altruistic, caring, supportive.

Capitalism cannot be the most natural system simply because it's only barely 300 years old. Before that, there was a whole slew of different ways to organize production and distribution. Primitive tribal communes, large tribal unions, agricultural slavery, feudalisms of varying shapes... and that's only in Europe.

Regardless of the obvious political quackery downvoting my original comment, this is what I was pointing out: we're not as self-prioritizing as we are convenience-prioritizing. Capitalism isn't the only solution, just like how any given criticism of the current implementation of capitalism isn't only indicative of a problem intrinsic to capitalism. The problem is we don't have effective checks and balances to over-conveniencing ourselves.

I believe that's the problem with capitalism as it is today. Whomever owns the means of production has literally zero constraints on maximizing their convenience. The expense ends up drastically inconveniencing, to the point of being a barrier to access, everyone who doesn't own the means of production.

> Whomever owns the means of production has literally zero constraints on maximizing their convenience. The expense ends up drastically inconveniencing, to the point of being a barrier to access, everyone who doesn't own the means of production.

maybe cooperatives are a potential solution to that issue?

> Capitalism is the most natural system because it accepts what we are - selfish beings

that does not follow: just because something is natural doesnt make it good or desireable

The Daemon/Freedom novels have an original solution for that

An highly advanced non-conscious AI takes over everything

Then people can rate each other. And gain experience levels like in a mmorpg. And then people work to improve their rating and levels

Hopefully the AI is smart enough to prevent fraudulent ratings.

> Then people can rate each other.

Found your problem.

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