Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway45349 | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com