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Comment by fortuna86 | Hacker News Reader

As I told every college freshman who just took poli sci 101, if you have a better system than capitalism, we're all ears.

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A better system than capitalism is a better capitalism.

Capitalism is not boolean. Anything can be good for the economy of somebody but we don't need to accept school mass shootings, or drug trafficking, or massive wildfires, or millions of people jailed for minor offenses, just because somebody benefits of it

It does not matter how is called

You’re looking for “a better system than US politics”. The rest of the capitalist world doesn’t have these things.

> A better system than capitalism is a better capitalism.

Except that is never the conclusion of anyone that makes it a point to criticize how terrible everything is, without the context that everything is better today than it ever has been.

I think that's an extremely reductive and academically dishonest question.

Adam Smith didn't propose some new system (and nor did Marx, really). Modern economists understand at least they work based on observation of human behavior and policy to influence or react to it, not a "system" from first principles that solves all problems perfectly.

I don't think you read Marx, because what you're saying about his work ain't true: he absolutely had a systemic thinking and within it for sure perfection could be achieved, by means of superceding the division of classes. Nevertheless, most people who cite Marx didn't actually read Marx, but a rehashed version from someone else. Or perhaps only a small, incomplete, subset of his work, from a very specific perspective. Marx's writings in particular have been falsified many times, for a multitude of reasons.

Marx didn’t propose a new system of government though, Marx proposed a theory of history (“history as class struggle”) in which the inevitable outcome was communism.

How about actual capitalism rather than the government-enforced pro-major-corporations environment we have now? When businesses can lobby government to change the rules in their favor any sort of free market is impossible...

The only way to get Adam Smith style markets is to forbid, and enforce the prohibition, corporations that are a large fraction of the market. No Walmart, no Amazon, no Tesco, Sainsbury's, Morrisons, no IBM, no ARM, no Toyota, VW, or Ford.

Ownership structures that hide the actual owners would have to be rooted out.

That way we might get slightly closer to markets where both suppliers and customers have a choice as to who to deal with.

I know it feels very self-righteous to dunk on college students but this reasoning is kind of like traveling back to the middle ages and telling a knight "if you have a better system than feudalism, we're all ears".

Just like a King is going to do anything in their vast amount of power to uphold the monarchy; so does capitalism. In both cases, the current powers that be will always seem entrenched

> "if you have a better system than feudalism, we're all ears".

But we did have a better system.

Sure if you are so confident that the existing system is maximally good, you’d be interacting with professors of economics, history, and sociology, not college freshmen since a bunch of people 18 year olds aren’t exactly most equipped to answer these questions.

To be clear, you are implying civilization was better off during feudalism?

No. I am saying that complaining about "every college freshman who just took poli sci 101" is not an effective way of engaging in discussion about the merits of capitalism.

And assuming I am "confident that the existing system is maximally good" is equally as bad of footing to begin a discussion. I think nothing of the sort.

>But we did have a better system

1. You can only make that assertion in hindsight.

2. The adoption of that "better system" wasn't sunshine and roses.

1. Ok

2. Yes revolution is bad, violent, and dark times in the short term. More of an argument to reform our current system rather than listen to romantic ideas of ditching capitalism as a whole.

unless you have traveled back from a future in which a better solution exists, then not really.

You could make that same argument to the hypothetical knight. Capitalism in the modern sense has only been around for 200 years. Just because you are unable to imagine a different future doesn't mean that one doesn't exist. What you are doing is no different than an appeal to tradition. You are sacrificing the virgin to the mountain god every year for reasons you can't fully grasp.

you're right that I have not imagined a different and better future syste,, but in the hypothetical someone does know of a different and better future system (assuming that we agree capitalism is better than feudalism), goes back to the past, and lies and says there is not a better system.

Second of all I admit I don't know of a different better system, I do not say I like the present system especially, although I get the feeling you must think that I do not being able to think of a better one.

>You are sacrificing the virgin to the mountain god every year for reasons you can't fully grasp.

and you are evidently good at insulting people and feeling superior when they admit they don't know of a better way without providing any concrete arguments for a better system. Must be nice.

They are all around us, no one wants to admit they bought the lie though.

In most of the modern world it's not capitalism Vs communism but rather how we define freedom and democracy.

Live is a lot better here in Switzerland, but we are just as capitalistic, and nearly as gun loving as the US

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