Comment by Jensson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Jensson | Hacker News Reader

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> its not necessarily "capitalism". Think about how Myspace was, or early Facebook, that was capitalism but didn't have the same issues.

No thats exactly capitalism, capitalism ensures processes gets more and more efficient over time, as you say previous versions were less efficient at inducing addictive behaviors but capitalism ensured we progressed towards more and more addictive apps and patterns.

Capitalism doesn't mean we start out with the most efficient money extractor, it just moves towards the most efficient money extractor with time unless regulated.

This is well known and a feature, capitalism moves towards efficiency and regulation helps direct that movement so that it helps humanity rather than hurts us. Capitalism would gladly serve you toxic food but regulations ensures they earn more money by giving you nutritious food. Now regulations are lagging a bit there so there is still plenty of toxic food around, but it used to be much worse than now, the main problem with modern food is that people eat too much directly toxic compounds.

That's a type of capitalism. Quakers built plenty of capitalistic entities that were primarily interested in profit but cared more for the long term with more of an eye on social and spiritual purpose. Extractive capitalism doesn't get to pretend its all of capitalism, we just assume that because its been active throughout our entire lifespan.

US hegemony has permitted and encouraged shareholder primacy, hostile takeovers and leveraged buyouts in order to facilitate the growth of its markets. However we'd be blinkered to assume that this is the only way capitalism can be. Its a choice we make and we deserve this outcome where we've enslaved a generation of children to be eye-balls for ad impressions for silicon valley startups.

We could make other choices but then we'd be personally less rich and see less growth. Do we really think those extra zeros in very few people's portfolio's are worth this macabre world we've created?

I judge a system by what it does, not by what it's proponents say it could theoretically do.

Extractive capitalism is real-world capitalism.

but it does that because of US hegemony empowering its equity to be extractive. We've lost a lot of organisations in the UK due to aggressive and leveraged buyouts. That's not necessarily reflective of capitalism as an abstract but geo-political reluctance in regulating its very worst excesses.

I appreciate your position but I can't help but feel like it's like saying cars are crap because they breakdown too easily, when in practice; you're constantly red lining them.

My point is that it doesn't have to be like this, but its a choice that we as society make, and we could choose to not make it.

> That's not necessarily reflective of capitalism as an abstract but geo-political reluctance in regulating its very worst excesses.

That capitalism needs to be regulated or it results in these toxic outcomes is core to capitalism, yes, that is what we are saying. There is no benevolent capitalism without regulations.

> yes, that is what we are saying

its almost as if its what I've been saying the whole time, but adding the context of where the line is, where MySpace seemed healthy and TikTok is unhealthy. Lean startup culture is an equasion that produces sociopathy, I've always hated it and I think its relatively disgusting how it was embraced at the time.

I guess I needed to rail against every type of capitalism at the start for you to appreciate my position earlier.

> I guess I needed to rail against every type of capitalism at the start for you to appreciate my position earlier.

No, your position earlier was wrong according to what you are saying here, you said Facebook and Myspace didn't have these issues so its not capitalisms fault. But Facebook and Myspace existed under much less regulated circumstances than exists today, so your original statement would make it seem you want less regulations and think things will just sort out themselves.

Or do you really think going back to 2005's regulations would fix things because internet was less toxic then? Internet wasn't less toxic then since capitalism was different, internet was less toxic then since it takes time for capitalism to optimize a system.

> But Facebook and Myspace existed under much less regulated circumstances than exists today

sorry, what regulation are you talking about here? Afaik regulation in the US is pretty much the same back then as it is now. Worst case scenarios are usually slap on the wrists like when Snapchat lied to its users about ephemeral messaging and got fined a pathetic amount.

> No, your position earlier was wrong according to what you are saying here

or how about the idea that you've misunderstood my position and instead are shadow-boxing a monsterised impression of me that isn't real.

I just don't like blaming capitalism in the abstract because it doesn't have to be like this. We can change it.

Also on the off chance you lean considerably left, it might help to understand that I have experience of the USSR. So simply saying "capitalism bad" with an implication that we need to tear down the system isn't good enough for me. Been there done that, ancestors deported to Siberia. We could maybe try regulating first?

> I just don't like blaming capitalism in the abstract because it doesn't have to be like this. We can change it.

But saying that Facebook or Myspace wasn't that bad does nothing to support this position, so why did you bring those up?

> So simply saying "capitalism bad" with an implication that we need to tear down the system isn't good enough for me

Read my post, I didn't say "capitalism bad", I said its good from the start. Its you that never understood why I objected to you and not the other way around.

> But saying that Facebook or Myspace wasn't that bad does nothing to support this position, so why did you bring those up?

Because I'm making the argument that lean startup culture is one of the biggest factors in creating this problem and early Facebook and MySpace were around _before_ lean startup culture.

> Its you that never understood why I objected to you and not the other way around.

Oh it only works one way round I see. Por que no los dos?

Lenin described this exact process a century ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism,_the_Highest_Stage...

The 'choice' is an illusion. To quote Lenin, the state becomes the 'executive committee of the financial oligarchy.'

The refusal to regulate isn't a a choice or a policy failure; it's the inevitable outcome of the system.

well my mother was born in the USSR, so I don't have to accept Lenin's position because my people suffered his "inevitable outcome of the system" for the choices he made.

I'd rather fix up this existing system then day dream about a glorious socialist revolution that always seems to end in blood.

What if this current system also always ends in blood, as history has shown so far?

I'd just like us to try regulation first?

Citing Lenin for a critique of capitalism's trajectory is a little bit like asking a prosecutor to write the defense's closing argument. He was a smart guy, but he wasn't some disinterested analyst writing a symposium on capitalism versus socialism; he was a revolutionary leader trying to build up support and justification for overthrowing the system.

But even if we overlook his inherent bias, he was just plain wrong. He wrote that capitalism had reached its final stage through imperialism, and that, as you said, state capture via financial oligarchy was inevitable. That was over 100 years ago, and history has produced welfare states, labor protections, financial regulation, the SEC, Germany's codetermination laws, even the Nordic social democracies. None of those should be possible under Lenin's framework for capitalism.

(Disclaimer: I'm all for common sense regulation of capitalism.)

> Quakers built plenty of capitalistic entities that were primarily interested in profit but cared more for the long term with more of an eye on social and spiritual purpose.

And those were replaced by profit seeking enterprises, that is capitalism. Sure some try to create such benevolent entities, but the profit seeking ones out-competes and replaces them over time, that is how capitalism works.

So you can temporarily have a nice company here and there, but 50 years later likely it got replaced by a profit seeking one. The only way to get pro social behaviors from these is to make pro social acts the most profitable via regulations, but its still a profit seeking enterprise that doesn't try to be benevolent.

yeah that's because we allowed aggressive takeovers, especially leveraged ones. They got replaced by extractive capitalism due to a lack of regulation, not just because "capitalism".

The extractive profit seeking entities don't "out-compete" they just use their capital in unregulated conditions to strip mine economies and poison capitalism to become sociopathy. Letting that happen is a choice, letting it continue is a choice.

Yet if you advocate for regulation you are immediately attacked by billionaires and massive companies and people who think those two groups benefit them more than the regulations protecting them. These groups bring unbelievable sums of money to bear to influence policy and public perception to make sure they are as under-regulated as possible.

“Regulation” is a four letter word in the US. Look at the hostility we see on HN whenever it comes up with AI .

Which is why our democratic systems need to provide solutions because they're places where we still have power. I'm from the UK and an increasing amount of our economy is locked up in exploitive equity extraction, much of it US based. Its really bad in some fields (e.g. care homes, foster homes), where the entities are straddled with such debt that the orgs "have no choice" but to charge sky high rates while paying peanuts. At some point I'm sure it will break and our politicians will "break the rules" in order to reign in private equity and sour their investments.

It used to be the case that we permitted these excesses because they guaranteed our security, but now that recent US governments have shit the bed on that one; there's considerably less of a need to tolerate it.

It's been going on since forever. The first people the British enslaved were their own kind, they just managed to create a society where citizens enjoyed the authority, and naturally the fruits of pillaging half the world did trickle down back then.

If you think about PFI etc. and how those contracts were crafted, it's no different to what happened to the UK's oil. That didn't eventually go to the citizens like Norway. Every last bit of the UK is being extracted now.

> The extractive profit seeking entities don't "out-compete" they just use their capital in unregulated conditions to strip mine economies and poison capitalism to become sociopathy

So they did out-compete them? You saying they won using unfair ways doesn't change the fact that they out-competed the other companies.

Capitalism will use any means available to out compete others, I don't understand why you try to argue against this. You just say "but if we restrict the means available its fine", that means you agree with me, so I am not sure what you disagree with.

> So they did out-compete them?

Having more money doesn't necessarily mean "out-compete". Its not that they're delivering a better product, more loyal customers or better branding. Its simply that they put down more capital at a given point, and were allowed to buy the company, despite its owners not wanting to sell. In most cases they didn't even have money, its simply because they obtained significant financing from money brokers by selling them on plans of sociopathy.

> I don't understand why you try to argue against this.

because you're trying to squash this into "capitalism bad". We get to make choices, we're making shit choices. You don't have to upend the whole system to undo these choices, you just have to have the spine to regulate and break up existing structures.

> because you're trying to squash this into "capitalism bad".

I never said "capitalism bad", I said it optimizes for profits and that it gets better at that over time, that is not bad or good, that is just what it does.

You're not describing capitalism, you're describing managerialism with a manager-evaluation function of profit.

Managers do not need to be evaluated by EPS, but when you are a public company with diffuse shareholders (who are the actual "capitalists", and who include any of use with a 401k or pension), that's an easy one for people to agree on. Also, when your society gives up on the restraints of (in our case) Judeao-Christian values and say "we're just overgrown apes", well, then you get HBS style of management, because there's nothing restraining acting "because we can". I think we have a spiritual crisis more than an economic system crisis.

The VOC and EIC would like a word. While under these so-called 'Judeo-Christian values' Europe was wildly antisemitic, colonised most of the known world, and subjugated, genocided, and enslaved indigenous populations. The UK even wrote a slave bible. Slavery in the US also happened while these 'values' were held in high regard.

If your personal religious beliefs help you be a good person then that's great for you, keep believing. But historically it doesn't appear that more religious societies are more moral societies.

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