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Comment by bbor | Hacker News Reader

I see where you're coming from on a methodological level, but

1. Capitalists control our society, and live completely different lives than the rest. A typical CEO is certainly quite privileged, and may even work their way up to true wealth eventually! But at the end of the day, they're still clocking in for at least 40 hours a week to do something they'd rather not do, and their life would be completely upended if they had to stop working for some reason. The difference between Pichai and Bezos dwarfs the difference between Pichai and me for these reasons, IMO.

2. Capitalists directly control ~50% of the capital in the US last time I checked. It makes sense to split any given pie in half IMO, at least to start!

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“The difference between Pichai and Bezos dwarfs the difference between Pichai and me”

I don’t understand: Pichai is a billionaire.

If you consider it in absolute values it makes sense. Bezos could give me a billion dollars which would match my wealth with Pichai's, and he'd still have 199 billion dollars

Yes, if you have a billion dollars then in terms of wealth Pichai is closer to you than to Bezos. But if you’re a typical HN reader (level 4 or 5), the difference between you and Pichai is pretty much infinite, while Pichai and Bezos are almost the same (relative to you): both are ultra rich.

How do you define "capitalists", in this context?

Probably the way it’s always been defined: those that own capital.

Yup, exactly this! To clarify a bit more for the lurkers:

Obviously the line can be hard to draw for most (intentionally so, even!), but at the end of the day there’s people who work for their living and people who invest for their living. Besides not having to work, investors are very intentionally & explicitly tasked with directing society.

Being raised in the US, I often assumed that “capitalism” meant “a system that involves markets”, or perhaps even “a system with personal freedom”. In reality, it’s much drier and more obvious: capitalism is a system where the capitalists rule, just like the monarchs of monarchism or the theocrats of theocracy. There are many possible market-based systems that don’t have the same notion of personal property and investment that we do.

Ah, that might explain some communication issues I've had.

Looking it up, it seems that marxists use the word "capitalists" to refer to the class of owners of capital. I've always used "capitalist" to refer to a market-led country or to people who believe in capitalism. My dictionary helpfully uses "capitalist" to mean anything related to capitalism.

At the very least, I'll have learnt something from this conversation :)

Lots of followers of capitalism fancy themselves capitalists, as supporters of a system that could enable them to themselves own capital - which feels like an even playing field in terms of possibility for the future. But they are not capitalists and have nothing in common with the ones they idolize. There is an in between sense of the word where people apply the label aspirationally.

>Capitalists control our society, and live completely different lives than the rest.

Also, the Capitalists are good at keeping thing hidden from us. For example, we do not know how they arrive on Earth. I certainly don't believe they aren't born to a mother and a father like the rest of us.

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