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Comment by pcmoney | Hacker News Reader

Capitalism has taken more people out of poverty than anything else on planet earth and produced incredible abundance and flourishing in the past 200 years. Socialism has failed every time it has been tried. (Also stop describing everything you don’t like as “Capitalism”, it is intellectually lazy, instead describe what aspect of Capitalism caused the thing you don’t like directly and provably and with a clear alternative that wouldn’t have had worse downsides)

Good critiques of Capitalism are important to help it continue to evolve, compete, and win in a competitive marketplace of ideas.

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I have increasingly noticed this general trend (here, on Reddit, and elsewhere) to just blame a myriad of societal ills on “Capitalism”. Sometimes it’s related to economics or whatever, but more often it’s really a non-sequitur. Some of the problems blamed on Capitalism, it’s not at all clear how communism or socialism or any other system would result in a different outcome. It’s become a thought-ending cliche.

Agree, just tribal signaling, “thing I thoughtlessly think is bad is bad”

I feel the same about every bad weather event being “caused” by climate change in the media. The models predictions are so vague people could blame anything on climate change. Not saying climate change isn’t happening, it is, but blaming everything on it is intellectually dishonest, costs legitimacy, and can lead to poor policy.

> Capitalism has taken more people out of poverty than anything else on planet earth and produced incredible abundance and flourishing in the past 200 years.

That's not wrong, but it came at the cost of massively depleting the oil reserves and polluting the ecosystems.

The same Would have happened with communism or any other economic system, unless we were kept at a pre-industrial level of tech. Collectivist systems don't particularly take better care of their environment.

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