Hacker News Reader

Comment by dao- | Hacker News Reader

> Capitalism does not force you to create an immoral business, or to treat your employees (direct and contracted) immorally. It doesn't even really encourage it.

It tends to encourage it by putting those at the top who manage to exploit the most. Capital also begets political power which makes it hard to counter that trend.

> Wanting more and more money regardless of the (human) cost

Congratulations, you've accidentally defined capitalism.

View on HN

I'd argue that most alternative political systems are responsible for a lot more wasted resource and cost...

False dichotomy. Economic systems contain hundreds of sliders a country can adjust, from various tax rates to workers' rights. Adjusting one of these has nothing to do with Stalin's USSR or Mao's China, so I don't understand why you're bringing those up.

Because when you slag off "capitalism", the next question is "what else?", and history shows the alternatives are worse.

Every country in the world and every civilization in the history of mankind is an example of "what else?". The US isn't run on pure capitalism, and it never has.

Some countries do better than others, in various metrics. That's the "what else" you can look at and emulate.

I disagree, e.g, europe, not pure capitalism, not pure communism, not pure socialism, but somewhere in between (depending no country). Overall these countries are not less successful than US (which is also not pure capitalism), and most of it citizen prefer living in europe and would not consider moving to the US. More socialised forms of healthcare, education and unemployement support are main reasons.

Nobody here advocated for "pure" anything. Money still changed hands in communist Russia, the USA has socialized services like fire brigades.

What I'm advocating against is the idea of a wholesale changing of a system of politics and economy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com