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Comment by vorpalhex | Hacker News Reader

Every major communist country has been left in the dust by capitalist ones. Poverty is at a historical low.

We have gone from people dying from starvation to complaining that not everyone can buy a house. Nearly everyone has a universally connected borderline supercomputer in their pocket.

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> complaining that not everyone can buy a house

In my ex-Soviet country you were guaranteed to get a free apartment provided by the government. Everyone I know who lived in a city got one, right up to 1991. All you needed to do was to register in a queue and wait for a few years (2-5 depending on several factors like family status — single moms were prioritized, for example). Now we're complaining that "not everyone" can buy an apartment (forget a house), just like you. Not just "not everyone", it's out of reach for most people, and things keep getting worse. At least we have jeans and burgers instead, I guess.

Housing is the cause of 90% of the problems in the west, and that's driven by democratic policies to restrict the supply, not by capitalism.

Yeah. Capitalism would have built a ton the types of apartments the GP is talking about if they were allowed. But, people who already have a place don't want that type of development near them.

Poverty has indeed been decreasing most places, but your framing is very misleading. Half of the people on earth still live on less than $7/day in 2017 PPP dollars, and they are not universally connected or supercomputing. Over 8% of the global population is still below the $2.15/day PPP threshold that defines “extreme poverty”, which means it’s not enough money to purchase enough food to survive, literally still dying from starvation. Note that’s around twice the population of the US. https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/opendata/march-2023-global-po...

I'm not disagreeing with you that people are definitely struggling, but it's hard to see numbers like what you present w/o also numbers on what it cost to live per day. Is it an extreme case of CA vs WV or is it like someone making $7/day living in CA?

This isn’t primarily the US, this is global extreme poverty, and right now for example, it’s bad in Southern Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, among one or two other places the UN & World Bank talk about.

> w/o also numbers on what it cost to live per day.

This is what “PPP” is all about, that’s referring to a normalized purchasing power parity that is specifically designed to help you understand what $7/day actually means: it means what you think it does, and it is supposed to compare directly to the amount of money it costs you to feed yourself every day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity

Communism is so terrible as a system of government that the U.S. has seen fit to forcefully intervene every time it’s been attempted.

Everyone is free to their own opinions, of course – and I’m not wholesale defending communism as it has been attempted – but I find it odd that something which is supposedly so awful can’t just be left alone to wither on the vine, and prove their point.

> Communism is so terrible as a system of government that the U.S. has seen fit to forcefully intervene every time it’s been attempted.

not exactly

the US and communist Russia were allies in WW2; the US did intervene in Korea and Vietnam but that was about maintaining a global edge over Russia -- Americans didn't give a fuck about whether it was good or bad for the people of Vietnam

Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan were communist.

Chile and Nicaragua are examples of when the US intervened to overthrough a democratically elected communist government.

You forgot Cuba.

Right, Cuba. The tiny island the US is obsessed about.

Cuba actually outperforms its non-communist former slave colony neighbors (Jamaica, DR, Haiti), which is especially impressive considering the never-ending sanctions from the US.

This is a ridiculous mix of statements! I don't care how many people have 'supercomputer' in their pockets. On other hand homelessness is rampant in USA/Canada and that's a major fail of the capitalism.

>On other hand homelessness is rampant in USA/Canada and that's a major fail of the capitalism.

Meanwhile in capitalist China[1], they're so great at building homes that there are entire cities with barely anyone living in them, "ghost cities". Insofar as a tight housing market contributes to homelessness, it's clear that it's caused by US/Canada specific factors (eg. NIMBYism, building codes, and environmental regulations) than capitalism.

[1] Even though ostensibly it's "socialist with chinese characteristics", for all intents and purposes the real estate sector is capitalist.

there isn't a problem with homelessness in China

but you are right that the capitalist market does restrict the supply of housing because people buy them as investments

also, the ghost cities is way overblown -- they just took time to fill up

Homelessness due to mental illness and drug addiction

Fentanyl and meth imported from China and other countries

EDIT: For naive downvoters. It is an observable fact. Drugs are destroying people and causing homelessness. I have witnessed it first hand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5AeGKSDVdE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwlIAjcYypA

Look up "Philadelphia zombies"

rejecting capitalism doesn't equal embracing communism -- esp not communism as implemented in Russia and China

the main reason why the US became the uncontested power of the 20th century was WW1 and WW2

the socialist policies implemented by FDR saved the capitalism by making it less capitalist

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