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Comment by robertlagrant | Hacker News Reader

> It's capitalism's fault for valuing workers only for the cost of their labor and nothing else.

Sigh. The value you're talking about here is the cost of their labour. This is like a business owner saying that employees should value their jobs differently to their salary.

You're right in the sense that capitalism is fundamentally "people make agreements and decisions within what's available to them" but what's the actual issue you want capitalism to solve, that doesn't create one of the massive downsides that any of capitalism's former rivals has?

E.g. monarchy can reward loyalty, but then so can capitalism. Monarchy can just also tell you to go die on a field if you don't kill the other king's people.

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> Monarchy can just also tell you to go die on a field if you don't kill the other king's people.

What makes you think that capitalism won't do the same to you? Capitalist[1] societies engage in pointless, bloody wars all the time.

[1] And communist, and other -ist.

The society isn't capitalist. The economy is capitalist.

Unlike monarchy/communism/fuedalism etc where power and resource allocation are by necessity mostly centralised, capitalism can (and wants to) be divorced from power, and only do resource allocation. Constant realigning it with power (e.g. regulatory capture) is what corrupts it.

The sort of (limited) power capitalism creates is by creating value in some way: labour, capital, contacts, resources. It's not derived from strength, unlike the other methods.

Of course a government, that is fundamentally derived from strength, and must be, can still fight wars. It can do it much better in fact because its economy was organised by the most efficient manner anyone's ever discovered, and so there's a surplus to tax and an efficient economy to flow requirements through.

Capitalism doesn't have desires outside of those of the people who participate in it that hold the most power. The desire of those people is more power. Not resource allocation as an ends, but as a means to more profit.

It has been shown time and time again that the majority of the powerful players in a Capitalist economy inherited their wealth or opportunities.

Capitalism can only function in an economy if a government allows it by setting up the necessary structures and allowing private property ownership.

Society can certainly be Capitalist by extension of the economy being Capitalist due to policies and strucutes set up by goverments.

> what's the actual issue you want capitalism to solve

Seeing as it's more or less the de facto world order it should ideally solve global alignment for the long term wellbeing of Earth-borne life

The difference is capitalism is bottom up. It has no top-downness, and would rather individual people and groups of people made agreements between themselves. That's why it can never usefully be described as a "world order".

That doesn't align well with efficiency or top-down world political agreements. But it has lifted more people out of poverty faster than any other system in history.

The absence of global coherence does not mean it cannot be described as a world order, it just means it's not optimizing for long term success. If we'd like to continue lifting people out of poverty and give future life a fighting chance, we ought to find a coherent system.

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