Comment by loudmax | Hacker News Reader

Comment by loudmax | Hacker News Reader

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> Can we just admit once and for all that it's going to be the norm under capitalism to not have Nice Things?

Capitalism, as opposed to what economic model?

Capitalism (or more precisely, a competitive free market form of capitalism) has proved extremely successful at producing material wealth. Automobiles, clothing, toaster ovens, food, all of these are Nice Things to have. Command economies have consistently failed to produce material wealth at the scale of free market economies.

Capitalism has not been successful at producing other Nice Things, such as justice and equality, or a social safety net for people who happen to run into bad luck. If you have any kind of ethical compass and you care about these things, you should want other social structures like governments that are accountable to the people and so on.

Democracy and the welfare state aren't alternatives to capitalism, these are non-economic models. They can exist with or without capitalism.

Capitalism can't be the only organizing force in society, unless you're prepared to abandon morality. But if your stance is not to have capitalism at all, what economic model would you propose in its place?

> Capitalism, as opposed to what economic model?

Let's look at what's currently working, which is China's hybrid model of keeping hard checks and bounds on instances of capitalism coupled with a long term vision that benefits its society instead of its uber wealthy.

China's kicking our asses in energy production, and they leverage AI and tech in general in socially beneficial ways.

It turns out when you set meaningful goals and punish abusers, the goals can be achieved.

Instead in the US we have "but if we raise taxes, the rich will leave" types of nonsense while any reporting on China is through a heavily biased lens, brought to us by bought-and-paid-for capitalist media outlets:

https://old.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/1lvoi0x/theres_a...

An enormous amount of China's economic progress since the 1980's is the result of Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms. These reforms were essentially to move away from Communism and allow free markets. Much of the early games were simply making up ground that they lost during Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward.

China has some reasonably good industrial policies, like pushing for developing their own solar panels. Obama tried to push for solar development in his first term, but Republicans threw a fit and the US had to abandon that effort. Industrial policy is hard to get right, and a lot of that effort is wasted. China's record there is mixed and it's not clear that the CCP's interventions have caused more good than harm for their economy.

Chinese individuals have very little power to stand in the way of development. The benefit, such as it is, is that China can ignore NIMBY type groups that prevent coal plants from being built in their neighborhoods. The downside is widescale pollution and abhorrent working conditions for millions of Chinese laborers.

Authoritarians like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, or wanna-be authoritarians like Donald Trump, claim to work for the benefit of the long term interest their countries. They lie. In all of these cases, they're enriching themselves and their cronies at the expense of the nations they rule.

That's a lot of words to talk around the hard evidence that I linked above. The results speak for themselves.

The person you're replying to isn't at the opposite of your stance. They complimented China on several occasions. All they did was add more nuance and bring up the fact that these benefits may come at a cost. Authoritarian governments can be very well-managed and efficient (something something trains run on time), but there's nothing to stop them if that efficiency starts being used against you. This isn't just about western-style capitalism vs. semi-planned Chinese capitalism, it's also one-party authoritarianism vs democracy. You just tossed a crass, ideological one-liner back at them, as if "big number = very good" with no nuance refutes what they said.

China does some things right. Our current system encourages deception, abuse and rent-seeking. But that doesn't mean that there's no self-serving interests in China or that we should follow them like a perfect ideological beacon. There's got to be more options to tame our system than full authoritarianism.

> All they did was add more nuance and bring up the fact that these benefits may come at a cost. Authoritarian governments can be very well-managed and efficient (something something trains run on time), but there's nothing to stop them if that efficiency starts being used against you.

Have...you been following the recent events in the US? And/or forgotten what the OP is about? Also, I'm not arguing for full authoritarianism. Just pointing out the tradeoffs in China compared to our crumbling empire.

Maybe we should couple China's benefits with the more democratic looking solution they found in Taiwan:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/17/audrey...

https://www.plurality.net/

Respectfully, you should follow recent events in TW and realized they're slightly behind or slightly ahead of US in political shitshow schedule, and it's no small part due to Audrey Tang / DPP crafting a pro/anti PRC culture war political machine that exploded into great recall drama last month... which contained some not very democratic tactics by DPP (Tang's party). TLDR is DPP thought they could sustain domestic politics by hammering antiPRC narratives without delivering on the home/economy front... and eventually constituents saw through the bullshit when they realized mainstreet was not improving and political system likely not capable of delivering mainstreet improvement. It actually maps pretty aptly to US situation, except instead of rotating through villlians TW/DPP had the luxury of just focusing on PRC for a few years post HK crackdown. But now TWers realize villainizing PRC (however legitimate) hasn't actually improved their economic well being. Something I think US will learn eventually too, as in there's probably "legitimate" reasons for US to villainize PRC for geopolitical competition, but unless US policies deliver on the homefront, it's only going to distract for so long, i.e.make the underlying economic system is work for masses.

I will be interested to read about lessons learned from all perspectives. As it stands, the open systems they built have successfully addressed longstanding gridlock with tangible legislative results that benefit ordinary citizens. Surely there have been competing interests along the way to set them off course, but I trust they will prevail.

>open systems they built have successfully addressed longstanding gridlock

TW democratization started in 90s, the system is young by democratic standards, IMO more accurate to say sufficient time has passed that TW system has now accumulated gridlock problems like other consolidated democracies which partisan politics are increasingly unable to resolve. Hence partisan brawls, long delays in budget bills, stalled constitutional reforms. The patient is getting sicker.

On one hand, the recall failure is sign that system is working, on the other hand it's your generic democracy is referendum on incumbent, i.e. voters can express dissatisfaction of party in power, but that really doesn't resolve the underlying problem that structurally intractable issues likely also can't be resolved by alternate parties because addressing them is too politically costly - switching leadership will get you back to square one because no party can square the political calculus of doing difficult things without rapidly losing power. So they don't, choosing to slowly bleeding power as voters get disenfranchised and realize there is no change coming. Which is not to say they can't, but IMO one of the reasons why norm under capitalism to not have Nice Things.

Your second paragraph suggests you don't have any familiarity with the novel design of the digital systems that were built to work around the inadequacies you described.

> you should follow recent events in TW

Nearly impossible for anyone who isn't proficient in Mandarin to do this. Western journalists tend to be extremely biased in favour of the DPP, because DPP's anti-PRC rhetoric aligns with the West's own anti-PRC biases.

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