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Comment by cogman10 | Hacker News Reader

> Markets can't decide "families can have only one child"

Actually they can. It's part of the reason why a lot of capitalist nations are seeing major problems with population stagnation and possibly shrinkage.

The problem is markets don't care at all about society. If they can require that every member of a household has to work and extract all their money as efficiently as possible, then they leave little room for society to have families.

Capitalism is geared towards minimizing workers' free time. And, unfortunately, free time is how babies get made and kids get raised.

That is where western capitalism is failing. Shouting louder and young adults to pull on bootstraps harder isn't making them have kids in their studio apartments.

South Korea and Japan are 2 examples of this train-wreck that's coming for the US and other nations.

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> If they can require that every member of a household has to work and extract all their money as efficiently as possible, then they leave little room for society to have families.

This ascribes an agency to capitalism that doesn’t exist.

The families themselves make the choices to have more or fewer children.

Capitalism says nothing about free time. Make the connection in your argument - people without enough money work as much as they can, maybe… but I still don’t see the lower wage people I know working 16 hour days. In fact it is the people who have a use for the extra money, usually to buy free time later, as one would expect in a capitalistic system.

> This ascribes an agency to capitalism that doesn’t exist.

Oh no, it really doesn't.

Captialism is everyone working to maximize profit. It's the lack of foresight on social problems and pressures in capitalism that leads to exactly this problem.

> The families themselves make the choices to have more or fewer children.

Right, because of the pressure of a capitalist society. People can be priced out of having children if necessities like food, housing, and clothing price them out of being able to take care of a child.

> Capitalism says nothing about free time.

Capitalism is about maximizing profit. A direct path towards that is paying employees the minimal amount and having them work the most hours to extract the maximum amount of value from them.

Before mass unionization, 60 or 80 hour workweeks were pretty common in the US. Even today, we see companies that use salaried employees as a way to make employees work longer hours.

If overtime wasn't so expensive, you could bet that McDonalds would have people working 12 hour shifts. Hospitals already do that to nurses.

> capitalism is everyone working to maximize profit

This is nonsense. Capitalism is about the private ownership of productive stuff, i.e. capital. That’s it. Profit is a corollary, and one that is bounded by preferences and tastes.

That completely ignores the coercive law of competition.

"Accumulate! Accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets."

- Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1

> completely ignores the coercive law of competition

Not a forcing function unless you’re levered. Competition can’t push your return on a productive asset below zero (by definition), just lower by increasing the value of said asset while reducing the cash flows from it.

`Not a forcing function unless you’re levered`; but every one is levered, you aren't born with all the housing, food, and water you'll need for the rest of your life. Everyone is born with a net negative of the necessities of life, the difference though is that a very small minority are bequeathed this by well heeled ancestors. But for the overwhelming majority there is a life long struggle to afford to live a suitable life.

> but every one is levered, you aren't born with all the housing, food, and water you'll need for the rest of your life

This is not leverage.

> Everyone is born with a net negative of the necessities of life, the difference though is that a very small minority are bequeathed this by well heeled ancestors

By your definition, no, they too are born in entropic deficit, it's just satisfied immediately by their parents. (This is how humans work.)

Out-competing yields rewards for effort, that doesn't make it necessary. All that's necessary is maintaining. Many small businesses coast by for 30 years with no aspiration to do more.

Japan has had stagnant GDP growth for decades. Growth is not "necessary" as socialist like to project, it's just better. Productivity/innovation increases through growth have drastically improved our quality of life. Meanwhile socialists treat the world as zero-sum, as though everyone started out with a pile of cash which gets divvied up. Redistribution can be good, but you first need to generate the wealth.

>This ascribes an agency to capitalism that doesn’t exist.

You may find this marvelous piece enlightening:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

You are reading something that doesnt exist. Scott is 100% a capitalist and this piece has nothing to do with capitalism and does not does make any claim that capitalism requires non stop growth. It does talk about how people are greedy but that has nothing to do with capitalism. Capitalism works because it embraces greed and uses it to make society at large better off. That doesnt mean non stop growth is a requirement, it is a goal of people that needs to be balanced with other goals.

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