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Comment by olalonde | Hacker News Reader

What is capitalist about modern banking? It's probably the most regulated industry in existence. Where a practice that would normally be regarded as fraudulent anywhere else (fractional reserve banking) is not only legal but encouraged by government. There's nothing capitalist about it[0].

[0] https://mises.org/power-market/central-banking-socialism

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A sovereign state in a capitalist society is a capitalist state. A capitalist state always serves, in aggregate, the interests of the capitalist class. Karl Marx showed us how this works 150 years ago and nobody has challenged this part of his analysis to my knowledge.

I am familiar with the delusional American libertarian fantasies, but that's just ideological denial. They haven't done any actual analysis of how a government or state works, or who influences it.

I was referring to capitalism as in "free enterprise" (not as in "anything that happens in a mostly capitalist society"). Many of Marx' central theories were shown to be incorrect (e.g. labor theory of value) and personally, I don't buy the theory of class struggle (it is probably not even a falsifiable theory).

I didn't ask what you thought of "many of Marx's central theories" and I couldn't care less. I meant exactly what I said and I'm right.

And every instance of communism has devolved into authoritarianism.

I take capitalism, thank you

Capitalism is just authoritarianism under corporations, if you think it's so much better then I've got a bridge to sell you

So you think the government should step in to add regulation to ban fractional reserve banking, and that that would be more capitalist? Your Mises link doesn’t even mention the term.

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