Comment by throw__away7391 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throw__away7391 | Hacker News Reader

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throw__away7391

> The concept of a corporation is fundamentally unjust.

No it is not.

The benefits of the current system are enormous, incomprehensibly enormous. The quality of life enjoyed by the average person even in developing countries would have been unimaginable by many measures to people living just a few centuries ago.

All the little first world boys whining on social media are perfectly happy to have clean water to drink, electricity on demand, video games to play, food to magically show up in their local grocery, roads to travel on—all these things that require the coordinated work of billions are just happen and are assumed to happen, there is never a complaint that their garbage is collected on schedule or that fresh fruits have been cultivated and harvested and shipped from the other side of the world for their enjoyment.

It is only when:

- they are asked to contribute something back to this system

or especially when

- someone else has more than them

That they decide a grave injustice is being committed.

> The benefits of the current system are enormous, incomprehensibly enormous.

I completely disagree. You're conflating the benefits of technological innovation which are substantial with the benefits of socio-economic and legal 'innovation' which are non-existent and in fact negative.

It's like there is a really good horse but it's covered in parasites; e.g. ticks and you're praising the parasites for helping the horse win the race. It won in spite of the ticks, not because of them.

If you look at the west (e.g. US, Europe) in the 1800s and 1900s, most families could buy a nice house with land on just one income without even taking on debt. They could achieve this even while there were world wars going on and far less advanced technology than we have today.

The narrative about things improving for developing countries (or any other country) is nonsense. It's thinly veiled propaganda, just like ESG and Wokeism. If things were improving in developing countries, why would people from these countries be trying to immigrate to the west in unprecedented numbers today, even while the west itself is clearly declining? The GDP per capita of essentially all African countries is as low as ever. Only China has been doing well; but that's only because the west gave them a monopoly on manufacturing at its own expense due to short term thinking; which happens to be incentivized by corporate bonus structures in the west.

I don't even want to start talking about the media and how it interacts with big corporations and big government... But it would explain why you think everything is going great; all while an increasing number of people, highly skilled people are living in poverty. The level of deception in the media is unlike anything we've ever experienced before.

> The benefits of the current system are enormous, incomprehensibly enormous.

Sure. What are the drawbacks? Where are the opportunities for improvement?

Also, you provided a list of things we enjoy today that you're presumably attributing to capitalism. But clean water and roads are usually provided by governments, and electricity and garbage collection (in the US) are generally in a weird liminal space where it's usually corporations but they're heavily regulated (and there's usually some political corruption at the interface between the corporations and the regulators). Our modern food distribution system is a marvel, but it depends on the exploitation of a poorly paid underclass of often undocumented migrant workers to do much of the farm labor. And video games are nice, although some corporations are trying to turn video games into weird casinos (see: lootboxes).

Claiming that the status quo is great and critics are being merely self-interested is deliberately turning a blind eye to the many drawbacks, flaws, and areas that can be improved with the current system. "We have clean water now; DO YOU HATE CLEAN WATER?!" is a disingenuous, bad faith argument. It's the "We should improve society somewhat" comic.

The status quo is that the quality of life for nearly everyone in the planet is improving faster than it ever has before in history and the rate of the improvement is accelerating as well.

I am living in a country which currently has a “socialist” government who have made a big show recently of implementing anti-capitalist policies to stick it to the greedy rich. We do not have clean water. I need to buy bottled water for drinking/cooking. The situation is getting worse as these policies come into effect. The government can’t do shit without someone to pay for it.

This is a fantasy land where you take your pick of attributes from different countries and pretend you can have all the things you want without giving anything up and all the money is going to come from other people.

The situation is like the anti-vaxers living in a protected bubble while simultaneously blaming it for all their problems.

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