
David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show' - patrickk
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-capitalism-marx-two-americas-wire
======
majika
This is a remarkably sensible speech.

 _The idea that the market will solve such things as environmental concerns,
as our racial divides, as our class distinctions, our problems with educating
and incorporating one generation of workers into the economy after the other
when that economy is changing; the idea that the market is going to heed all
of the human concerns and still maximise profit is juvenile. It 's a juvenile
notion and it's still being argued in my country passionately and we're going
down the tubes. And it terrifies me because I'm astonished at how comfortable
we are in absolving ourselves of what is basically a moral choice. Are we all
in this together or are we all not?_

I see a lot of libertarian and anti-government sentiments expressed on HN.
People like to construct arguments like "more government vs. less", "higher
taxes vs. lower", "less regulation vs. more", but those debates are missing
the forest for the trees. The question - and only question - should be what
David Simon asks: are we all in this together or are we not?

To me, the answer is blindingly obvious. It's demonstrated by what societies
are flourishing - with high economic and social equality, healthy democratic
government, protected personal liberties, well-cared-for populaces, and
resilient economies - and what societies aren't.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model)

~~~
avar
The libertarian and anti-government sentiments aren't saying that we shouldn't
be all in this together, but that we shouldn't be _forced_ to be all in this
together. That difference is what the entire argument is about.

Few people are saying saying "let's not do this" for some value of "this",
they're saying "let's not _force everyone_ to do this".

That's a very profound difference, it's why having the government make
anything its business anywhere in the world is always controversial.

~~~
ant512
> Few people are saying saying "let's not do this" for some value of "this",
> they're saying "let's not force everyone to do this".

There are four guys in a crippled spaceship. They have 7 hours of oxygen left
if they continue to breathe normally. If they _all_ make a concerted effort to
breathe slowly they could extend the oxygen to 8 hours. The rescue ship
arrives in 8 hours.

They are all in it together. There's nothing that can be done about that.

Now the libertarian astronaut insists that he won't be forced to change his
breathing pattern. No way is _he_ going to be forced to do anything different.
He's not going to be forced to be in it with the other guys. No amount of
cajoling, threatening or reasoning will get this guy to give up his "one-man
island" philosophy.

But he is in it with the other guys. Sticking his head in the space-sand
doesn't change the hard facts of 7 hours of oxygen and rescue in 8.

~~~
VMG
Contrived example time?

What is the political system on the spaceship that allows three of the four to
hold a vote and kill off the least popular guy on the spaceship?

~~~
jjoonathan
It's contrived but it highlights a real problem: free markets are very poorly
suited to the task of avoiding tragedies of the commons.

Unless you think tragedies of the commons don't happen in real life, the
contrived example is relevant.

~~~
CamperBob2
The problem with the example is that it doesn't illustrate the tragedy of the
commons. Self-interest alone will lead the astronauts to do the right thing,
because they're rational actors who are fully aware of their situation, and
who are not in competition with each other. There's no incentive for the
"libertarian" astronaut to consume more oxygen than the others.

In your example, only stupid astronauts (or, I suppose, mentally impaired
ones) would fail to conserve their oxygen. It's better to structure your
economic views to encourage and expect rational behavior among fully-aware
actors, even if this ideal is rarely approached in practice.

~~~
JonnieCache
_> It's better to structure your economic views to encourage and expect
rational behavior among fully-aware actors, even if this ideal is rarely
approached in practice._

Why?

~~~
CamperBob2
Because otherwise you end up allowing naive, irrational, and dishonest actors
to determine how your system functions for everyone. It's like airport
security.

------
abalone
Very good speech and an important national dialog to spark. I'd like to call
attention to one thing though:

 _" I don't believe that a state-run economy can be as viable as market
capitalism in producing mass wealth."_

This demonstrates a basic confusion that we Americans have about ourselves,
even most "lefties" and "libertarians": The false belief that we live in a
free market economy.

The truth is, the state plays a _massive_ role in our economy.

This is _especially_ true for us Silicon Valley entrepreneurial Americans.
Because the government's hand is _especially_ strong in high tech.

The Internet. Microcomputers. Lasers. Jets. Robots. Siri. You name a major
high-tech innovation, and it's probably got DARPA or NASA behind it in the
earliest, highest-risk, most capital-intensive stages. Look again and you'll
probably find lots more government support in bringing the technology to
market through procurement.

This is all the more damning for our system's poverty. The rich and powerful
are fully in favor of a strong, powerful state-run economy that serves their
needs. That's why it's done under the rubric of military spending -- "we have
to spend trillions of taxpayer dollars on this because we have to defend
ourselves" sounds better than "because we need it to produce the Silicon
Valley economic miracle."

Because the latter would suggest it's fair to direct major taxpayer support
for other economic investments like education, health care and housing.

Instead, the state-supported rich and powerful can claim we live in a "free
market economy" that just happens to have trillions of state-sponsored
investment, for them.

~~~
jerf
The 2012 US GDP was 15.68 trillion. The 2012 Federal government expenditures
were 3.54 trillion. Right off the top, the Federal government accounts for
22.6% of the economic activity in the country. Depending on how you measure,
you can quibble with this exact choice of numbers, but no matter how you
fiddle you're not getting out of the Federal government being a huge part of
the economy directly. State and local governments still not counted in that
number.

The Federal government also controls the Federal interest rate and its
centralized currency directly. It extensively regulates every major financial
industry; to the extent that this fails to produce sufficient "regulation" for
a liberal's purposes, it is, generally speaking, not for lack of _statutory_
power, and a concerned liberal should probably be looking at the (almost
always) liberals exercising the statutory power, rather than complaining about
the few people whose meager voices suggest that perhaps the power shouldn't
exist at all, lost in the sea of those screaming for more.

Indeed, it extensively regulates every major industry. It produces thousands
of pages of new regulations every year. It taxes nearly every economic
transaction. You can't hardly do anything without the government being
involved. It already engages in huge wealth transfers every which way (even
some really crazy stupid ones, like Obamacare's transfers from the young and
healthy to the on-average wealthier older crowd).

This is not necessarily and automatically a bad thing. I'm just mentioning
this stuff to show that the idea that we live in some sort of libertarian
nightmare is ludicrous nonsense. The state has the power already, today. It's
not theoretical, it's a done deal. If you don't like the outcome we're
experiencing, _take it up with the State_.

Personally I can't help but observe that we keep giving more power to fewer
people under the rubric of "better government", and, lo and behold, our
society has ever more power and wealth concentrating in fewer and fewer hands.
Why, oh why ever could it be? Somehow some people manage to convince
themselves this is all the libertarian's fault. I'd suggest looking at the
people who keep putting more and more power in fewer and fewer people's hands
and then acting all confused about the outcome where more power ends up in
fewer people's hands. There _might_ be a connection there. We _might_ want to
consider, you know, _not_ doing that more if we don't like the outcome we're
getting.

Much of the reason why I am a libertarian is that I actually think it's a
_good_ thing for society, in precisely the ways that David Simon is
complaining about. With the bloated Federal government taking all the power,
the government not only doesn't solve "the problem", for whatever problem
we're talking about, but it also often prevents _you_ from solving the
problem. It can do this either legally, where it claims for itself exclusively
the power to solve the problem, followed by it either doing nothing or doing
the wrong thing, or perhaps more poisonously, it convinces you that it is its
responsibility to solve the problem, followed again by not doing so or doing
the wrong thing.

A couple of days ago I happened to flip by the Canadian Broadcasting Channel's
news hour, and there was this guy standing in front of a children's
playground, complaining that the city wasn't taking care of it. Scattered on
the playground were about 30-40 _bagged_ piles of doggy-doo-doo. It otherwise
appeared to be a fine playground; it was modern, the paint was cared for, the
swings were all there, it did not show obvious wear. He's standing there
talking to the reporter and complaining that their part of the city needs more
money. My crazy, socially-evil, society-hating, collective-despising
libertarian anwser was "Dude, in the amount of time you spent complaining to
the reporter, you could have just _cleaned up the playground_." Seriously, all
that was wrong with it appeared to be scattered piles of, and again I
emphasize, _bagged_ doggie-doo. This is how the government can corrode away
the very social consciousness that people so desparately try to use
governments to create. Yeah, it's a small example, but it happens everywhere,
for all kinds of things.

(Yes, I realize that cleaning it would then mean the guy couldn't complain, so
he's putting on a show. I further realize that it's really quite likely that
the doggie-doo receptable probably had all the doggie doo piled up in an
somewhat unsanitary pile, and the guy probably _deliberately_ scattered it
before the video shoot, because really, scattered bagged doggie poo is a
rather unlikely scenario. However, I'd suggest this just further emphasizes
the point I was trying to make here. You can't create "social responsibility"
by telling everyone that somebody in $GOVERNMENT is going to take care of
"it". You create the _exact opposite_. If you want _more_ social
responsibility you _need_ less government.)

~~~
robomartin
I agree with your views regarding less government being a good thing. Just in
case some take pride in the number you provided I want to take a moment to put
it into some context.

> The 2012 Federal government expenditures were 3.54 trillion. Right off the
> top, the Federal government accounts for 22.6%

We thankfully have a canonical example that exposes just how bad government
can be: Obamacare.

Government is the only organization on the planet that can take a website that
could not possibly cost more than one to five million (as a ridiculous
maximum) and turn it into a disaster costing upwards of a billion dollars.
Think about THAT for a moment. It took government A BILLION DOLLARS just to
make a website that the private sector could have delivered for A THOUSAND
TIMES less money and in a third of the time. And, of course, it would have
worked as required on day one.

I am not going to propose government money utilization is a thousand times
less efficient than in the private sector across all domains. If I had to
guess, based on my direct experience selling to various government agencies
and seeing just how convoluted the process can become, I'd say the private
sector is 50 to 100 times more efficient at everything. The exception, of
course, is killing people and spying on the population.

I'll go with 100 times for easy numbers. This means whatever government
accomplished with 3.54 trillion could have been done privately for a mere 35
billion. Even if I am off by a factor of ten this is still a major difference.

This means that this 22.6% participation is mostly money being burned. The
actual real impact of government is probably somewhere in the the 2% or less
range.

To use the lovely Obamacare canonical government-incompetence-and-waste
example. Ask yourself this question: What could we have done with a billion
dollars if instead of letting government burn it to try to build a website we
had given five million of that to a qualified private entity to build the site
and devoted $995 billion to, say, medical research or other massively valuable
causes? Right. They just burned money that could have funded the discovery of
a cure for Cancer and who knows what else.

You have to consider this:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-
_FY...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2011.png)

and then this:

[http://nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-
budget-1...](http://nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-
budget-101/spending/)

Hard to argue that the money is being spent with both discretion and
intelligence. I point you to the 57% in military spending our many wars,
pointless foreign aid, Solyndra and the inability to even manage the
development of a website as proof.

No. Less government is better for all of us.

~~~
coldtea
> _Think about THAT for a moment. It took government A BILLION DOLLARS just to
> make a website that the private sector could have delivered for A THOUSAND
> TIMES less money and in a third of the time._

Well, I don't know.

The private sectors seems willing to pay 3 BILLION DOLLARS for a BS
message/photo sharing app (Snapchat) that one could have built in 6 months
with 2-3 man years of effort.

Compared to the trivialness of that, the healthcare website is rocket science.

~~~
pswilson14
Could be argued that, when a company like Facebook acquires something like
Instagram (which is itself a pretty straightforward service that wouldn't be
difficult for a team of competent developers to build), they aren't really
buying the app. They're buying the user base.

Anyone can build a Snapchat, but not anyone can have millions of active users.

Sorry, just had to point out my opinion that that argument isn't too relevant
to the discussion.

------
gum_ina_package
When I see arguments like this one, I always remember the little known fact
that Adam Smith was a moral philosopher before he wrote about economics. A
fundamental principle for capitalism is that people will behave morally and be
compassionate. Without a moral society, no matter what system you're talking
about, that society will always collapse.

I think David Simon, and many other modern critics of capitalism, have
forgotten this and/or are too afraid of sounding "preachy" if they were to
advocate for a more moral society.

I'd also like to point out that Simon seems to be making an emotional argument
when he says there's a whole portion of people in our society who are useless
when it comes to making the economy work. Perhaps it's because their skills
don't match the needs of the workforce today. It's simply supply and demand.

~~~
patrickmay
As well as Smith, I am reminded of Bastiat:

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the
distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we
object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we
object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the
socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state
religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object
to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And
so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting
persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”

\-- Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

The problem in the US isn't capitalism, it's that the government interferes
extensively in the economy. It is rational, if not moral, for the wealthy to
expend effort and resources to gain political power rather than spending the
same effort and resources on providing goods and services.

Building a society is the responsibility of each individual who values it.
Using government force in pursuit of that goal leads only to the co-option and
disenfranchisement Simon complains about.

~~~
NegativeK
I disagree with you wholeheartedly on the political front, but I'm right with
you on what we're actually debating.

Hearing fellow liberals claim that conservatives want the poor and
disadvantaged to suffer is like hearing conservatives say that liberals just
want to take money from the rich and give it to people who don't deserve it.
Both arguments are shitty, and both either imply that the speaker isn't
listening or doesn't want the audience to listen.

If you don't even try to figure out your opponent's assumptions, you should
probably shut up and start listening.

~~~
rquantz
Here's the thing you don't understand: Yes, conservatives do want the poor to
suffer, because they think the poor are poor because they're too lazy to work
hard and overcome their poverty. Making them suffer is the only way to make
them contribute to society, in their view.

Also, yes, as a liberal, I do want to take money from the rich and give it to
people who don't deserve it. That is exactly what I want to do. What do you
think social welfare is? If you only give money to people who meet some
arbitrary moral standard, you aren't helping everyone who needs help. I
believe in universal income, universal healthcare, universal education,
universal pensions, etc, etc. It has nothing to do with deserts.

~~~
mmmbeer
> I do want to take money from the rich and give it to people who don't
> deserve it

And what give you the right to take what belongs to others?

~~~
steveklabnik
That's exactly the question I have for the rich. ;)

But no, seriously, that's the argument for wealth redistribution: the rich
only are able to amass such wealth because of advantages they've accumulated
for various reasons. If you're full-blown communist, it's due to the
appropriation of the surplus labor produced by the proletariat. Therefore,
you're just taking back what they took in the first place.

Now, you may disagree, but I figured since you asked, you might want an
answer.

------
steveklabnik
It's really a shame that more people don't actually read 'Capital,' or at
least the first three chapters of Capital I. While I ultimately disagree with
Marx, I think he does a much, much better job of analyzing the problems we
have than most people. Hence Simon's distinction between 'diagnostician' and
'clinician.' It was Lenin and Mao that really tried to be the clinicians,
anyway.

It's a Sunday, if you've got some time today, check out "Value, Price, and
Profit," which is sort of the beginning of Capital I but in a little bit
easier language, and much shorter. It's only about 40 pages.
[http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-
price-...](http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-
profit/)

~~~
kungfooguru
I don't agree with Simon's claim that because Marx provided no clear clinical
treatment it should cause one to not call themselves a Marxist. Marxism is the
science of analyzing socioeconomic relations.

~~~
steveklabnik
Agreed. I read it as defensive comments designed to appear more reasonable to
a broad audience, since Marxism is such a dirty word here.

(I play a Marxist often, but really, I part ways with Hegel, so I can't really
truly be a Marxist.)

------
danso
It's hard to talk about David Simon without immediately thinking of The Wire,
and I'm glad he mentioned it (he's infamously annoyed that people see it as
compelling drama more than its attack against institutions, including the
capitalist system):

> _So I 'm astonished that at this late date I'm standing here and saying we
> might want to go back for this guy Marx that we were laughing at, if not for
> his prescriptions, then at least for his depiction of what is possible if
> you don't mitigate the authority of capitalism, if you don't embrace some
> other values for human endeavour._

 _And that 's what The Wire was about basically, it was about people who were
worth less and who were no longer necessary, as maybe 10 or 15% of my country
is no longer necessary to the operation of the economy. It was about them
trying to solve, for lack of a better term, an existential crisis. In their
irrelevance, their economic irrelevance, they were nonetheless still on the
ground occupying this place called Baltimore and they were going to have to
endure somehow._

 _That 's the great horror show. What are we going to do with all these people
that we've managed to marginalise? It was kind of interesting when it was only
race, when you could do this on the basis of people's racial fears and it was
just the black and brown people in American cities who had the higher rates of
unemployment and the higher rates of addiction and were marginalised and had
the shitty school systems and the lack of opportunity._

I still think The Wire is the best TV drama yet made, and that includes
Breaking Bad, though I haven't watched Sopranos yet. One of the most amazing
things about its achievements is how so un-cop-show-like it is...besides cops
being of mixed character, they almost never draw their guns on the show...and
yet it's still an addictively entertaining show. Simon and his co-writers were
so good at creating characters (and drawing from his deep reporting
experience) that even as his show has a strong anti-capitalistic tone, the
Wire keeps your attention no matter what your political beliefs. Perhaps Simon
could eke out one more grand show...beliefs and opinions can be affected by
popular culture as they are by political discourse.

~~~
xradionut
The chilling thing is the answers you get when you ask some of the more frank
of the upper class in a moment of candor what should happen to the people that
are no longer necessary or left behind.

Some of outliers of their solutions range from literal slavery via
prison/slums, to starvation, to genocide. Worst of all answers is indifference
or "God will provide". They got theirs, go fuck off and die.

~~~
cdash
This fuck you got mine attitude is very prevalent on this site actually even
if wrapped up in some absurd justifications.

------
badman_ting
> _I think Marx was a much better diagnostician than he was a clinician._

That is a hell of a way to put it, and I totally agree. His basic framework of
social relations (I am probably butchering terms here, please forgive me)
seems basically right to me the older I get, though like Simon, I don't
necessarily agree with his proposed solutions.

~~~
steveklabnik
You're not butchering it at all, that's exactly correct.

------
sz4kerto
The tragedy of the successful capitalistic societies like the USA is the lack
of first hand experience with socialism (and communism) will eventually result
in the masses wanting to try it out.

Believe me, it's the worst thing what can happen with your country. It
happened around here, and it takes generations to recover. Don't try it, even
if it looks morally right.

~~~
agilebyte
Where is "around here" please?

~~~
sz4kerto
Eastern Europe.

~~~
agilebyte
Hmm, I am sorry you have had a bad experience. I hail from over there too and
am actually glad that the social state has not been completely dismantled.

~~~
ahomescu1
Maybe it would have been better if it had been dismantled, instead of it
becoming a Petri dish for corruption and abuse (speaking as a Romanian).

------
apsec112
The US as it exists today simply _is not capitalist_. The Great Depression and
19th-century industrial slums can reasonably be blamed on capitalism. American
problems today cannot.

This isn't the fallacy of "no true Scotsman". It's just simple arithmetic.
Look at a pie chart of GDP. About 40% of it is outright owned by the
government (public spending). Another 40% of it is nominally private, but is
extremely heavily regulated License-Raj-style, like real estate and medicine.

For example, if you want to build a new apartment tower, this is almost
everywhere illegal because of zoning codes. The government has to give you
permission to build anything, and then once you get permission, they dictate
what you can build, how high you can build, what the building can be used for,
how much parking there will be, how much of the land has to be building vs.
landscaping, how far your building is away from the street, etc. etc. etc.
It's literal central planning - a government committee takes out a map and
draws lines, and then dictates at each spot exactly what kind of buildings
there will be. None of this existed prior to the mid 20th century.

~~~
hacknat
I accept your beef about zoning codes, but the government should have some say
on safety standards, don't you think?

~~~
saraid216
Nah, if people die due to "accidents", there's no initiation of force so it's
okay. And of course, everyone will hear about it since there's absolutely no
incentive for the property owner to cover it up when his reputation, and thus
livelihood, is at stake.

~~~
hacknat
People can and do make a lot of money in this world, long before their
reputation gets destroyed, making really shitty stuff.

------
bsirkia
The hardest thing for me is that I'm super aware of how fucked up things are,
but not totally sure what can done so just say "this sucks" and go back to
work and whining about healthcare and listening to Slate podcasts. If I
learned anything from the Wire, it's that these problems Simon brings up are
so institutionalized that there's almost no way to fix them without some
massive change, but I'm too small and irrelevant to make that change and our
society is set up to resist change anyway.

So I'll probably just share this on Facebook, get some likes, and be proud of
myself for "building awareness".

~~~
bluedino
The thing people that write these articles don't acknowledge was how fucked up
things were in the USA, even in the 'great' times. The 50's and 60's were a
booming time for the economy and middle class. But black people still had
their lines to wait in, had to sit in the back of the bus, and we had
'colored' drinking fountains.

Things have came a long, long way since then. Things might not be perfect and
there are bits of racism but we are so far ahead of where we were.

~~~
xradionut
But the US population as a whole has slid backwards in power and monetary
means over the last thirty years. The shenanigans that allowed the elite to
walk over the working class had their roots in the late 70's and 80's with the
shift to the right and the "Greed is Good" era.

~~~
bluedino
Of course - the rest of the world has 'caught up' to the USA. We aren't the
powerhouse we once were. Even if you distributed CEO pay to minimum wage
workers they'd only be getting a thousand bucks or so each.

~~~
wavefunction
>>CEO pay to minimum wage workers they'd only be getting a thousand bucks or
so each.

I would bet the workers would take it. And we'd probably have a more equitable
and healthy economy.

------
VLM
The speech appears flawless at first read.

It comes from the FODI about a month ago which summarizes to (sorry if this
offends) a more interesting TED than TED.

[http://fodi.sydneyoperahouse.com/](http://fodi.sydneyoperahouse.com/)

If only I could subscribe to a RSS feed of FODI speeches...

------
jl6
> Are we all in this together or are we all not?

Who is "we all"? I'm sure he's thinking of "all Americans", but if the idea is
to help people you don't know who are less fortunate than you, what is the
moral basis on which we restrict that generosity to just Americans? Nations
and citizenship are arbitrary divisions.

If someone is in need, help them, regardless of what their passport says.
That's not socialism, it's charity. And charity is capitalism's solution to
suffering: aid, given freely.

Edit: though when it comes to the environment, capitalism has no answer, as
the environment is fundamentally socialised.

~~~
dkuntz2
Considering that the article was a transcription of a speech given in Sydney,
I would think "we all" is humanity in general.

------
moss
There are so many things to love about this speech, but I think my favorite
part is this: "the only thing that actually works is not ideological, it is
impure, has elements of both arguments and never actually achieves any kind of
partisan or philosophical perfection."

That's an extremely cogent observation about capitalism, but it would be just
as relevant in a discussion about FP and OO, or about team social dynamics.
Across the board, I see people doing better work when they spend less time
seeking philosophical consistency and purity, and more time responding to real
observed situations.

------
7Figures2Commas
It's astonishing that, in a nearly 3,000 word speech calling the United States
a "horror show", the word _debt_ is used not once.

~~~
chroem
If you're implying that we need to madly slash all government operations, I
think that's pretty misguided.

We're actually running a secondary surplus right now, given that the rate of
inflation is higher than the extremely low interest rates on our national
debt.

~~~
7Figures2Commas
> If you're implying that we need to madly slash all government operations, I
> think that's pretty misguided.

I am always amused when folks take a simple statement ("It's astonishing that,
in a nearly 3,000 word speech calling the United States a 'horror show', the
word debt is used not once.") and read into it suggestions that are neither
expressed nor implied.

> We're actually running a secondary surplus right now, given that the rate of
> inflation is higher than the extremely low interest rates on our national
> debt.

There are always justifications for reckless behavior ("Yes, I'm spending a
lot of money, but I'm paying 0% interest for 18 months thanks to my new credit
card's introductory offer!"), but given that interest rates can't get much
lower, an exercise you might find valuable is to calculate the cost of
servicing the national debt as interest rates rise. For reference, although
the CBO isn't great at predicting the future, they expect the interest rate on
the 10y to be at 5.2% in 2023 and that annual interest payments on the debt
will be $823 billion.

------
kenster07
In computer science or math terms, the market economy is incredibly simple to
understand:

1) People are encouraged to locally optimize -- i.e. optimize their own
happiness. But as any psychologist would point out, lots of people have no
idea how to do that. Kind of a problem.

2) Local optimization rarely achieves the global optimum.

------
DickingAround
Already, there's deeply untrue parts of this: We don't really know why the US
emerged on top after WWII. There wasn't an A/B test that proves it. An
argument can easily be made that the US came out ahead because it was the
largest country which hadn't been substantially bombed and/or invaded. It's
not well founded to say it was because the US was a mix of capitalism and
socialism. There's not enough evidence for that.

~~~
erichocean
_An argument can easily be made that the US came out ahead because it was the
largest country which hadn 't been substantially bombed and/or invaded. _

Until this guy's speech, it hadn't occurred to me that anyone made any
argument but that one. Despite the lack of A/B testing, it's seemed obvious to
me, although I'd lump in reserve status for the dollar, and a couple of other
political things that—again—the US were able to force through thanks to being
last man standing after WWII is a huge force in US prosperity since WWII.

~~~
bane
It doesn't hurt to have jacked up the taxes to astronomical levels to raise
funds and then use those funds to make substantial public infrastructure
(Highways, Rail etc.), manufacturing (Tanks, Planes and Ships) and education
(engineering, management science, logistics and planning) investments with
that money resulting in an economy with a massive manufacturing base, the
logistics and infrastructure to support it and the people to run it --
followed by huge numbers of men returning back home needing jobs (and getting
free or heavily subsidized education if they wanted it as it was needed by
this new industrial machine). It was virtually a second industrial revolution,
but now instead of tanks, cars were churned out.

It's no mistake that other countries (Germany, Japan) that made similar
investments came to dominate the economies of their respective regions. It's
only now as other countries (China, South Korea, etc.) make the same style of
public investments that they're realizing the tremendous economic gains.

------
sologoub
The arguments about the divide in America often misses an important point -
personal choice or rather the sum of many personal choices that lead one to be
on either side of the divide. The fact that we have so many people in prison
is driven by the fact that people break laws in the first place. Some laws
might be unjust, but the vast majority are just. If you commit what society
has deemed unwanted, you must be punished. This is the basic concept of social
organization.

Recently, I went to see a movie "20 blocks" down the street (as the author
puts it) not thinking one bit that it might be a bad idea. I won't bore you
with details, but in the end, I was assaulted just for asking someone not to
speak loudly during the movie... How is this normal? Am I to blame for this
anyway, just because I am white and of upper-middle income?!

This is the reason I cannot buy in to the fact that capital is to blame for
all evils. Personal choice and degradation of moral values is what is the
tragedy of the West and the world. In all facets of our society, we have
chosen to ignore the basics that we understand to be good. These moral
principles have nothing to do with wealth. If we remember these and act on
them, the balance will be restored.

~~~
hacknat
_Some laws might be unjust, but the vast majority are just._

It doesn't really seem like you're examining this assumption too closely. The
vast majority are just? Really, the vast majority or laws are immaterial to
criminal behavior. The vast majority of law is definition, e.g. Telecom
companies are only allowed to use such-and-such a frequency band, utility
companies must implement such-and-such safety measures, banks must have such-
and-such leverage ratios.

When it comes to criminal laws, though, are the vast majority of them just? Do
you really think the application of the law is just in this country? I think
very smart men and women have made fantastic arguments disagreeing with the
basic assumption you glossed over, don't insult our intelligence by not
seriously engaging with that assumption before ripping off some anecdotal tale
of being assaulted in da 'hood.

~~~
sologoub
I'm not intending to insult your intelligence. I simply disagree with your
sentiment. Having the benefit of knowing exactly what life is like in less
fortunate society than US, it's a matter of perspective.

Compare the state of law and law enforcement in US, say to Russia, and you
will see that by this standard things aren't that bad here. No doubt they can
be better, but at least I have some recourse under the law here, whereas
bribes and political connections mean everything here.

Also, that is no anecdote, but very real personal experience and not in the
"hood", but a relatively modest part of Los Angeles.

~~~
bilbo0s
But your attitude is just the point.

There are many issues with your stories, and many points at which they may go
different ways. To give a single example, if I understand correctly, people
disrespected you at a movie theater for asking them to quiet down. If I may...

did you ask them to quiet down in a respectful fashion?

Don't answer.

Just think about your own behavior towards them and TRY to evaluate it in an
honest fashion. You may conclude that you would be better off moving out of
that neighborhood. Or maybe being more polite. Or perhaps just going to a
different movie theater. But whatever it is... it will probably make society a
better place if you make the adjustments.

I don't mean to put too fine a point on it.. but we shouldn't take on the $40K
a year expense of locking people up because you have a hard time with them at
the movie theater. That money is better used elsewhere.

~~~
sologoub
Actually, for the record, I did ask very politely. Unfortunately, I ended up
getting hit for that... So let's evaluate, I asked politely, verbally, then
got physically assaulted.

Also, did I ever mentioned race or ethnicity? No! All I referenced was that
this was a poorer part of Los Angeles than I live in, close in reference to
the "20 blocks down" that the speech referenced.

This has absolutely nothing to do with race or ethnicity. It has everything to
do with upbringing and economic situation, and, ultimately, personal choices
we make.

Did the person who hit me have to hit me? No, I was not assaulting him. This
was a personal choice.

~~~
bilbo0s
???

I didn't mention minorities either???

At any rate... your side of the story is known... but not the other side. That
is my entire point. The government can't be the solution to EVERY problem.
Especially when it is so expensive. It's an easy thing for you to go to a
different movie theater. It is a difficult thing for government to incur a
$40K obligation to make you comfortable... all on your word.

------
pfraze
Here's the video of his speech and following Q&A:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNttT7hDKsk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNttT7hDKsk)

------
mcphilip
For those interested, there's a great Bill Moyers Journal segment with David
Simon as the guest. It uses themes brought up in The Wire as a launching point
for discussion of topics related to this speech. In particular, Simon
explaining how the War on Drugs has transformed into a War on Inner City
Poverty was particularly interesting. David Simon is incredibly articulate off
the cuff, and that really shows through in this interview:

[http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04172009/profile.html](http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04172009/profile.html)

BTW, this interview does contain The Wire spoilers since it aired after the
conclusion of the series.

------
mooreds
"...because you know when people get to the end there's always the brick."

Chilling.

~~~
yetanotherphd
I find it chilling that the left still get away with their implicit threats of
violence unchallenged.

Can you imagine someone saying that about immigration? They would almost
certainly be locked up in the UK.

There is a double standard where saying "X will lead to violence, but I am
just warning you, I don't want to see it happen" is allowed for some, but not
others.

~~~
mooreds
Well, it happens on both sides in the USA all the time. Plenty of violence to
go around over here.

------
dmfdmf
Like a lot of people, Simon seems sincere in his concerns about America and
our future. Unfortunately, most people's sincerity isn't deep enough for them
to question their fundamental moral premises. I won't argue the case for
Capitalism here but to say that there are answers but most people do not want
to hear them.

People are realizing that we as a society are faced with a horrible moral and
political dilemma. The moral ideal is Socialism and yet where ever it is tried
consistently it fails. Our moral evil is Capitalism and yet where ever it is
tried it leads to material success but moral decay. So the dilemma of our age
is a moral-practical dichotomy that no one seems to be able to resolve. It is
understandable that people like Simon issue a call to double down on the moral
ideal of Socialism, that's what morality is for, to tell us what we should do.
But his "solution" is that maybe we can make it work this time if we don't
impose Marx's dictum too consistently. Maybe this time "need" won't expand
beyond all bound and "ability" won't vanish. This time.

This approach will fail too. To escape our dilemma we need to question our
morality instead of imposing another Socialist failure in America. I hope we
can avoid this fate but I am not optimistic. If you are sincerely interested
in these issues then I urge you to read two books by Ayn Rand; Capitalism: The
Unknown Ideal and The Virtue of Selfishness.

------
johnohara
_And that 's what The Wire was about basically, it was about people who were
worth less and who were no longer necessary, as maybe 10 or 15% of my country
is no longer necessary to the operation of the economy._

I wish more people would write about the so-called employment to population
ratio as opposed to the new claims for unemployment model. Not as a metric of
who's freeloading but as a metric of who's able to have skin in the game.

His 10 to 15% number may well be conservative.

------
Thiz
Capitalism isn't bad. Statism is.

There is no single argument against capitalism that doesn't involve government
intervention fucking up everything and everybody.

------
siliconc0w
The article mentions Marx as useful for diagnosis but not for prescription and
then seems to make the same mistake. The problem with political science is
that it isn't a science. It has certain language to express complex social
systems but it sucks at prescription. We can look at the ravaged path produced
by a complex dynamic system and attribute some apparent motivations and maybe
we're kinda right but it's still very difficult to then start making causative
statements. And still more difficult to endeavor to engineer such a system to
a certain end.

It isn't just answering, "what are we really trying to solve"? Or "how are we
going to solve it"? The problem is that there isn't just one question or one
answer. There are hundreds of possible questions, and then you have to agree
on a answer in theory, and then you have to agree on a implementation, and
then you have to have a system that is capable of the implementation. It's
madness and there is no evidence we have a political system that is capable of
such feats.

------
penguindev
His comments about health insurance were quite interesting.

"And ... you know when you say, OK, we're going to do what we're doing for
your law firm but we're going to do it for 300 million Americans and we're
going to make it affordable for everybody that way. And yes, it means that
you're going to be paying for the other guys in the society, the same way you
pay for the other guys in the law firm … Their eyes glaze. You know they don't
want to hear it. It's too much. Too much to contemplate the idea that the
whole country might be actually connected."

I never thought about it that way. That said, I still think obamacare has some
serious problems, and is basically corporate welfare and sick care. If you
want to make people healthy, stop subsidizing unhealthy carbohydrates and GMO
toxic shit, and perhaps _gasp_ think about stabilizing population.

------
return0
> Right now capital has effectively purchased the government

Which is the reason people no longer trust any government, which is why
libertarianism seems the way forward, and any thoughts like these sound like
'reactionary' voices from the past. It seems to me that the linear progression
towards absolute personal freedom which started with the Enlightenment is only
going to go forward, which will realize many of the fears expressed in the
article. The newer generations seem to be very comfortable with the idea of
the oncoming law of the jungle, and seem very comfortable with their
nationally neutral, atomic, unassociated social network identities. I doubt
there will be a shift towards socialist ideals any time soon. The empowerment
of the poor is already considered a technical problem to be solved by the
startup ecosystem.

------
fkssaa
This is in maryland... I'm pretty sure the wealth in that area isn't due to
"capitalism". Try beltway bandits.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_bandits](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_bandits)

------
auggierose
This has right now 239 points and is 4 hours old, with 237 comments. How can
this article not be Nr. 1 on HN right now?

It is time to assess your algorithms, Mr. Graham.

------
platz
There is no such thing as society - Thatcher

~~~
gd1
It reads slightly different in context, but then you probably know that:

"There is no such thing as society. There is a living tapestry of men and
women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives
will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for
ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts
those who are unfortunate."

~~~
platz
That's fair. Although I would suggest her view encourages you to take care of
yourself first, and only then pay attention to others.

------
PythonicAlpha
Capitalism: Lemmings running towards the verge of the abyss and the priests of
capitalism are yelling: Faster, Faster!

------
michaelochurch
Excellent speech.

I think we should view market capitalism as like an AI algorithm in a very
convoluted space.

Start everyone off with the same amount of resources, and then let market
capitalism go. For the first few iterations, inequality is forming but
everyone is better off; even the poor are making absolute gains. You'll
conclude that the algorithm (market capitalism) works. Untended, though, it
starts to diverge after some time. The parameters go to infinity, the model
gets ridiculous and ceases to represent real information (which institutions
are worthy and add value, which do not) and goes into the self-perpetuation of
early, parochial advantage (like overtraining, in ML, where noise in the data
is misinterpreted as genuine signal).

What we want is to have the growth of that initial training arc, not the
degeneracy as the algorithm diverges, and you want to keep having that growth
and increasing general prosperity indefinitely. So we need continuous
regularization. The welfare state is supposed to do that, but the increasing
ability for those with wealth to convert it into power has rendered our
government severely dysfunctional, so the normalization has stopped.

The problem with poverty in capitalism is that there's no real solution.
Divergence and perpetuation of poverty is exactly what you'd expect. Markets
are all about trade, but a person with _nothing_ \-- no social capital, no
cultural capital, no wealth-- has nothing to trade, except for when terms for
labor are extremely favorable-- like, skilled labor is in such shortage that
even the out-of-touch rich see value in training the poor, for free-- and
that's something we haven't seen since the 1960s.

------
andyl
Capitalism as we know it is unsustainable.

~~~
gum_ina_package
How so? If anything, we've seen how people can corrupt and ruin any
system/society. When many people say "capitalism has failed us" they really
mean our politicians have failed us by allowing corporations to run the
government. That's not a failure of capitalism, that's our failure because
we've let our elected representatives do this to us.

~~~
chongli
Because it's based on the idea of exponential growth. Exponential growth is
not sustainable without exponential growing access to resources.

~~~
RamiK
Instead of regurgitating an old chestnut: "thermodynamic limits impose a cap
to energy growth lest we cook ourselves. I’m not talking about global warming,
CO2 build-up, etc. I’m talking about radiating the spent energy into
space."("Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist",
[http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-
meets-...](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-
physicist/))

Essentially, even if we have exponential growing access to resources, we'll
still be facing earth BBQ circa 2400.

~~~
chongli
Heat capacity and space are resources too.

