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Comment by Yodel0914 | Hacker News Reader

Capitalism has its problems, for sure, but it is the only system in history that has raised the majority of people out of abject poverty. Even Marx recognized this, which is why capitalism is a necessary step on the path to Marx's communism.

And of course Marx was seeing capitalism before it had done the majority of the good it has done over the past ~200 years.

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I lived in capitalism for 50 years. I’ve seen hyper capitalism reduce or remove education, devalue income and Labor, force people to work two or three jobs to survive barely. That’s in a western society where capitalism is supposed to work.

If anyone thinks the good it did is anything but an accident I expect some people will be really surprised when it turns out how bad things are.

At this point it’s ignorant to not see how much damage it has done. But okay. Keep riding the dead horse.

I apologize if I'm wrong, but "3 jobs to survive" sounds like you're living in the US. I don't think equating the US political and economic system with "capitalism" is particularly useful - it is a capitalistic society, for sure, but it is far from the only one.

The US is, for whatever reason, accepts extremes of both wealth and poverty. Many other capitalistic societies choose a different mix, sacrificing the upper extremes to protect against the lower extremes.

Nope, we are talking about Europe.

First it giveth, then it taketh away.....Well it's all relative to where and when. From the perspective of someone in PRC, participating in markets and having some form of capitalism helped. Deng literally lifted China out from Up the Mountains down to the Countryside into the cities and into everyones homes. We've just lived long enough to see things deteriorate. Nothing goes straight up forever, life is stochastic.

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