
This Isn't Capitalism, It's Growthism, and It's Bad for Us - ArekDymalski
http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/10/this-isnt-capitalism-its-growthism-and-its-bad-for-us/
======
twoodfin
This is so bad it makes my brain hurt trying to respond to it. We should be
_upset_ that our society has managed to put in our pockets supercomputers
connected wirelessly to the world's knowledge? Ah, I see, they'll turn us into
"fat miserable drooling zombies".

Luckily, in this world of "skyrocketing" poverty, surely only the top 1% can
afford such indulgences, right? It's not as if innovation and a growing
economy have put them in the hands of more than a hundred million Americans.
Oh dear, I guess the zombie apocalypse is nigh.

This guy's Twitter feed[1] is more or less a constant stream of invective
directed at "billionaires", like this:

 _The billionaires believe the greatest threat to freedom is society. But a
free society 's great threat is billionaires._

 _Let 's say you had THREE BILLION DOLLARS in the bank. Would you really give
a fuck if it was...2.75? That's like counting toilet paper!_

He's a clown, and it's embarrassing that HBR thinks he's valuable as a
contributor.

[1] [https://twitter.com/umairh](https://twitter.com/umairh)

EDIT: And in case there was any question about where he _actually_ stands on
capitalism, from a whole three days ago:

 _So now the fashion establishment calls designers with real vision, like
Westwood, "eccentric". Ah, capitalism. Fuck you so much._

~~~
quotha
Wow, was that a nerve he hit?

~~~
davidw
The nerve Umair Haque's writing touches in me is that it is handwavy ranting
and raving. A lot of his arguments, when looked at closely, seem kind of
hollow. They're ... intellectual junk food - they have some flavor when you're
chewing them, but there's not much substance, and there are a lot of additives
that aren't that good.

~~~
tokenadult
The thoughtful comments here by participants I trust prompted me to flag the
article. That's about all I have to say about it.

~~~
subsystem
That seem quite hypocritical since you write quite long rambling text
yourself. At least show other people, who did upvote it, the respect of
reading the article before you flag it.

~~~
jlgreco
Rambling? Perhaps. But I would _hardly_ say that tokenadult is known for
"handwaving". Quite the opposite actually, his long posts are typically the
best researched and cited posts on this site.

~~~
subsystem
It's not about "handwaving" per se, there are numerous reasons I don't enjoy
tokenadults posts. All of which are irrelevant since many other people do. I
simply ignore most of them and expect the same respect in return.

But if you're a five year member, I'm in the mood and you're breaking basic
rules of HN like "don't comment that you flagged" I reserve the right to call
you out. Even if I wasn't technically correct about not reading the article
this time.

------
grecy
> _So maybe, then, it’s time for you and I to leave this cult...The cheap,
> plastic junk that surrounds us probably isn’t worth what we paid – not just
> in cash (or, more likely, credit) to get it, but in freedom, time, and
> tears._

This strikes a chord with me at a very deep level.

A few years back I was completely disillusioned with living and working in a
big city, basically just to buy more stuff. It still boggles my mind we all go
to work 40 hours a week then come up with more and more creative ways to waste
that excess of money, rather than just work less and have more time.

I sold everything, quit my job, and spent 2 years driving from Alaska to
Argentina, living in my tent and cooking on my little travel stove.

My perspective on the world has changed immensely, and I now live in the very
far north, grow and hunt/fish my own food, and only go to work enough to have
the quality of life I want. That's usually around 2-3 days a week, depending
if I want a new toy that month (rifle/camera/etc.)

I highly, highly recommend people take a break from consumerism for an
extended period of time and see how fulfilling your life can be without all
that stuff. Some of the happiest people I've ever met in my life have nothing
by North American standards.

~~~
adrianlmm
Looks like you don't have wife and children.

~~~
tcdent
In your mind, how would that be a limiting factor?

Your partner becomes your working companion; this is a mutual relationship at
it's very essence.

Your children learn practical skills, grow stronger, and aren't shaped
entirely by a failing education system.

~~~
SubuSS
How do you account for illnesses / Old age / injuries / a reasonable setup for
your children etc. on this forest living?

The main problem with romanticizing the unabomber life style is what it
misses: All the benefits of regular society. I would rather be inclined to a
good pitch for smaller footprint living (Make X money - live on it for the
rest of your life doing OSS / charity).

~~~
tcdent
How do you account for old age in your current plan? Sock away some money to
pay for hospice care at ~$4000/mo./ea. and hope you time your death
accordingly?

Or, create an environment that will support your family indefinitely. Give
your children space that they own. (I'd be ecstatic if my teenager wanted to
build their own house on the property.) It is, of course, possible that
they'll all move away, too.

Thinking about my parents, it's very likely that they end up on my property,
living in their own space, with family close-by to care for them. I'm not
going to abandon them to caretakers, but I do realize that it's unrealistic to
expect that lifestyle to work in a suburban tract home setting; everybody
needs their space.

You're welcome to keep waiting for that one big gig that sets you free
financially. I've got my own hopes for that, too, but I'm not about to let it
stagnate my life.

------
tytso
Think about what happens to the stock price of a company once it stops
growing. It falls through the floor. It could be making enough money to pay
all of its employees, and making the world a better place, but if it doesn't
grow, then if it has already gone public, the stock price sinks, and all of
the employees who hold stock lose a lot of money. If it hasn't gone public,
then the VC's get really upset. An example of such a company was Cygnus
Support, which was in no danger of going out of business, and it was
supporting a hundred or so engineers and their families, which were producing
high quality open source code (such as GCC, gdb, etc.) so it was certainly
making the world a better place. But it was considered a failure because it
didn't give the VC's a lucrative exit. That's growthism. Fortunately for
Cygnus's VC's, finally Cygnus got bought by Red Hat many years later.

But Red Hat is going to end up in a similar boat; as a public company, if it
can't figure out a way to sustain an significant growth every year, forever,
the stock price will get punished. And of course, the problem is that
companies can't produce a sustained compounded growth forever, because sooner
or later compounded growth will cause the company's required revenues to
exceed the world's GDP. So the trick is to stay on the rocket ship as long as
you can, and then sell the stock to a greater fool before it tips back towards
earth. And that's growthism, too....

~~~
logn
> Think about what happens to the stock price of a company once it stops
> growing. It falls through the floor.

I don't entirely agree. Companies which can earn stable profits and distribute
those as dividends remain healthy stocks. Their stock prices might remain
flat, but with dividend payments there's always a natural floor at which a
stock will fall to, and no one's really holding them to make a profit on the
sale of the stock (the stock price is more of a safeguard in case the
companies cut dividends or you decide to liquidate to move your money). The
key is finding companies which can sustain profits and those are often
businesses with pricing power to keep up with inflation and competition.
Here's a great blog:

[http://www.dividendgrowthinvestor.com/](http://www.dividendgrowthinvestor.com/)

His posts go back for years, and he's very focused on researching companies
which have paid strong dividends for years/decades. It's an enlightening blog,
especially after being surrounded by tech companies which rarely pay dividends
and have stock prices based on growth potential (but Oracle, Intel, MS, etc.
have transitioned to dividend paying companies).

------
dragonwriter
I am endlessly amused by people pointing to features that the socialists who
came up with the word "capitalism" to name the system they were criticizing
criticized capitalism _for_ and saying "this isn't capitalism".

But, no, the features that are being complained about as "growthism" \-- the
idea of being "willing to sacrifice everything for more growth" \-- is
_exactly_ a feature of capitalism that those 19th Century socialists who
coined the term "capitalism" were criticizing.

See, _inter alia_ , Karl Marx. "Effect of Capitalist Competition on the
Capitalist Class[,] the Middle Class[,] and the Working Class", in _Wage
Labour and Capital_ at [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-
labour/...](http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-
labour/ch09.htm)

~~~
dnautics
One could make the argument that free marketism inevitably brings about
capitalism which inevitably turns into growthism. Much like Benjamin Tucker's
argument that Marxism inevitably ends in Stalinism (he made this argument as a
contemporary of Marx, so this wasn't hindsight). I happen to actually believe
Schumpeter's model better (that capitalism turns to gas and water socialism
turns to growthism).

It is, however, telling, that there are plenty of free-marketers who espouse
essentially the same argument as Mr. Haque, for example the Austrian school of
economics (which is full of kooks for other reasons). Chris Martenson (who
called the 2008 crash) is another.

~~~
dragonwriter
> One could make the argument that free marketism inevitably brings about
> capitalism which inevitably turns into growthism.

I wouldn't make the first part of that argument, because I'm not convinced
that "free marketism" is even a real thing, much less a precursor of
capitalism. It seems to be position presented as a rhetorical _defense_ of
capitalism, but doesn't seem to exist independently.

But what this article calls "growthism" is one of the core features of
capitalism called out by the people who _named_ it. Capitalism doesn't
_inevitably turn into_ growthism, it _is_ (or, at least, _includes as an
essential feature_ ) growthism.

> Much like Benjamin Tucker's argument that Marxism inevitably ends in
> Stalinism (he made this argument as a contemporary of Marx, so this wasn't
> hindsight).

Stalinism -- or, more to the point, Leninism -- requires _both_ Marxism and an
environment that is unlike the ones described by the descriptive elements of
Marxism in a particular way into which one attempts to translate the
prescriptive elements. Given those ingredients, I'd agree that its pretty much
inevitable that something like Leninism will at least be attempted.

Marxism _itself_ doesn't inevitably become Leninism/Stalinism, but its
existence makes the existence of such a system quite likely.

> I happen to actually believe Schumpeter's model better (that capitalism
> turns to gas and water socialism turns to growthism).

I would argue more that the empirical evidence is that capitalism _plus_ the
existence of socialist ideas leads fairly usually (even if not inevitably) to
a variety of mixed systems that feature a basically capitalist structure with
socialist elements ( _including_ growthism), of which "gas and water
socialism" is an example.

~~~
dnautics
Again, Tucker made his argument from first principles, in a non-hindsight
fashion (he was writing when Lenin was a teen). So it would be hard to argue
that it's not inevitable, because it was empirically shown and in a prior
fashion mechanistically predicted (this is the minimum bar for creating a
_law_ in the physical sciences), unless you can point out exactly what needs
to happen differently from how Tucker envisioned it.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Again, Tucker made his argument from first principles, in a non-hindsight
> fashion (he was writing when Lenin was a teen). So it would be hard to argue
> that it's not inevitable

The conclusion does not follow from the premise. That an argument was made
"from first principles" doesn't make it hard to argue against.

> because it was empirically shown

I would disagree with the claim that what Tucker actually predicted was
empirically shown, but this whole discussion is widely afield from the point.

------
cromwellian
This is a rather incoherent rant. Growth = Bad.

What's bad is if growth is achieved by irrevocable destruction of the
environment, or deterioration of the human condition. It's not growth itself
that is the problem, for there are many kinds of growth.

Growth in physical inputs? Energy use? Labor? Outputs? Value (GDP)? Some of
these counter-balance the other.

If efficiency goes up (productivity), there is less need for labor, but it
could also mean less physical inputs required, less energy, etc, so good for
the environment. Also, the increased surplus means that labor can enjoy more
fruits of its produce (in theory).

And growth in value is another thing entirely, because it is a human value
assigned by our minds, not an objective physical quantity. Just take
virtual/digital goods, someone can make one awesome piece of software, or a
game, that the whole of humanity values tremendously high, but which has O(1)
marginal costs to produce for each person, and which took relatively few
inputs. If I suddenly uploaded the entirety of humanity into the Matrix, all
of a sudden, value can continue to increase, without continued use of
environmental resources beyond the energy needed to run it. Today, if I make a
piano, I have to cut down trees and use tons of energy, so for everyone on the
planet to own a piano would be very bad. But if I make a virtual piano,
everyone on the planet can have one at relatively low cost, and then the
question simply falls to how good the simulation can be.

I'd analogize Capitalism to evolution in an ecosystem. The entities within the
system can grow, change form, multiply, and die. If they grow too much too
fast, they can deplete their resources too quickly to sustain their
population. They must have wild swings between mass die-offs and mass growth,
or they might have a relatively stable pattern with low volatility, but while
growth is slowed, they still have competition, they have not "switched off"
evolution.

I don't think growth is bad if it comes from increasing efficiency, or an
increase in value because of completely new inventions. Perhaps same physical
inputs that could produce a device in 1950, produces something in 2010 that I
value a lot more. It is the organization of matter, it's pattern, the
information content of it, that can grow with infinite variation and which we
can continue to demand.

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
> What's bad is if growth is achieved by irrevocable destruction of the
> environment, or deterioration of the human condition. It's not growth itself
> that is the problem, for there are many kinds of growth.

Non sequitur. The notion of _economic growth_ is tied to environmental and
human labor exploitation, at fundamental levels.

A large portion of any nation's GDP comes from mining, pumping oil, cutting
forests for crops, and activities that produce a lot of waste, on which the
rest of the economy relies on. Another large portion comes from the financial
sector, which profits on the disparity of income by providing credit. These
activities are only profitable because the _environmental_ and _social_ costs
are externalized. Without that, other endeavors wouldn't even make sense cost-
wise, making economic growth grind to a halt.

> I'd analogize Capitalism to evolution in an ecosystem.

I realize many people think like that, and it's a fallacy. Capitalism is not
some sort of natural law, it's entirely arbitrary human invention, and in
practice it's _nothing_ like this pure, theoretical meritocracy that allows
the best solutions to strive. Quite the contrary: it fails to address many
concrete, contemporary problems, like ever increasing economic disparity,
social welfare, research funding and environmental destruction. And don't come
tell me it's because we don't have _enough_ capitalism, that markets are not
free enough... this is the same argument used to explain why communism failed
(it wasn't _pure_ enough). If we keep looking at it as some theoretical ideal,
we will never tackle it's shortcomings in practice.

~~~
ahomescu1
> Capitalism is not some sort of natural law

Capitalism is based on trade, which IS a natural law. It seems pretty natural
to me that people want to trade what they have for other things they need (for
example, a musician trades their music for food&shelter).

~~~
dragonwriter
> Capitalism is based on trade, which IS a natural law.

All economic systems are "based on trade", since they are all mechanisms of
arranging trade.

That doesn't make capitalism at all special among the universe of all actual
(or possible) economic systems.

~~~
cromwellian
A better way to phrase this is that natural law (of rivalrous goods) is based
on possession, not ownership. "Ownership" or property is a human invention.

When a lion possesses a carcass, the hyena's don't respect it's property
rights, they respect it's possession (unless they can over take the
possessor), but the lion cannot leave dozens of killed carcasses stored around
for future use.

Our notions of capitalism are based on concepts of property rights which are
human inventions. One could reasonably be expected to defend one's own
immediate possessions, home, or farm, but the invention of property allows an
individual to control a vast amount of possessions, backed up by the power of
the state.

When free marketers say "capitalism is natural", I think what they're really
saying, is that market forces are natural, and by that they mean, individuals
have demands, and are willing to trade possessions for them, and do not need a
state or other framework for this 'bottom up' system to work. But that's a
gross simplification, by taking a huge mental leap from a barter economy on
the small scale to a modern capitalist economy. The modern market of trade
bears little resemblance to the small scale microcosm thought experiments.

Reality is, our modern system is based of hundreds of years of evolved civil
institutions, common law, political structures. It's the reason why a 'free
market' in some countries is a "failed state" of misery, and not a paradise.

------
quadrangle
Capitalism is itself based on constant growth. There is a fundamental
misunderstanding with this article (and most of our society) and that is the
conflation of capitalism and a free market. A truly free market is not
necessarily capitalist, and actually capitalism doesn't lead to free markets.
This confusion is messing up everyone's thoughts. What we like is the free
market, the natural bottom-up interactions that help determine prices and
such. Free markets have nice features.

Capitalism is about profit and growth and the instant you think it isn't going
to fail, everyone might as well speculate like crazy (why not? if it isn't
going to fail…). The only way for capitalism to work is for everyone to
realize that it is inherently unstable and likely to fail. And that
realization is true also.

We can still advocate for market freedom without advocating capitalism.

~~~
Ensorceled

        "Capitalism is itself based on constant growth."
    

No, constantly increasing profits or shareholder value are based upon constant
growth. Capitalism does not require constantly increasing growth of profits to
be "capitalism".

This "corporations must constantly grow" is, along with "corporations must, by
law, sociopathically seek profit", the major reason that American style
capitalism isn't viable. It eats it's young.

~~~
dnautics
There's other structural issues beyond just legal obligations of corporations
(which are a problem). A debt-based economy, especially a debt-based currency,
requires a constant level of growth to stave off economic catastrophe.

Of course, these are really one and the same: The unifying principle is that
if inflation is to be maintained, we must provide an easy avenue for average
joe to feel secure against the rolling treadmill, so we create legal entities
like 401ks and mutual funds and IRAs and the like - which, in order to
maintain a return, require the government to create legal obligations on the
corporations, and when they DO fail, pump up the corporations whose stocks,
and so on and so forth (and this pumping is financed through inflation), and
so we have unsustainable spirals and the periodic retrenchments which, of
course, hurt the poor harder.

------
johnrob
I see this type of thinking a lot, sometimes even within myself. I don't think
the problem is Capitalism (or "Growthism") - it's that we don't do much as we
could to counter act the negative effects. Instead of worrying about the
rich/poor divide, we could instead try to improve conditions for those on the
bottom (food/shelter/health are all good starting points).

~~~
dnautics
But the point is that "trying to improve conditions for those on the bottom"
will never pan out, because the effects of growthism on the poor are
compounding, i.e. exponential, and at best those things you are trying to
improve the lot of others, scale linearly. Things get really bad when you do
things like government welfare, which provides a linear benefit to the less
fortunate while enriching the rich and polticially connected far more
(indirectly, through deficit spending).

~~~
cromwellian
That's false. In the limit, you could have 100% of the population unemployed,
robots manufacturing everything and have the robots and robot factory owners
taxed at 99.9% FICA, paying social security to everyone at birth.

This scenario has been covered by quite a few "post-work" authors, who look at
humans returning to a hunter-gather society. See Hans Moravec in _Mind
Children_ for example.

We used to walk around and these marvelous automated machines produced
everything for us: nuts and fruits from trees, free for the picking. In the
future, we'll walk around, and robots will be churning out the equivalent of
fruits and nuts from factories.

The modern concern of labor arises from the industrial revolution.

~~~
dnautics
It's not a growthist system, though, if previously accrued tax receipts are
used to pay out the welfare you're describing.

What would make it growthist, is if the welfare is paid for by borrowing,
which would require compounding interest to pay it off. That the payback
requires interest (which compounds, i.e. grows) implies growth in the overall
productivity of the system to continue functioning.

Moreover, if you consider these post-work humans to be "poor" something
strange is going on in your head. It's easy to conflate "unemployed" with
"poor" because that's generally the case in our society. But I wouldn't
consider the humans in your "limit case" (with my growthist modification) to
be the poor people being screwed over by the growthism. It's the robots.

~~~
dragonwriter
> What would make it growthist, is if the welfare is paid for by borrowing,
> which would require compounding interest to pay it off. That the payback
> requires interest (which compounds, i.e. grows) implies growth in the
> overall productivity of the system to continue functioning.

Strictly speaking, it requires growth in the overall rate of _production_ ,
which is not the same as growth in productivity (which is production per unit
of some input consumed, usually labor-hours.) If, for instance, the rate of
population growth were greater than the interest rate on the debt, you could
have constant productivity with employment levels without a problem.

~~~
dnautics
_> Strictly speaking, it requires growth in the overall rate of production_

Fair point. I'm writing too quickly for my own good, it seems.

------
holograham
The beautiful part of CapitalismStan is that no one becomes rich unless they
in turn enrich the lives of others. Aka they produce a good/service that
consumers want to freely purchase.

He can rant about twisted incentives that government imposes on the free
market but I can never understand why anyone can lambast capitalism when only
people who produce value for everyone else make money. Billionaires would be
celebrated as national heroes in CapitalismStan.

Lastly, this author lambasts our current capitalists for producing goods that
make us "zombies" well they should look in the mirror because capitalism only
are delivering the goods that the consumers want to buy.

------
websitescenes
I agree with most of this article except for the main point; I think that
"Growthism" and capitalism are synonymous. Growthism seems to be a scapegoat
for the very real short comings of capitalism. Fact is that capitalism
requires constant growth or it will fail. The real issue is valuing private
property over the sacred right of life and that is what CAPITALism means.

~~~
dnautics
no, captialism is valuing the accrual of property as a virtue in and of
itself, not necessarily above or even competing with valuing human life. That
growth is required as a part of the economic model is actually a rather modern
concept that post-dates the development of capitalist philosophy, and
accompanies the emergence of secular inflation as a matter of public policy.

If you would like to understand how growth is "built in" to the economic
system as a matter of policy and structure (and has nothing to do with
capitalism _per se_ ), I would strongly recommed three resources:

1) Zeitgeist takes a left-ish perspective, and unfortunately is diluted by a
lot of conspiratorial nonsense, but importantly its description of the money
system is more or less correct.

2) Chris Martenson's "crash-course" is centrist, and very very good, but also
very long and tedious.

3) Hidden Secrets of Money (video 4 in particular) takes a more right-leaning
approach, and is tainted by the fact that the guy is obviously trying to sell
you gold and silver, but the description of the money system is spot on and he
strongly makes the point that growth is required. It's also the most concise
and well-produced of the three.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> captialism is valuing the accrual of property as a virtue in and of itself

 _Accrual: The act or process of accumulating; an increase._

Am I missing something? How is that not "growth"? If someone has more and
more, the number of things they own has to keep growing. [I put growth in
quotes because I think there is a world of difference between a tree or a
person growing, and bank accounts or "places to put stuff" (see Carlin et al.)
growing.]

> not necessarily above or even competing with valuing human life

I would argue that even the focus on property - owning things just for the
sake of owning them, as opposed to making, using and sustaining things (not
just objects, but also ideas and living beings) for the sake of furthering
life - goes against the humanity and aliveness of the person subscribing to
that view.

Moreover, since we're nowhere near being able to turn energy into matter, to
conjure property out of, say, the energy that gets hurled around space by suns
and such, property often has to come from somewhere. Not strictly necessarily,
but quite often in practice, it means taking things that someone else owned,
or could potentially own; wherever we're dealing with finite resources,
amassing property must make the rest poorer. Sure, that's not an objective in
itself, "just" an unavoidable side-effect. Kinda like alcoholism is "just"
wanting to be happy/drunk, not wanting to feel miserable or making others
miserable. 10 for noble intentions, 0 for intellectual honesty.

Yes, it is theoretically possible for such an addiction (to own more for the
sake of owning more) to at least harm no other beings than the ones suffering
from it. We may get there some day. We're not there, at all.

~~~
dnautics
_> Am I missing something? How is that not "growth"?_

Because it's an individual value; there is no imposition that society as an
aggregate MUST do so. That imposition is "growthism".

 _goes against the humanity and aliveness of the person_

This smacks of the naturalistic fallacy. What constitutes "humanity"? One
could argue, that being the only species that appears to have conjured up
property rights, propertization is _quintessentially_ human. When animals
fight over scarce resources, they get bloody. When humans fight over scarce
resources, they shout words at each other and ultimately go to court (in most
cases). Occasionally blood is shed, but it's much rarer.

 _> the focus on property - owning things just for the sake of owning them_

That's not the typical capitalist property rights model - most capitalists
justify property rights via the Lockean model; that something comes to be your
property so that you can transform it into something else, ideally useful to
others for future trade. This is exactly opposed to the growthism model, where
the investments are less made to promote the product being made (and score a
bit of a profit in the meantimes), and more made for the purposes of securing
your future against the treadmill of inflation.

I'm sorry, but it appears your views on what constitutes capitalism are
exactly the caricature of capitalism that have come about because of
growthism.

Just to clarify: I don't personally subscribe to any of these views, I take
more of the free market position, which takes no position on property and has
a weaker value associated with profit - by weak, non-profits are not to be
stigmatized, and in fact I'm running a non-profit myself. Futhermore, my
personal philosophy on property is that propertization is a social right (not
an individual one) that is justified pragmatically as a means to avoid the
tragedy of the commons.

------
AJ007
Irregardless of your political ideologies there are two roots to this issue
which the author of this blog post seems unaware of:

1 - Government policy 2 - Central bank policy

Your 401k, pension fund, home, are all dependent on prices increasing in order
for you to retire or be financial secure. It just happens that if you did
really well with your investments someone who has more investments than you
did even better.

If leverage is involved, not only do you fail to get a positive return on your
investment you not only lose that asset but potentially everything else you
have.

Some of this policy extends beyond government subsidized lending toward things
that are very looked down upon by modern Western society such as colonialism
and genocide.

As a civilized individual imagine yourself playing a computer game like
Civilization. What strategies are you going to implement to grow bigger, get a
better score, and continue playing the game?

------
panarky
The author asks an honest and important question:

    
    
      Is capitalism failing at being the best possible means
      of organizing human work, life, and play?
    

We've seen so many examples of market failure that it should be obvious that
the market system is not a good answer to every problem.

And when other nations chart a different course and deliver better outcomes
for their citizens, that should trigger some critical questions.

Failing to examine the beliefs and assumptions that public policy is built on,
in the face of overwhelming evidence that those beliefs are false, really is
magical thinking and cultish.

------
apsec112
This mostly makes two points:

1\. America is screwed up. But we know that.

2\. Arguments from My Opponent Believes Something:

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/13/arguments-from-my-
oppon...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/13/arguments-from-my-opponent-
believes-something/)

Eg.:

"1\. Argument From My Opponent Believes Something, Which Is Kinda Like
Believing It On Faith, Which Is Kinda Like Them Being A Religion:

“The high priests of the economic orthodoxy take it on faith that anyone who
doubts the market is a heretic who must be punished.”"

------
avn2109
This is something I've been wondering about for a while: To what extent are
our economy and stock market merely ponzi schemes that require continued
population expansion? If growth slows down/reverses/stops, is the era of easy
profits finished?

Or in other words, what will happen to my total-market ETF shares if
population growth slows/stops? Is this an argument for investment in the
developing world?

------
patmcguire
My first thought when I saw the article title was "I bet this is by Umair
Haque," and I was right. This is sort of what he does. How to fix the world is
interesting, though
[http://howtofixtheworld.org/](http://howtofixtheworld.org/)

------
ThomPete
It's not Growthism per se but the lack of acknowledgment that growth needs to
be taxed in a way that it still benefits society without taking the incentives
away.

That balance is lost in the US and people gets rich way beyond their risk.

It can be fixed but it will require different taxation system IMHO.

------
devinmontgomery
Interestingly, the article appears behind a registration-required modal
window, but you can read the whole article by scrolling down and leaving the
window in place.

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oakaz
you guys are poisoned with a lot of thrash that make no sense. and here is
your receipt:

1\. Go to Bulgaria. 2\. Get a bike. 3\. Bike to Barcelona by following the
Danube River.

And see what the fuck capitalism is.

It's the root of evil that turns villagers to slaves of companies that makes
profit by filling everywhere with corn fields.

------
ffrryuu
Anything that grows infinitely is cancer.

~~~
swombat
Cancers don't grow infinitely. They stop when the host dies.

Entropy, on the other hand...

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Goddamnit, entropy.

