Hacker News Reader

Comment by the_af | Hacker News Reader

I think the "objectively" part can be disputed, since it's very difficult to be objective about this. What are you measuring? To be truly objective you must measure outside the parameters of capitalism, otherwise you'll be measuring just what it's optimized to do (e.g. you could be measuring the ease with which one can become an entrepreneur and start a company, but why would that be the best way to measure a socioeconomical system?).

How do you measure happiness of the population, self-fulfilment, solidarity, sustainability, etc?

Capitalism has run its course in my very subjective opinion. Hopefully there will be a successor that is more sustainable and people friendly, and hopefully it won't involve the invisible hand of the free market, state enforced monopolies, laissez faire or unsustainable consumerism.

View on HN

Well, one can certainly say that Marxism and feudalism both produced less happiness and self-fulfillment for the population. I'm not sure they did better on solidarity, either. Sustainability? Feudalism could be argued to have done better there, but not Marxism.

My main point, though, is this: What is your better alternative? Everybody's got criticisms of capitalism (me included), but as a broad organizing pattern for society, what is your alternative? How has that alternative actually worked when it's been tried? Is there real-world experience, or just theory?

You cannot "certainly" say any of those things. They are debatable, and you'll find plenty of educated people to debate them, and dismissing them as cranks is probably too comfortable a position to take.

I don't know what will replace Capitalism, or even what shape it'll take. As you say, flawed alternatives have been attempted -- and some were better at particular aspects, and some even forced Capitalism to take its current form in order not to perish. So you could argue modern day Capitalism owes its shape at least partly to competing systems.

How can Capitalism have 'ran its course'? It was never on course. Even in the most economically 'free' parts of the world... interest rates are still set by a central government, people are still taxed, imports and exports are still subject to tariffs, and markets are regulated and swung in favour of the central state. All of which are distinctly anti-capitalist. There are no Capitalist nations, not truly.

This is some sort of No True Scotman. If you are truly going to follow this road, then there hasn't been a truly Socialist or Communist nation either, not truly.

In this case, we haven't made any inroads in deciding about the relative merits of Capitalism, Socialism or any other -isms, since there haven't been any nations that implemented them. Not truly.

I don't know about you, but it seems like a fruitless viewpoint. I believe Capitalism as practiced in the real world has run its course. This, of course, doesn't mean it's going to go in the next few decades, but I believe its days are counted. Call it optimism.

So the market is an 'invisible hand' but any other form of centralised planning, that you yourself can't name or suggest isn't?

By definition the invisible hand metaphor stands opposite to any kind of centralized planning.

But you're nitpicking. The central of my comment is that you absolutely cannot assert that Capitalism is "objectively" better than every other system. Objectively better at what? By whose objective measurements?

It seems to be better in terms of efficiency. After all, it optimizes for profit, costs are a given for every market participant (in a free market), just as profits are bounded, so the most efficient gains more market share at each "time slice". (Sure, sometimes this efficiency is observable only in marketing, lobbying or in other exploitative mechanisms.)

I'm willing to concede it optimizes for profit (of some people, of course). So maybe Capitalism is "more efficient" at this than other competing systems, but does this make Capitalism objectively better as a system? Maybe if profit-making is the main metric. I remain unconvinced.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com