Comment by stavros | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stavros | Hacker News Reader

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Sure, wealth accumulation is limited to a subset of the population there, but this is true everywhere. The reasoning error here is thinking in terms of absolute incomes across the group, rather than the relative incomes of the members.

Yes, people in the US make more money, on average, than the average Ghanaian, but the relative incomes of a family are just as disparate as those of Ghanaians. If someone in the US gets a better job, the whole family doesn't suddenly also get better jobs.

This is why the kinship system is so economically counterproductive: The collective expectation effectively levels everyone down; any individual who begins to accumulate wealth faces pressure to redistribute it across the group. Nobody can grow their fortune, because that requires both having some fortune initially and being able to make investments that compound it. If the kinship group makes sure your fortune can't increase, any compounding you manage to do doesn't matter, because the initial capital always stays small.

It seems this only matters in economic systems with compound interest, like capitalism.

In gift economies, all these distinctions are meaningless. The bounty of a funeral would be a direct representation of the deceased's popularity (likely established through their generosity) as well as their family's ability to convice people to e.g. spend time making s beautiful coffin, bring food, play music.

> economic systems with compound interest

You mean like reality? The power law exists. Runaway growth is natural. Or would you claim that planets and stars are secretly capitalists?

This is stretching a metaphor way beyond anything plausible. Fusion in a sun is a positive feedback loop therefore... Compound interest is natural?

It's not even a good metaphor since a star is mostly a stable system. The better metaphor for human economic systems is life itself, and in life, positive feedback loops lead to things like ecosystem killing algae blooms or cancer.

Infinite growth through positive feedback loop is natural, exponential decay is natural (radioactive decay), but the thing that supports life best is homeostasis. In which case this culture's tendency to prevent wealth hoarding is actually long term the better solution than capitalist endless wealth accumulation.

This is mostly just capitalist normativism. In reality capitalism is young. Describing it as a natural order of things is like a kid born in 2002 calling TSA in airports a fundamental reality, after all, you can't have airports without TSA!

The economies mentioned in the article are capitalist economies.

Yes, the State economy is capitalist, but the family groups are clearly operating under some kind of Communism. The article itself mentions it - "nothing you own is actually yours, everything is owned by the family." Thus wealth accumulation not really being possible, a hallmark of a communistic economy.

This is my experience with extremely rural areas or tightly knit / kinship / indigenous cultures as well. They happen to live on territory within a given State that's inevitably capitalist because the entire world is, but take a closer look and you'll realize it's almost an entirely different country within the village. A local example to me: everyone assumes the tribal leaders of Taiwanese indigenous towns are super wealthy landowners because their name is on every lot and house in the village. The reality: the villages own everything in common, and when government officials show up asking who owns what, the villages don't really know how to answer, so the government official then asks "ok well who's the leader?" And then getting that answer, just puts that name down for everything.

Edit: oh I see what you mean, right now, people are using cash to pay for e.g. the DJ. Yes, probably true because it's literally costing them money. My point there was that it's possible that an older tradition from a pre capitalist system that worked fine then is not compatible with how capitalism works. Many things aren't.

This "tradition" isn't possible without refrigeration technology to delay the burial. It is a modern aberration.

> My point there was that it's possible that an older tradition from a pre capitalist system that worked fine then is not compatible with how capitalism works. Many things aren't.

Oh, yes, agreed there. I can imagine that these communities were very insular in the past, so there wasn't really anything to own that wasn't what they could immediately see and touch around the village. Then again, there wouldn't be a need for this ritualistic spending back then, so the spending seems to be a direct reaction to capitalism arriving to these societies.

A herd of goats and an apple orchard both exhibit exponential growth in production, to the limits of the supporting land (which admittedly may be reached rather quickly). Indeed this is the origin of interest: I lend you my goats for a season and expect to get back a larger herd. The argument that non-capitalist economies can't have exponential growth from investment is a non-starter.

Good thing nobody made that argument! My argument was that you can't hide goats.

> to the limits of the supporting land

Exactly, under capitalism, "limit to growth" means "maladapted." Only things that grow forever are considered successful under capitalism, even if that growth is to the detriment of humans, society, the environment, laborers...

Whereas outside of capitalism, things may grow, to an extent, and then achieve homeostasis.

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