
Socialism, Capitalism Seen in New Light by Younger Americans - todd8
https://www.wsj.com/articles/socialism-capitalism-seen-in-new-light-by-younger-americans-1512561601
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0xcde4c3db
As far as I can tell, the traditional American litanies about capitalism and
communism pretty much require accepting that every bad thing that happens
under socialism and communism is because of lack of capitalism, while every
bad thing that happens under capitalism is in spite of capitalism. In other
words, it's the classic "X can't fail, it can only be failed" pattern of
thought. I think that's a hard sell if you didn't grow up with a lot of
propaganda about how being American means being capitalist and being socialist
or communist means being anti-American. It's an even a harder sell looking at
post-Soviet Russia and seeing political repression and corruption that appears
to be no better at a fundamental level, rather than being less severe due to
being less systematic.

So it falls to more general arguments evaluated in light of our current
context, which is inherently messy because we don't have the answer sheet yet.

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PrimalDual
Seeing young americans accept communism is terrifying to me. They are showing
the same level of historical ignorance that Bernie Sanders showed when he
claimed the american dream was more alive in plces like Venezuela. It really
sounds like young Americans haven’t seen enough of history not to take the
fruits of capitalism for granted. It’s like they have forgotten how bad things
can get if you let political ideologies like communism run amok. It’s even
alive here on HN with a commenter claiming the life of a Japanese Salaryman is
somehow equivalent to a communist distopia. You really need to be judicious
when deciding to change a system that works as well as the US does for its
people. There are plenty of injustices and grievances that we must address but
It’s truly hartbreaking seeing young amricans turning on the ideals that made
America into the great country it is today.

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danschumann
I don't think they even know what communism means. They just want everyone to
be taken care of. Children want to be taken care of by their parents.
Communism is when government seizes control of means of production. There are
not many businesses that would be better ran by government than by private
citizens with skin in the game. Only institutions where profit motive is not
helpful, like prisons, should be run by government. I am against private
prisons, but for private almost everything else.

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frgtpsswrdlame
>Only institutions where profit motive is not helpful, like prisons, should be
run by government. I am against private prisons, but for private almost
everything else.

In telecom we've got companies screwing over their customers in a myriad of
ways, in gaming we've got companies turning their games in slot machines for
kids, in medicine we've got $1000 pills that cost $2 in India, in tech we've
got the indiscriminate gathering of every piece of consumer information we can
gather (and subsequent lack of security placed on it), agriculture's
struggling with dicamba drift and so on. It doesn't seem clear to me that you
can draw a strict line between the profit-seeking behavior of those private
enterprises and that of a private enterprise like prisons.

~~~
danschumann
Yea, at times, I've thought it might be good if the internet was more like a
utility. Perhaps there could be a public option, without `seizing means of
production` of existing companies, ala communism.

Prescription stuff is probably one of the most screwed up parts of our
country. The fact that weed is illegal because big pharma wants it to be. I
don't think the situation would be much improved if the government siezed
control of pharma companies, but it would be improved if pharma companies no
longer had control of the government.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
>I don't think the situation would be much improved if the government siezed
control of pharma companies, but it would be improved if pharma companies no
longer had control of the government.

Seeking control of the government is a side effect of profit motive, it's a
symptom of capitalism. Seizing the means of big pharma seems totally fine to
me, it's a public good and our world where the amount spent researching a cure
is proportional to how much money we can milk out of those afflicted seems a
lot worse to me than a world where the amount spent researching a cure is
proportional to the misery of those afflicted.

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danschumann
I'd rather stop all government funding of their research, have a public
option. Let the government compete with them. First we need to stop big pharma
dollars from influencing politicians.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
>I'd rather stop all government funding of their research, have a public
option. Let the government compete with them. First we need to stop big pharma
dollars from influencing politicians.

Compete on what merits? Corporate pharma is going to win on profit created and
government pharma is going to win on any altruistic measurement. At that point
why even bother with the corporate pharma? The money that goes into corporate
pharma is still my money, it's what I'm paying at the pharmacy. I'd much
rather my tax go up a little bit and we get full on government pharma research
than getting good prices on some drugs (gov created) and getting gouged on
others (corporate created).

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clarkevans
To some exuberant commenters in this thread: Young Americans are NOT accepting
Communism. Most wish a slightly more socialist direction, not the full blown
state ownership of the means of production. For example, many would like to
see is single payer medicine; that's not the same thing as the government
running the hospitals and employing the doctors. Many would like to see
municipal broadband. They'd like to see a bit more consumer protection. Many
would like to see more water systems remain under municipal control rather
than being sold to a private, for-profit entity. In short, they'd like to see
a bit more community works. I've yet seen anyone seriously advocate for
government seizure of the means of production.

If you must think in terms of duality, state or privately controlled, there is
perhaps a good rubric: If the industry is inherently monopolistic due to it
controlling a singular resource (like a central park, or water), then the
resource should be owned democratically by its community of users. In
contrast, if the field can be competitive, then government should only be
regulating the fair competition within that market. Note that even within a
singular, monopolistic market there are always subordinate markets that are,
in fact, competitive (e.g. parts & labour).

Democratic control need not imply centralized control. Even in the singular
resource case, a democratically-controlled user or consumer cooperative
specific to that resource is often a better organization structure than making
it operated by an arm of a governmental entity. For example, rural electric
companies are consumer cooperatives that serve their local area; often times
they own & operate only the power lines and transmission (the monopoly part)
and leave power generation (the competitive market part) to independent for-
profit entities. Regional electric companies are not really part of a
centralized government, yet they are democratically controlled by the
subscribers who purchase electric service from them.

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AstralStorm
The problem is the old one: who watches the watchers? Who ensures the
regulators are doing the job instead of perverting the system for gains?

Systems can be built based on mutual trust (actual communism) or distrust
(rule by jury law), distributed (like marxism or democracy) or centralized
(oligarchy, autocracy and monarchy). A hybrid tends to get dominated by one or
another extreme or gets unwieldy.

Currently centralization is winning despite what is a sham of a de jure
republic.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
>Systems can be built based on mutual trust or distrust, distributed or
centralized. A hybrid tends to get dominated by one or another extreme or gets
unwieldy.

This is exactly what full-blown socialists believe, it's actually the core
reason they think we should transition to a socialist state.

~~~
AstralStorm
By socialist do we mean statist socialists yes? Towards more of a republic or
just buying up votes and voters with promises?

Many unanswered questions lie this way.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
I don't know why what I said would require statist. Even the left libertarians
would agree. Socialism is just changing who owns the means of production,
that's independent of how centralized the government would be.

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gwbas1c
As I look at how the US, China, Russia, and Japan run themselves and their
economies; I start to think that the distinctions aren't what we think they
are. The life of a Japanese salaryman sounds like a communist distopia, even
though Japan is fiercely capitalistic. China is a single-party "communist"
state, but their economy looks and acts like capitalism.

~~~
SauciestGNU
China abandoned communism with Deng Xiaoping's reforms. They are fiercely
capitalist, with strong authoritarian political structure.

~~~
api
China is something new. It's capitalism without freedom and with a Soviet
"politburo" type structure acting not as agency of the proletariat but as a
hyper-Keynesian backstop to markets.

Tangent but: I think this really killed Libertarianism. Libertarians and
classical liberals from Adam Smith to Ayn Rand said this wasn't possible.
Capitalism and freedom are inseparable, they said. China proves that
Capitalism works perfectly well and in fact may work _better_ under a more
authoritarian system. Freedom is not required beyond a few degrees of freedom
to act economically. The presence of a totalitarian ruler willing to
constantly backstop markets prevents panics and actually makes the system work
better.

... or seems to so far. History isn't over. China could crash.

~~~
ameister14
>The presence of a totalitarian ruler willing to constantly backstop markets
prevents panics and actually makes the system work better.

Not really. Remember this?
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonchang/2014/01/19/mega-
def...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonchang/2014/01/19/mega-default-in-
china-scheduled-for-january-31/#628a39ec5e00)

If the government backs everything, people will engage in riskier behavior
because they don't accurately assess risk. That creates a massive bubble of
risky investments until it's too large for the government to effectively
control.

There's an interesting book on the subject you might want to check out:

[https://www.amazon.com/Chinas-Guaranteed-Bubble-
government-p...](https://www.amazon.com/Chinas-Guaranteed-Bubble-government-
propelled/dp/1259644588/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1511885714&sr=8-1&keywords=China%E2%80%99s+Guaranteed+Bubble%3A+How+Implicit+Government+Support+Has+Propelled+China%E2%80%99s+Economy+While+Creating+Systemic+Risk).

~~~
api
I think you are right, but it hasn't happened yet. China keeps growing and
developing with what seems to outside observers such unbelievable might that
it's _psyching people out_. I think the rise of strong man rule and neo-
fascist ideologies in the West and elsewhere is a reaction. "We need to become
more totalitarian now or we will be left behind!"

Bubbles always psych people out. They always go higher than anyone expects.
They always make the nay-sayers look like fools... until they don't, and the
nay-sayers end up looking like prophets.

My brother in law lived and worked in China for about 10 years. He went from
thinking China would conquer the world in the first few to thinking China is
Enron.

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Clubber
Regulation is designed to save capitalism, but lack of regulation and a fair
chance at success will destroy it. I'm afraid many people are so disheartened
by capitalism in the US that they are willing to abandon it without thinking
about a replacement.

~~~
unknown_apostle
Lack of skin in the game is killing capitalism.

We've had 20-30 years of ever escalating bailouts. Heads: you win. Tails: the
public looses.

"Capitalism", or rather the free market, works by moving from failure to
failure. Without "Tails: you get taken to the woodshed", failure doesn't lead
to learning and improvement. No amount of regulation will change that.

Quite the opposite: most modern regulation is so complex that lawyers can't
get enough of it. Not to mention the revolving doors between regulators and
their targets.

Same thing put differently: we already have socialism. It's just socialism for
the rich.

~~~
jnordwick
"It is moves tax it. If it keeps moving regulate it. If it stops moving
subsidize it."

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jnordwick
I think people in America vastly over generalize when speaking of the nordic
social democracies. They have a very outdated notion of how socialistic they
are and the direction they are headed. All the exemplar social democracies
have been making large market strides in the last 20+ years. This is just as
true of China too. These economies are going well now because they are
becoming more market based (and American). China would still be struggling
without market reforms.

Planned economies can be excellent at going in a straight line or when
everybody is the same. That is why they look good on paper and seduce
technocrats and academics who think they can plan something as big and complex
as the economy. However they are horrible at adapting to new situations
because of everything from bureaucracy to new technology to balancing
competing goals. So planned economies tend to do well now but fail as the
world they were built for changes. Capitalism requires some amount of faith in
that we believe solutions will come but don't know what they are yet.
Capitalism is said to harness the power of necessity and imagination, and
those are impossible to predict.

The nordic countries had to change or fail and they have adopted market based
changes. The jury is still out on China and what will happen when the world
changes underneath it - become more market oriented or wither.

There has been pushback from the nordic leaders for calling them socialism:
[https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/denmark-
tells-...](https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/denmark-tells-bernie-
sanders-to-stop-calling-it-socialist/)

~~~
mistermann
> The jury is still out on China and what will happen when the world changes
> underneath it - become more market oriented or wither.

My gut tells me that the sheer size and competency of China plus their
authoritarian political system will be such a juggernaut that it won't matter
what anyone else does, they are near unbeatable. They can still fail on their
own though.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Huh? They are failing right now - their unsustainable bubble will burst within
a year or two, to the horror of everybody. Their money is in so many places,
everything will turn to shit.

~~~
mistermann
Yawn....where have I heard this before.

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Grue3
People who never had to live under socialism think that it works. News at 11.

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AzzieElbab
It has been observed time over time that over regulating and over complicating
a large and complex economy ends up in either run-away corruption to the point
of modern feudalism or some form of totalitarianism

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erikj
It's a shame they don't have parents who actually lived in the Soviet Union.

~~~
danharaj
Is every attempt to establish communism going to end up like the Soviet Union?

~~~
briandear
Yes. Or worse. Human nature exists and it doesn’t change. Ignoring the
Invisible Hand is to ignore what it means to be human.

Read the book Animal Farm if you haven’t already. That captures the psychology
of communism perfectly and demonstrates why it never, ever works.

~~~
yequalsx
The takeaway of Mao, Stalin, Kim Jong Il, etc. is not that communism is bad
but rather that concentrating too much power in too few hands is bad. For
instance Hitler, Shah of a Iran, etc. Especially when the leaders have
simplistic notions. For example, Idi Amin, Maduro, Baby Doc Duvalle, etc.

~~~
ameister14
Sure - communism simply requires the centralization and concentration of power
and so is incredibly vulnerable to authoritarian takeover.

~~~
AstralStorm
Since when a prerequisite for communism is nationalisation? As far as I'm
aware the actual communism was supposed to be ran by worker committees and not
"party" or "leader". And does not have to involve central planning at all. Do
not confuse it with authoritarianism. Or stalinism which was a variant of it.

~~~
ameister14
I'm not confusing it, I'm going from what Marx and Engels said.

"Only conscious organisation of social production, in which production and
distribution are carried on in a planned way, can lift mankind above the rest
of the animal world as regards the social aspect, in the same way that
production in general has done this for men in their aspect as species.
Historical evolution makes such an organisation daily more indispensable, but
also with every day more possible."

"If it should become necessary for communist society to regulate the
production of men, just as it will have already regulated the production of
things, then it, and it alone, will be able to do this without difficulties.
It seems to me that it should not be too difficult for such a society to
achieve in a planned way what has already come about naturally, without
planning, in France and Lower Austria. In any case it will be for those people
to decide if, when and what they want to do about it, and what means to
employ"

~~~
danharaj
Organization and planning are not the same as centralization and concentration
of power. It would be absurd to conflate the two. So do these quotes justify
your claim or not?

~~~
ameister14
In order to effectively execute such planning and transition from capitalist
to communist, it required concentration of power in the federal government -
further management was required to maintain equitable distribution of
population, labor and resources.

That's why, in the transition period, power would end up concentrated in the
hands of a small group of people.

Obviously eventually the idea was that the State would cease to be anything
more than a mechanism for distribution of resources and stop managing people,
but there are an awful lot of problems with that, conceptually.

Also, the guy I responded to said it didn't have to involve central planning.
It kinda does, at least Marx and Engel's version does.

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matt4077
If only someone had come up with a reasonable middle ground.

Like something that treats the market economy as a tool that works rather well
to maximise production, but doesn't mistake it for an end itself. If only...

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
Market Socialism?

