Comment by usrbinbash | Hacker News Reader

Comment by usrbinbash | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The solution already exists and is used, to varying degrees, by many western industrializted countries, especially in Europe.

1. Regulated Capitalism

2. State Funded Infrastructure.

ad 1) Capitalism isn't a bad system per-se, but needs to be kept in check. States need to ensure that un-competitive behavior is kept in check, that too-large monopolies are reigned in, that consumers are protected, that fair taxes are paid and that private wealth has no undue influence on politics.

ad 2) Structural systems required for a society to function properly have to be, at least partially, state funded, state controlled, or even state owned, thus ensuring the availability and baseline quality of structural services to as many citizens as possible, with regard for revenue generation being a secondary concern.

These sound like reasonable improvements, and maybe not without their own potential vectors for cronyism. I am genuinely interested to read more.

Of course they create vectors for cronyism, massively. All these improvements require constant vigil by regulatory bodies, the justice system and the public itself.

They also rely heavily on the public being educated enough, interested enough and participatory enough to reflect bad behavior in their voting decisions.

None of this however is an argument for less regulation. It is an argument for education and political participation.

Do you think that kind of vigil is sustainable? Surely there will be some ebb and flow there, and that's what concerns me: what if it flows too far into one extreme or the other and some new, unforeseen scourge worse than what we have today shows itself.

Are people taking care that they are educated, stay informed, have an active interest in what's going on? Then it can work.

It's not an easy process, it is active work in fact, but it is possible.

> 1. Regulated Capitalism

This is why we have cronyism in the first place. Who do you think is writing the regulations? Who's funding the think tanks and the "grassroots" organizations? Who's paying for the campaigns?

Here in the UK we have pretty strict campaign finance limits and lobbying is also heavily regulated. In most European democracies the comment was referring to this is really not a serious problem. It's always a problem to _some_ extent, but the US is an extreme outlier on this one.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com