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Comment by robertlagrant | Hacker News Reader

This isn't exactly untrue, although the numbers are off, I think, but no one seems to invented a better alternative. If you have money because you stole it from your citizens, or because you sent your serfs to die in a war, that's infinitely worse than because you did something someone else thought was valuable and they paid you for it.

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Only very few people are asking for a completely different system, they usually demand fine-tuning the system so that it improves median life quality.

It used to be that the philosophy before was to have the least amount of intervention on the free market, and it's now that there should be no interventions whatsoever. Isn't that an extreme position?

There is probably no country in the world with no intervention, or even close. In fact, there are massive intervention in pretty much every country.

Actual lassez-faire economies was mostly a thing in the 19th century.

Since then, regulatations have been accumulating constantly, and total government spending increased to GDP increased from about 10% to 35-75% in most if not all western countries.

Yes, but many of these have one form or another of "take from the middle class and give to everyone else".

I wasn't arguing that governments don't do anything, it's that they don't do enough to limit the size if the parasitic rich class, while the original post was saying that this is the best system we've got.

> limit the size if the parasitic rich class

Do you consider it ok to dehumanize your fellow humans by comparing them to parasites?

Also, how can you be so sure that the metaphor even works? Do you truely believe that everyone else would be better off if the top 0.1% richest people in the world had never been born, and never started all those big companies they own?

Because that's what it means to be a "parasite". To consume resources you have no part in creating.

Or is the word "parasictic" ONLY used as a means to dehumanize a group you detest, without even being meant to be seen as a metaphor?

I don't mind having a discussion about how to best distribute the economic output of the economy, but calling one group or another parasites is not a good start.

> no one seems to invented a better alternative

There has been myriads of alternatives experimented in the 200,000+ years humans have been a thing. Many ancient societies didn't have the concept of property. Others did, but burned everything someone possessed when they died, ensuring a level playing field at each generation. Most ancient societies didn't have any hierarchy at all. The concept of anyone being the boss of anyone else is extremely recent.

We marvel at our modern world but what does it give us? Does it make us happy?

> The concept of anyone being the boss of anyone else is extremely recent.

My guts tell me it's as old as humankind. Citation?

> The freedom to abandon one’s community, knowing one will be welcomed in faraway lands; the freedom to shift back and forth between social structures, depending on the time of year; the freedom to disobey authorities without consequence – all appear to have been simply assumed among our distant ancestors, even if most people find them barely conceivable today. Humans may not have begun their history in a state of primordial innocence, but they do appear to have begun it with a self-conscious aversion to being told what to do. (...) the real puzzle is not when chiefs, or even kings and queens, first appeared, but rather when it was no longer possible simply to laugh them out of court.

The Dawn of Everything, 2020

Thanks for the citation, interesting, especially as this book is on my to-read-list.

On the other hand eeh... nice words but I don't buy this. Even animal groups has leaders and leaving/abandoning community probably meant death, not freedom. There is a reason why we think so much about what others think about us. One of the greatest survivor skill is to be able to fit into your community.

Is there any evidence of this? How do we know they felt self-conscious?

Even if you did invent a better alternative, do you think you would get a fair hearing, given how mainstream/corporate media is organised and operated?

Actually, do you think there is anyone with any substance and influence out there trying to even invent a better alternative? All I see is culture wars/left vs right nonsense, but maybe I am out of touch.

Sure, if this is the best possible of all worlds then we should be happy, but is it really? Seems defeatist to think so. Are there economies which function in a healthier way than this? Do you remember the early days of computing, before the big money got tipped off?

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