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Comment by brightball | Hacker News Reader

Capitalism will lead to:

- Lots of options competing on quality, price, user experience, user needs

- Every marketplace innovation that we talk about on this platform

So somebody might offer exactly that and if it's a good option, people will use it. If it's not, they'll use an alternative.

Government regulation will lead to:

- Giant entrenched companies that are difficult to disrupt thanks to insider connections

- Lack of competition, price increases, terrible customer service and pretty much everything that "anti-capitalists" today complain about in regards to capitalism.

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So, government regulation will lead to all bad things we see today in capitalism? But capitalism won't. This is not very sound logic.

Hey now, let’s not burst his utopic bubble.

Theory holds so far.

Everything government involvement touches gets more expensive. See healthcare, college tuition, student loan debt as some easy examples.

Two of those are the same thing and both are much cheaper in countries other than the US where the government is much more involved

That’s odd because spend on all of those things per capita is consistently lower with better outcomes where they’re socialized.

> See healthcare

Medicare is cheaper that US private insurance:

* https://www.kff.org/medicare/how-much-more-than-medicare-do-...

Also:

> A single-payer universal health care system could cover every American, save more than 100,000 lives a year, and still cost $1 trillion less than the system it would replace, according to a new preprint study led by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health.

* https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/universal-health-coverage...

I would say 0/10 apply yourself, but somehow people are still replying

*gestures at prices*

In Soviet Russia, prices so low no inventory left!

In Soviet Russia, supply demands YOU!

Quantitative easing and fiscal stimulus entered the chat a while ago.

gestures at supply and demand

Yeah. It's not working to lower prices.

Right now, demand exceeds supply. As new fabs come online, supply will rise. Eventually, either through greater efficiency of the models and inference systems or through the collapse of AI companies, the demand will drop.

Pure hn libertarian moment

Truth doesn't change with the day.

for all values of spherical cows in a vacuum

> Government regulation will lead to: > > - Giant entrenched companies that are difficult to disrupt thanks to insider connections

Oh, you mean like Apple, Google, and Microsoft?

> - Lack of competition, price increases, terrible customer service and pretty much everything that "anti-capitalists" today complain about in regards to capitalism.

Have you looked around? This is already happening.

Yes, absolutely.

And it leads to comments like the parent blaming "capitalism"

Capitalism under the control of a few billionaires who can influence the entire market with FUD leads to: current market conditions.

Capitalism doesn't exist without government regulation. Who's going to enforce the contracts? Who's going to break up the giant entrenched companies rent-squeezing every cent out of their natural monopolies, and then using their illicit gains to crush any would-be competitors as they ooze into other markets?

Literally everything listed for 'government regulation will lead to' can and has happened in unchecked capitalism. Insider connections rule everything right now in this current regime of chest-beating 'capitalists.'

Capitalism and socialism aren't real things outside of freshman year econ textbooks.

Current government already doesn't enforce contracts. Ex, prime video ads. Further there's no point in having contract terms if they can be changed unilaterally at any time.

Contracts are worth exactly as much as you're lawyered up and willing to get them enforced. There is absolutely still a functioning courts system to enforce contracts.

The one notable exception is if you're a group of workers and you negotiate a contract with your employer: the state can and will interfere to void it if it prevents the workers from being properly exploited.

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