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Comment by bequanna | Hacker News Reader

One explanation I've found pretty accurate: When the young start to become educated (late teens, early 20's) they face the realization that they will be entering the world on the bottom of the economic totem pole.

There are two primary responses to this:

1. Realize that the real world is competitive and difficult and much self-improvement and hard work will be needed to thrive. These people put their heads down and get to work.

2. Refusal to address the truth of #1. Frame the real world as some unwinnable game to avoid putting in the required effort to succeed. Distract yourself with structural problems (real or imaginary) far too big for you to have any effect on but keep you from the painful self-improvement that is really needed.

Communism preys on the people who are susceptible to the second path.

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Sort of. I think it's more nuanced than that.

Communism rebalances the relative worth of people in society. I.e. my grandfather, an engineer, earned less than a factory worker. An average or passing artist could earn a decent living in the Soviet Union, compared to having scraps today (in relative terms).

I notice this calculus as I have an artistic career and a software career. I would like to pursue the artistic career (and am actually pretty good at it), but I would make many multiples less than I currently do in software. This is partly because of how we've financialized/structured the economy (i.e. software monopolies should have been broken up, taxes imposed, etc), not because the work is actually worth less in some sense.

Right, this is the kind of seductive but ultimately unrealistic kind of thinking that ropes in the vulnerable.

Shouldn't people be incentivized to pursue work that they are good at, enjoy AND which society actually demands?

If good art is rare and in higher demand, good artists will be able to demand higher pay. If good art is in high supply because many people prefer the artist lifestyle, artists will not be able to demand as high of pay. Both of these situations seem perfectly reasonable to me.

Sort of, but not really. There is a prisoner's dilemma here. People would like [better public transit, more art, you name it], but what's actually produced (and rewarded) doesn't completely overlap with what people want. It overlaps mainly with what _rich_ people want, which is different.

The reason investment bankers are paid well is that they make money _for rich people_. If you look at any professions, the closer you are to the money source and to the rich, the more you make.

Rich people want to stay rich in relative terms, not in absolute terms - something people always forget (because that makes them able to command other people's time and make other people "dance" for them, not buy gadgets or luxury goods which don't matter anyway).

I.e. I would argue that a lot of things that command a high income in the U.S. are actually net-negative for society overall (if we look at the value not in $ value, but in human value). Extracting monopolistic rents, for example. Slumlording. Speculating in Bitcoin. The list is long if you want to really make it.

> not because the work is actually worth less in some sense.

It depends on how you define value. If you mean value in terms of how much money you receive, you actually need other people to agree that what you're doing is worthwhile.

If you only care about the feelings that YOU get from doing the work (which is totally OK) your work is still valuable, but don't expect others to provide you value in the form of money when you provided them nothing.

In other words, I'm cool with you being an artist. But you can't force me to pay you for your art if I don't want it.

You're not paying for my software engineering either, at least not directly. In fact, you don't have a choice about it. It's included in the markup of the products you purchase - in all of them.

In fact, if you had a choice, if we sold software services the way we sell art today, software salaries would go way down (in fact, someone could increase revenues for a company by making it impossible for you to unsubscribe. If that's not anti-value, I don't know what is. In fact, it's so bad that we even have to pass laws to outlaw it). Same for medicine and many other things - the financialization and obscurity of the actual source of the money is part of what allows this whole thing to continue.

My point is that money is a very imperfect proxy for what people find valuable - frequently the things we spend the most money on are not a free market. And the closer you look, the more imperfect it gets.

Someone would happily buy a house that's half the size of most on the market (or less) - unfortunately, such houses are prohibited by regulation. So they are forced to choose between buying twice the house at twice the cost or renting.

It sort of works when you're comparing product A to product B at the store. When you're comparing parts of the economy, there are much greater forces and distortions at work.

An average artist who toed the party line. Let's not forget about "degenerate art" and all the other censorship.

There were an estimated 7 to 12 million casualties during the war, mostly civilians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Civil_War).

A total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag not including labor colonies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet...).

The Communists didn't prey in some vaguely psychological sense, they physically exterminated anyone who disagreed.

1. 1,053,829 is from https://sovietinfo.tripod.com/GTY-Penal_System.pdf. Which has no source on the claimed number.

2. USSR had no extermination camps (unlike the NAZIs), GULAG was a prison system no different from the US Prison system today.

Tell me you have no ancestors from the USSR without telling me.

Meanwhile, capitalism preys on people who are convinced that if it weren't for the moochers and layabouts and undeserving holding them back, they would have a life of wealth and respect.

Joe the Plumber was the poster child for this, a decade ago.

So, the types are:

1. Keep your head down, work hard and humbly, be a good little serf.

2. Say "screw this", realise there's a ton of wealth in the world and the leeches are taking it all, push for some changes that might actually make a difference in the world.

Capitalism preys on the people who are susceptible to the first path.

Or you know you could work towards owning your own business. There are many pathways to get there, more than in any other country.

If you can’t beat ‘em join em

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