Hacker News Reader

Comment by insaider | Hacker News Reader

Because it's the most capitalistic country on the planet and inequality is the direct result of that.

A government's job in the 21st century is not much more than to counter the downsides of capitalism. But people see how bad the US is at doing that so they lose faith in the government and so decide that the solution is to privatise everything, thus actually exasperating the problem!

We need institutions(governments) that exist outside of the incentives of capitalism in order to fix capitalisms problems. But the US government, and increasingly many others, are far too affected by capitalistic incentives.

When the measure of a man is the depth of his pockets then the world shall be ran by clowns.

View on HN

>But people see how bad the US is at doing that so they lose faith in the government and so decide that the solution is to privatise everything, thus actually exasperating the problem!

This is entirely intentional. Republicans get elected, they privatize, slash and burn, and otherwise stifle government function, and then run ads screaming "Look how shitty the government is, elect us and we'll kill it", repeat.

I'd be really interested to hear your definition of capitalism, because I think you are confusing ideals. It appears you are tying capitalism to a tax structure or some other government program to promote equity. Capitalism is simply using a market economy rather than command economy.

China has used capitalistic market principals from the 1970s to greatly benefit the wealth of its population, as opposed to the Mao era command economy which clearly failed. If you look at poverty in the world from the 1970s you will clearly see the China's reopening greatly reduced world poverty (mostly because their population is a major proportion of the world's).

https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty

https://www.zdnet.com/article/study-world-poverty-rates-plum...

Capitalism recognizes that a competitive market driven economy relies on governmental controls to protect against market failures, externalities, and imperfections. These are knowns in American economic academia.

Because the government of America fails to give appropriate, or lack-thereof, government control in the face of some of these issues (such as healthcare) does not mean that the capitalism concept is incorrect. It means that the federalistic, two party, republic has not properly regulated some issues as recognized by standard economic practices.

However, give me concrete examples of other governments that better protect against "when the measure of a man is the depth of his pockets then the world shall be ran by clowns" abuses while not removing blatant freedoms, and give specific changes you propose. Sitting on the side of "capitalism is for pigs" is much easier than actually studying and solving the problem.

Your definition of capitalism also seems confused, or insufficiently nuanced -- if markets == capitalism, then what is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism?

You're right, it's hard to take such a complex topic, whose definition does not always match colloquial use, and boil it down to two paragraphs (I guess asking for a definition was unfair). Like most debates that people take to polarities there is always an in-between. Back to my China example, they move on the scales whose polarities are laissez-faire and command economy. The Western markets would fall closer to a competitive market than market socialism today. But, In the 90s China was almost more hands off than Western countries. Under Xi the government has consolidated more control and influences the market much more. They are still not a command economy, but also not a fully competitive market, they use markets with "Chinese characteristics."

I'm tying capitalism to its resultant effects, specifically inequality. https://confrontingpoverty.org/poverty-facts-and-myths/ameri...

The changes that I would propose are more cultural than governmental.

Cultural map of the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inglehart%E2%80%93Welzel_cultu...

Happiest countries in the world: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-...

Notice the correlation between happiness and culture. That should be the measure of success, not pocket depth. Those cultures that are happiest also have a strong disinclination to talking about money, as they recognise the divisiveness of egotistical capitalism.

'Capitalism either creates or reinforces egoism by lessening any altruistic instincts and by weakening the “moral force in man which combats the inclination towards egoistic acts” including criminal ones.' (America also has the highest incarceration rates of any developed country).

> A government's job in the 21st century is not much more than to counter the downsides of capitalism

A government's job in the 21st century includes legally privatizing public property, waging profit-bearing forever wars, and distracting us from the wealthy who feed on us. It's enough to make P.T. Barnum blush.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com