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Comment by Causality1 | Hacker News Reader

Yep. Money is the one unpatchable zero-day for every platform and service on earth.

There is a patch thanks to contributor Marx but everyone keeps pressing "remind me later".

Does bribing not exist in that system?

Sure there is. I don't know which motivation you'd have to bribe someone to promite your product, though. Would also be hard to sustain if intellectual property was decommodified.

Other, more pressing concerns have to be addressed, though.

>your product

In a hypothetical world where I don't benefit from a competitive advantage, in what sense do I own the product / company?

Consider firms which are wholly owned by either 1) every single employee (worker-owned firm), 2) every employee and every customer who opts in (consumer co-op), or 3) literally every citizen of a government (publicly owned).

You own it in partnership with the other people who own it.

This is, in the strictest definition, the socialism that people are so scared of.

How much control do you have over the military of your government? Or even the DMV? Are these organizations behaving directly as a response to the majority will of the people? If not, how do you solve that problem before you add more organizations?

The best answer we have today, IMO, in terms of ethics of freedom and agency, is "representative democracy," which may be extended to "liquid democracy" to bridge the gap between small, direct-democracy-capable organizations and large, unwieldy ones.

Unfortunately, no solution will be perfect, but that doesn't mean some aren't better than others. The problem is in essence unsolvable. Politics and civilization is an exercise in minimizing harm rather than eliminating it, maximizing utility rather than spiking it.

I don't know how but I do know it is much harder to make something everyone involved thinks impossible than to make something everyone thought they already had.

Perhaps the problem is as simple as setting up a forum with sub forums for every government official - then throw money at it until it works.

In the sense first and foremost that you may produce and design it, especially if production is structured in a co-op way, in the sense that you use it, especially if it's a consumer/worker co-op but also in a worker co-op, and to a lesser extent in that you are part of the society which produces it.

because there aren't luxuries in that system. that creates a need, and from it a secondary market, which without titles[1], sees the exchange of power either via favors exchange or plain tribalism. bribery then becomes the norm for the influential, even if actual money doesn't change hand, favors and contraband do.

1: a catch all to include both money, 'quota cards' and the likes

Working example needed.

Socialism, like capitalism, also has a zero day vulnerability by the name of mundane old “human corruption” that undermines its goals. Capitalism just works better because it pits people against each other, keeping the focus off authority and top level control.

Probbably due to the memory of the deaths of millions of people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_...

You get bit by a viper in the bathroom and your going to avoid that bathroom for a while.

That doesn’t really explain anything, given there are millions of deaths under capitalism too.

Big difference.

Not to the bodies in the graves there isn't.

Tell that to the people who were enslaved and to the people who starved to death.

Slavery is not a function of capitalism, though. Capitalism is being able to 1) firstly, own yourself and your body 2) thus sell your labour however you wish. It's the alternatives economic systems that prevent you from being free.

And yet capitalists imposed slavery upon multiple places around the world, often for decades or centuries.

Putting emotions aside for a second, slavery is very inefficient in a free market. It is not a coincidence free countries are all capitalist (and vice versa).

So are famines, but that didn't stop the market from starving millions of people, either.

When did markets cause famine? We are living in an age of wasted food because we have so much cheap crap (as well as high-quality) available. People are too fat because there's no barrier to over-consumption.

Whereas a socialist system causes famines due to central planning leads to poor decision making.

The causes of the Great Irish famine were those imposed by capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Causes_...

The market decided that the starving people who harvested crops didn't need to eat them, because people would pay more for those crops elsewhere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Food_ex...

10 million people starved in the Bengal famine: https://www.mensxp.com/special-features/today/27992-the-forg...

How would socialism have dealt with the first scenario? My understanding is there simply wasn't enough food to go around, and no economic system can fix that. Capitalism at least provides a profit motive to solve the problem (eventually).

The Bengal famine was a top down project specifically designed to profit. There is no "free market capitalism" in that scenario.

That's because the United States invades free countries that aren't capitalist.

Oh yeah. The US is guilty as charged, but there's no such thing as a free country that's not capitalist, until we live in a post-scarcity society. Technologically we are many centuries away from that.

> This article has multiple issues

I assume that this criticism is offered in good faith, and that you're in need of good, solid Wiki articles about the tens of millions of victims of Communist regimes--well, I'm happy to get you started!

Here's an article about the Soviet terror-famine (known as the Holodomor) which killed 4 million Ukranians. No worrisome notifications on this article, so I assume it meets your rigorous standards:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

And here's one about the so-called 'Great Leap Forward', when the Chinese Communist Party's top-down modernization plans resulted in the accidental deaths of ~50 million human beings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward

I'm not denying or excusing that historical atrocities occurred under socialist governments, but for perspective one should also look at the myriad atrocities that were and continue to be committed under capitalist governments. That doesn't excuse such actions, but neither side is innocent. I suggest reading The Wretched of the Earth* Chapter 1, "On Violence".

Here are a few examples off the top of my head:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_brutality_in_the_United...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...

* Though I will object that it is unfair to attribute the actions of the Khmer Rouge to socialism. Like the Nazis they were socialist in name only, and in fact were supported by the United States in their war against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

The issue is that these atrocities were committed more specifically as a result of communism, whereas other attrocities are less closely attributable to capitalism since it has been the majority default throughout history.

EDIT:. I'm not saying what's normal is ok, I'm saying what's common is more likely to falsely correlate with anything. Whereas as the common factor for communism across the board has been a high statistical propensity for mass murder and genocide. This includes the nazi regime I might add (look it up)

I'm not really interested in having this argument anymore, but I'll leave you with this:

Just because something is the "default" option doesn't mean it is non-ideological. Ideology is a powerful tool for shaping people's actions. People will go along with insane and sometimes horrifying things just because they perceive them as "normal". Maybe expose yourself to some alternative ideology. You don't have to agree with it to learn something.

That's ahistorical considering almost all deaths attributed to communism were a result of industrialization, a process which was just as deadly under capitalism.

The only difference as a result of ideology was the timeframe. The USSR was forced to rapidly industrialize due to global pressure from foreign militaries and famines in China were exceedingly common long before communism.

History is not as simple as you're making it out to be.

The famine under Mao was because of his failed policies, though.

Aside from the fact that mismanagement is not unique to communism, there have been many famines under capitalism.

I'm not a maoist, so I'm not about to defend his ineptitude, but it seems intellectually lazy to point to these problems as unique. In the 18th, 19th and 20th century, depending on what level of development a country was in, these problems were widespread across all ideologies.

Not unique, but some truly terrible leaders were inspired by Marxism in the 20th century. I'm not sure what the selling point is supposed to be if the rebuttal is that bad things happen under capitalism too.

I'm not selling revolutionary marxism here, but an informed view of history that doesn't fall into such ideological chasms.

Think about why Stalin is presented as a terrible leader and Churchill as a great one.

Holocaust is not due to capitalism. It's actually due to socialism. "The National Socialists German Workers Party"

That is the same thing as saying North Korea's failures are actually due to democracy. "The Democratic People's Republic of Korea"

Obviously the name of an organization doesn't mean jack compared to their actually implemented and enforced policies. The first things the Nazi's did when they gained power was kill all the socialists, communists, and unionists. They are anything but socialist.

This is a common rewriting of history in the last few years. Hitlers speeches are rife with rants against capitalism:

"We are socialists. We are the enemies of today’s capitalist system of exploitation … and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.” ~ Hitler

Literally the point you are replying to is that you can't take fascists at their word. You have to use their actions.

Communists were among the first inhabitants of Hitler's concentration camps. The Communist Part of Germany started the organization Antifaschistische Aktion, the direct precursor of what we now know as Antifa.

And please stop equating "anti-capitalist" and "communist". The two are not the same or even close.

I don't know if you want to open the can of worms that is "accidental deaths from mismanaged resource distribution" under capitalism.

Global deaths from hunger result in one great leap forward every 5 years.

The fact that Capitalism has not (yet) solved the global issue of extreme poverty is hardly an argument against it. Particularly when it is the transition to capitalism which has done the most to solve the problem!

After all, it's a simple matter of fact that the accelerating decline of global poverty since 1990 was the result of the transition to capitalism in formerly Communist/Socialist countries in Asia, including the CCP's own particular flavor of state capitalism.[0]

[0]https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/04/Extreme-Poverty-p... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty

I think comparing Capitalism and Socialism is a red herring. There is no "pure" Capitalism nor pure Socialism.

There are only countries with specific sets of laws governing them. The question is which system of laws is better and why and when and most importantly: Better for WHO?

Arguing that capitalism is the solution is like saying: Don't look here, we are better than socialist countries and therefore there is no need to improve anything in our country. Same for the other side too.

Let me know when we reach post scarcity and no longer need a rationing device such as money.

People thought of this issue since 1870 and the solution they came up with is simply non-transferable rationing devices. In traditional Marxist terms this was labour vouchers but nowadays there are much better solutions. Marx himself wrote about this, in terms of primitive accumulation in socialism.

For sure there are a lot of issues, but this isn't one of them.

You could in theory have bribery in material terms, but this is much easier to trace than in money terms.

My argument was with the idea that money will be gone as a rationing device. You can come up with alternatives but it’s the human nature that is the problem not the technology we use to ration resources. Let me know when this bug is fixed.

Well, that's not the problem we were talking about, is it? We were talking about the issue of bribery, which is made possible by the fungible nature of money.

Yes it is, namely this is the GP

> Money is the one unpatchable zero-day for every platform and service on earth.

To which the response was that Karl Marx had submitted a fix

Yes, and? I think you missed a few steps. Someone then answered that bribery is still possible, and I answered again.

I didn’t respond to the bribery comment I responded to the patch comment saying to let me know when scarcity is solved. I think it may be you who has added a step there, friend.

Money is not the only device that can translate relative preferences.

Just because things are scarce does not mean that non-scarce tools such as software must be bent to monetary incentives that reduce their value.

Any device that is used to ration is money though, there are other means to ration (the three we learn in Econ are beauty, brute force and first come first serve) but any device is by definition money since money is just a rationing device.

No, money has many more attributes than just being used to ration. Importantly money must be fungible divisible and durable.

I don't really get it. How does this prevent people from holding onto foreign currency or gold?

Who is going to sell you forex or gold for non-transferable tokens?

Non-transferable tokens aren’t going to be a successful replacement for money

In a capitalist economy certainly not.

In any economy that isn’t post-scarcity dude, money wasn’t invented by capitalists nor was the idea of an exchange.

No, modes of rationing and discovering preferential subjective values are necessary. That does not imply what is meant with money, which is infinitely durable, portable, fungible and uniform.

Already rationing systems which do not fit the definition of money are being employed. For example in the post-pandemic period the PBoC has issued consumption tokens with an expiration date.

You are simply confusing the idea of a scarce token with money. Money is in the former category but the former category is not money. The necessary function is to translate consumer preferences into numeric terms. For this fungibility and durability is not necessary.

Bitcoin at least rations out the zero-days. You don't just have one authority that can create them as needed.

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