
Seven Fixes for American Capitalism - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-07/seven-fixes-for-american-capitalism
======
komali2
>Among their recommendations is preventing tech platforms from vertically
integrating into different lines of business, where they can potentially favor
their own services and harm rivals. In this view, Facebook shouldn’t be
allowed to own Instagram.

Weird, I would argue that Facebook buying Instagram was a horizontal
integration.

Amazon buying cloudflare is more something I'd think is vertical but it's
possible I just don't understand the terms.

~~~
chasd00
the issue is you didn't directly attack Facebook and therefore are in
violation of the groupthink de jour.

~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments like this to Hacker News. Even if you
have a good point, it damages the quality of the thread.

------
perfmode
> “I don’t even think stasis is compatible with liberty,” he told the
> Washington audience. - Bezos

Suppose one were to attempt to steelman Jeff’s statement. Is there any
credible basis for this statement?

Or is it just one of those things that powerful people say because it makes
them sound profound and they don’t have to follow it up with substantive
supporting evidence.

~~~
entropicdrifter
If he's talking about economic stasis, let's give it a go:

1) Economics are the monetary interactions of a given society, subgroup,
population, etc

2) stasis refers to not just stagnation, but a complete lack of change

3) total lack of change at a meta-scale like a society only exists in
totalitarian societies

4) in the case of total economic stasis, you would need a command
economy/controlled economy

5) in the scenario of a command economy, some of the people involved in the
economy would fundamentally need to be oppressed

6) therefore, regardless of any moral or ethical judgements, a totally static
economy would be inhibiting of the liberty of any given individual
participating in it

Now, that said, there are many things to be gained by limiting what people are
allowed to do. By the same course of logic you could argue that all laws are
incompatible with liberty, since technically the government is trying to force
you not to kill people, for instance. Obviously that is still to the benefit
of society even if you personally have one fewer option. At this point it
comes down to the fact that laws and regulations, when done correctly, can
increase the number of practical/feasible options available to a populace,
even though they technically restrict some of the options that would cause a
society to fall apart. People can accomplish more in groups than they could on
their own due to the options of specialization and parallelizing work becoming
viable when they have restrictive agreements to cooperate. That's the whole
point of companies.

So this is IMO a case of him being _technically correct_ while still not
making a very deep or substantial point in the overall context.

~~~
claudiawerner
I think your post hides a few ideological conveniences which you've used to
bolster your argument, or at least make it suond convincing. For instance,

>total lack of change at a meta-scale like a society only exists in
totalitarian societies

Does it? Why?

>in the scenario of a command economy, some of the people involved in the
economy would fundamentally need to be oppressed

Why? Where does the oppression come in? If it is being _told what to produce_
then doesn't capitalism do the same, though through a distributed model of
command? Isn't it true that under capitalism, one must work by someone else's
instructions, by the duration dictated by this other, in the method prescribed
by this other, in exchange for compensation often only negotiated by a group
of these 'others' (save the power of unions intervening)?

>regardless of any moral or ethical judgements, a totally static economy would
be inhibiting of the liberty of any given individual participating in it

According to what definition of liberty? Here's what Marx talked about[0]:
communism comes in the form of a stateless society, its conception of liberty
is radically different to the English liberal tradition's, which places
liberty negatively defined as freedom from interference from others. So it
seems like you need to preface "liberty" with "bourgeois liberty", or if you
prefer, "classical libertarian definitions of liberty". You cannot take them
for given.

>laws and regulations, when done correctly, can increase the number of
practical/feasible options available to a populace, even though they
technically restrict some of the options that would cause a society to fall
apart

Under this schema, a hypothetical restriction on employing labour could do the
same - people have more options on how to spend their time and to what end.
But it's worth nothing that Marx (or any traditional socialist) never argued
for imposing laws and regulations, they spoke about changing society, the
whole framework of it. Consider that in Hegel, freedom is defined as the
negation of necessity.

[0]
[https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/f/r.htm](https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/f/r.htm)

~~~
entropicdrifter
It's true that my post is grossly simplified for the sake of an exercise in
pseudo-formal logic. This is largely for the sake of readability, as it was
pretty long already.

>>total lack of change at a meta-scale like a society only exists in
totalitarian societies

>Does it? Why?

This is genuinely interesting to me, so I'm going to try to write out my
intuitive reasoning. Please bear with me and feel free to point out any
errors.

1) The natural state of closed systems is to change unless at an equilibrium.
(2nd law of thermodynamics)

2) In order for an economy to stop changing you need to be at some sort of
equilibrium, typically these are either brought about by implicit military
force with a government or by economic force in the case of functional
monopolies.

3) While monopolies can crush entire industries, they have yet to take over
entire societies without government assistance, to my knowledge

4) Therefore when you're talking about (relatively) complete stasis within an
entire society's economy, you must be talking about a scenario where either
government intervention is involved, or perhaps a hypothetical scenario where
a single monopoly has taken over the entire economy and therefore functionally
replaced the government.

I would say either of those hypothetical societies are roughly equivalent to
totalitarianism, at least with regards to the economy, which is still the
domain we're talking about, right?

>Why? Where does the oppression come in? If it is being _told what to produce_
then doesn't capitalism do the same, though through a distributed model of
command?

A distributed model of command? By allowing market forces to dictate what is
in-demand and what is not, is that an imposition by an external will, or is it
closer to gravity and surface tension defining the path of water as it flows
down a hill?

I would argue that a fundamental aspect of oppression is intention. The market
itself has no fundamental intentions but to grow. That said, it is bad at
certain types of planning and must be redirected in many cases with external
force in order to get it to work in the best interests of the public.

Having said all that, I don't think that we disagree on any of the points
you've made. I was steelmanning Bezos' argument as suggested by the parent
comment, not trying to make my own (except the very last paragraph). Yes, the
use of "liberty" was assuming a bourgeois definition, this was because I had
assumed it was the definition that Bezos was using.

~~~
claudiawerner
> is that an imposition by an external will, or is it closer to gravity and
> surface tension defining the path of water as it flows down a hill?

It is imposition of the will of capital, as the personification goes. As such
it is also the imposition of its representatives - politicians, churches and
economists. Even water flowed down hills before capitalism - so the natural
analogy is only half way there, perhaps a much more recent (and thoroughly
capitalist) natural analogy would do: the pollution of the earth!

More than a bee builds a hive, we're responsible because we are thinking
creatures, with the power to change nature and make it ours.

"The institutions of feudalism are artificial institutions, those of the
bourgeoisie are natural institutions. In this, they resemble the theologians,
who likewise establish two kinds of religion. Every religion which is not
theirs is an invention of men, while their own is an emanation from God. When
the economists say that present-day relations — the relations of bourgeois
production — are natural, they imply that these are the relations in which
wealth is created and productive forces developed in conformity with the laws
of nature"

On intention, we'd agree that intention is a very human thing. Does the air
show intent? Do animals show intent? No, intent is human - and so the force of
capital must also be, or so it would go if we don't use the power of
abstraction. To think abstractly about the situation, we recognise that
abstract entities do have intentions of their own. Socialists don't want to go
about blaming, they want to get on finding the most abstract form of this
system, which is totalitarian: it absorbs every section of society (from
interactions every day, to leisure time, to work time, to our relationships,
to art, philosophy, science...) to work for it. If you don't conform as a
capitalist or a worker, you're out. Intention is the question when we want to
blame someone, but not even Marx blamed (or praised) the capitalists.

"To prevent possible misunderstanding, a word. I paint the capitalist and the
landlord in no sense couleur de rose [i.e., seen through rose-tinted glasses].
But here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they are the
personifications of economic categories, embodiments of particular class-
relations and class-interests. My standpoint, from which the evolution of the
economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can
less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose
creature he socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself
above them."

I think we have reached the point where the growth of the market should be
questioned, and whether its worse continuing to serve this external _alien_
authority, both as capitalists and as workers. The question of what follows is
to many still an open one, as I'm sure you'd agree if I were to say my own
(which you can probably guess is). Can there be a society without the kind of
coercion capitalism uses to "redirect our resources"? Maybe you don't think
so, but by saying the answer is "no", we're throwing out weighing up its
criticism (sociological, economic, moral, artistic) and where it has excelled
over any previous system.

~~~
andrenth
But “the will of capital” is defined by market demand; in other words,
consumers. This is what makes it different from totalitarian imposition.

~~~
claudiawerner
You haven't given any reason to think that. I've already addressed why
intention is not necessary for the critique. Are you aware of ideas such as
structural violence, for instance?

Imagine if you lived in a society in which the idea of liberty simply didn't
exist, and the intentions of those in charge were good intentions (as far as
they know), and those in charge were numerous, or even the whole populace.
Would you call this potentially totalitarian?

Why is capitalism totalitarian? Because it _creates a totality_ in which all
life is absorbed, from the economic foundation of society (even you would
agree), but also to the way we do science, create art and how we interact with
other people.

~~~
andrenth
> Would you call this potentially totalitarian?

Absolutely. And “good intentions” is irrelevant, what matters is the results.
How do people in that hypothetical society live? Obviously we cannot tell, but
we can study history and check how things go when liberty is discarded.

> Because it creates a totality

This is just word play. The word “totalitarian” has a very specific meaning.
From the dictionary:

1) of or relating to a centralized government that does not tolerate parties
of differing opinion and that exercises dictatorial control over many aspects
of life.

2) exercising control over the freedom, will, or thought of others;
authoritarian; autocratic.

~~~
claudiawerner
>Absolutely. And “good intentions” is irrelevant, what matters is the results.

Fantastic, I agree. So then the intentions actually seem to matter very little
(or not at all) in the kind of society we create; so why do you insist on the
human factor, if the intentions don't matter? What do you think of emergent
properties of a system, for which nobody is to blame individually?

>The word “totalitarian” has a very specific meaning. From the dictionary

I don't trust the dictionary to define terms which are better defined in their
own fields (in this case, sociology or politics or philosophy). But I can see
capitalism fitting into the second definition, or the first definition, since
you say that the good-intentions-but-unfree society I described before is
totalitarian.

Another example: can racism be totalitarian? Even your second definition would
seem to suggest so. What about gender roles? In the end, I see no reason at
all why totalitarianism must come about as part of a coordinated intention or
conspiracy. If good-intentioned bureaucrats can create a totalitarian society,
why can't neutrally-intentioned capitalists and consumers?

~~~
andrenth
> so why do you insist on the human factor, if the intentions don't matter

Because, regardless of intention, results are a consequence of human action.

> What do you think of emergent properties of a system, for which nobody is to
> blame individually?

Are you asking if emergent properties can be totalitarian? I think this
question is not very useful. Do we have a real-world system in which nobody is
to blame for its properties?

> But I can see capitalism fitting into the second definition, or the first
> definition

If you're talking about the capitalist societies we have today, yes, they can
absolutely be totalitarian. But is that because of capitalism or in spite of
it?

The fear of totalitarianism is the reason capitalists defend freedom and the
reduction of the state.

> can racism be totalitarian?

The idea of racism? The definition of the word? I don't think so. But a
society where racists can exert power over people and reduce their freedom is
totalitarian. But we're back to the human factor.

------
dnautics
No mention of ending inflation, which is a deliberate state-driven policy to
steal from the poor to give to the rich and make the state "look good" by
lowering the metric of unemployment:

[https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-
hi...](https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-higher-
inflation/)

"even in the long run, it’s really, really hard to cut nominal wages. Yet when
you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a
significant number of workers take wage cuts. So having a somewhat higher
inflation rate would lead to lower unemployment, not just temporarily, but on
a sustained basis."

~~~
jiveturkey
a. isn't krugman arguing FOR inflation?

b. why is low unemployment bad? let's say we have a deflationary economy,
doesn't that lead to high unemployment which is a feedback to more deflation?
how is that not a bad thing?

excuse my naivete

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I think the problem was in dnautic's phrasing.

I initially read it as "No mention of ending (inflation, which is a deliberate
state-driven policy to steal from the poor to give to the rich)".

But after reading the follow-up from dnautic (peer to this comment), I now
think the intended meaning was "No mention of (ending inflation), which is (a
deliberate state-driven policy to steal from the poor to give to the rich)".

That is, dnautic (if I understand correctly) is saying that the problem is
_ending_ inflation, rather than that inflation is the problem.

~~~
dnautics
Nope. Inflation is _the_ problem with contemporary capitalism.

------
tribune
The chart showing USG spending / GDP excludes transfer payments, which strikes
me as misleading. Transfer payments have ballooned in the time period shown
and are still transfers of cash out of the government's coffers. I'm not some
sky-is-falling Federal debt doomsayer; borrowing has been cheap and we're not
breaking a sweat to service the debt. Still, it's hardly controversial that
the current trajectory is unsustainable in the not-so-long term of a few
decades.

~~~
amalcon
Transfer payments are presumably excluded because GDP traditionally excludes
transfer payments. Including something in the numerator, but not in the
denominator, is a good way to get weird ratios. E.g. it would be possible
(though it would not presently happen in the US) to have a spending:GDP ratio
greater than one.

I do agree that it would be better to use some other denominator that does not
have this problem, but it isn't a crazy decision to begin with.

------
kaycebasques
See also an article [1] I submitted a few days ago that provides a trader’s
take on MMT.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19073500](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19073500)

------
nabnob
I agree with some of the points being made in this article, but there's
definitely better resources on this topic.

The paper mentioned in the article, "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox", is very
thorough and easy to read even for someone (like me) who doesn't have a
background in economics.

The key point made in that paper is that modern antitrust legislation only
looks at price when determining whether a monopoly is harming the consumer,
and doesn't consider scale or the effects on the overall market and
competition.

>This Note argues that the current framework in antitrust—specifically its
pegging competition to “consumer welfare,” defined as short-term price
effects—is unequipped to capture the architecture of market power in the
modern economy. We cannot cognize the potential harms to competition posed by
Amazon’s dominance if we measure competition primarily through price and
output. Specifically, current doctrine underappreciates the risk of predatory
pricing and how integration across distinct business lines may prove
anticompetitive. These concerns are heightened in the context of online
platforms for two reasons. First, the economics of platform markets create
incentives for a company to pursue growth over profits, a strategy that
investors have rewarded. Under these conditions, predatory pricing becomes
highly rational—even as existing doctrine treats it as irrational and
therefore implausible. Second, because online platforms serve as critical
intermediaries, integrating across business lines positions these platforms to
control the essential infrastructure on which their rivals depend. This dual
role also enables a platform to exploit information collected on companies
using its services to undermine them as competitors.

Even though I'm a software engineer, I'm skeptical of claims that technology
can help fix social, economic, or environmental problems. I support green
technology, but they're not a panacea. In articles pushing green tech and
sustainable energy, there seems to be this implicit assumption that we can
maintain our current standard of living in a "sustainable" way. Solar panels
and electric cars aren't going to prevent climate catastrophe if only 5% of
people can afford them. Rather than relying on individual consumers to make
ethical choices (opting into living sustainably) we need drastic changes at a
state-wide level (so that choosing not to be sustainable is opt-out).

>Income inequality can be solved by educating or retraining workers for the
high-tech jobs of the future.

This statement doesn't make any sense. If you increase the number of software
engineers, the average wage will decrease.

Edit: Forgot to mention that tech is absolutely automating away a large number
of jobs.

~~~
api
Another thing the pricing test favored by the Chicago School doesn't consider
is the effect of consolidation on entrepreneurship. Huge consolidated
companies become de-facto standards that are hard to compete with for many
many reasons and that have the resources to simply buy or clone any competitor
in its crib. In the computing world they also tend to become platform
monopolies with strong lock-in from APIs and network effects. You also get a
huge problem with regulatory capture due to the massive budgets these
companies have for lobbying and revolving door deals. If the mega-corps get
big enough and exist long enough they start to effectively merge with the
state.

The price to the consumer might not change a lot, but a lot of innovation
doesn't happen when the market gets dominated by players like that.

Back to inequality -- this effect also leads to consolidation of more and more
wealth at the top by these companies and to geographic consolidation of wealth
in the cities where these monster companies are headquartered or have major
operations. Today that's San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York.
Due to the "law of rent" this forces up real estate costs in these cities,
further making it hard for middle class people to build wealth regardless of
where they live. Geographic wealth concentration means you face a choice
between poor career prospects and living in a city where the real estate
market takes all your surplus due to the natural spatial supply limits (land,
commute times) that exist for housing.

Entrepreneurship is a major vehicle for geographic wealth dispersal and for
class mobility from the middle class upward. Without entrepreneurship the
ranks of the very wealthy become incredibly stagnant and almost like a
generational nobility. (Europe has this problem too, though for very different
reasons. In Europe the problem is too much cumbersome regulation making it too
hard to start new businesses. So Europe has too much government and America
has unstoppable mega-corps that crush everything new.)

~~~
zozbot123
It's weird to me to see a narrow "pricing approach" towards antitrust being
attributed to the Chicago School. I thought the Chicago perspective on
antitrust was that it should potentially be applied to markets that aren't
"contestable" (i.e. have high barriers to entry) for either structural or
regulatory reasons, and in particular, that well-designed regulation could be
used in such cases to minimize and constrain the non-contestable portion of a
complex, multi-lateral market structure (see e.g. the markets in energy,
telcos and the like - IT does not seem all that different), while "carving
out" new, more contestable markets that could then sustain a lesser regulatory
burden. This seems quite close to the power-focused approach that the
"critics" are pursuing, and it's weird that they're being characterized as
anti-free-market.

~~~
api
It's possible that as with Keynes' advice about counter-cyclic spending the
Chicago school's views on monopoly and antitrust have been distorted by
politicians and lobbyists.

In the case of Keynes counter-cyclic spending became "deficits don't matter,
always spend more no matter what." In recessions spending goes up and in booms
spending goes up. Keynes argued that governments should cut during booms to
achieve something at least close to a net balance, but the cutting part is
ignored.

------
apta
Two things that can have a major positive impact: end usury/interest, end
artificial inflation.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Interest != usury.

And what do you mean by "artificial" inflation? QE?

~~~
apta
Any amount of money you owe on a loan (whether it be a fixed amount, like 1
cent per 10,000 usd or a percentage) is usury. It is bad because it exploits
people in need, and people with money get more money doing basically nothing.
Do not distinguish between the two based on how much interest gets charged,
it's all the same. As far as I'm aware, what are known as Abrahamic religions
made no distinction between the two. It's a modern invention.

Most inflation today is artificial, banks print more money to stimulate people
spending more money. This is one summary I came across:
[https://www.quora.com/What-is-artificial-
inflation](https://www.quora.com/What-is-artificial-inflation)

------
d_burfoot
A lot of analyses of capitalism miss out on the fact that the problems it
creates vary widely by sector. Warren Buffet said that if "a farsighted
capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a
huge favor by shooting Orville down." That's because the airline industry
didn't return profits to investors; instead the vast value created by the
industry accrued overwhelmingly to the public, because of competition.

So a good general strategy would be for the government to make sure that, at
least in the long run, the rules for each sector are tweaked to make the
sector look more and more like the airline industry.

It's not hard to imagine a way for this to happen in the tech industry. We can
imagine a technology sector that runs completely on commodity hardware, open-
source software, and open APIs instead of walled gardens like FaceBook. This
would just take a bit of political will and some smart regulations - no need
to radically overthrow the system that has created so much prosperity for us.

~~~
clairity
> “That's because the airline industry didn't return profits to investors;
> instead the vast value created by the industry accrued overwhelmingly to the
> public, because of competition.“

rhur?

competition is essential to capitalism; monopoly returns to investors are not.
no one is even guaranteed a profit. you describe exactly how capitalism is
designed to work.

this kind of basic misunderstanding is part of why we’re in the mess we’re in.
economics and finance should really be required in high school.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I think it's a bit much to imply that Warren Buffet missed out on learning
economics and finance in high school.

~~~
clairity
might yours be an intentional misreading? buffett surely knows that
capitalism's purpose is to allocate capital efficiently in an economy, not
generate outsized returns to investors, which is a form of inefficiency:

"[E]ventually a fundamental rule of economics prevailed: In an unregulated
commodity business, a company must lower its costs to competitive levels or
face extinction." \-- Warren Buffett, in the 1994 Berkshire Hathaway
shareholder letter

but he's not an impartial observer--a definitional statement that suits his
vested interest is not surprising.

~~~
dragonwriter
> buffett surely knows that capitalism's purpose is to allocate capital
> efficiently in an economy

No, it's not. That's an retrospective rationalization invented centuries after
capitalism came into existence, and even after it was named by its critics.

The _purpose_ of capitalism which motivated them pushing the changes which
formed it was to secure power previously held by the feudal aristocracy in the
hands of the mercantile—what would become “capitalist"—class.

~~~
clairity
the history is debated, and knowledge is generally retrospective and
rationalized. besides, the historical origin of capitalism has little to do
with its pragmatic purpose.

capitalism wouldn't be a practiced (locally optimal?) economic system were it
not relatively efficient at allocating capital in an economy. decentralization
of the means of production is also a critical feature of its success, but i'm
sure the 18th c. bourgeoisie didn't think about that either.

~~~
dragonwriter
> capitalism wouldn't be a practiced (locally optimal?) economic system were
> it not relatively efficient at allocating capital in an economy.

Why not?

It's certainly reasonable to expect productive efficiency (at least in some
sense of output, though not necessarily the pure aggregate utilitarian sense
it is normally used) _ceteris paribus_ to lead to better survival of an
economic meme, but it seems unwarranted in the extreme to assume that that is
the only differentiator in the survival of such memes, which is necesat for
the implication you suggest to reliably hold.

(And even if it does hold, what does that say about the near-universal
evolution away from pure capitalism to various forms of the modern mixed
economy?)

~~~
clairity
sure, it's premature to be absolutely sure of the reasons for capitalism's
current success (and potential demise), but that doesn't mean we can't draw
any conclusions.

the underlying conjecture is that capitalism combines with modern political
and cultural systems to create broad distribution of esteem and opportunity,
while also being more efficient at it, so that attention is drawn toward
positive-sum production (and away from zero-/negative-sum conflict), making it
more stable than other systems like feudalism.

moreover capitalism seems to be flexible enough to combine with diverse
political and cultural systems. the modern mixed economy, then, can be thought
of as an expression of the pragmatic holistic sociopoliticoeconomic system
(vs. the ideal) as it counteracts various forms of self-serving distortions.

do you believe maximizing personal capital is a worthy goal in itself, or is
there another reason for the debate?

------
om33
It's not an issue of having good ideas. The issue is really about execution
and consensus building.

We need to stop propping up 'the choosen one' type leaders and we will see
change. I want boring people elected ala Merkel.

Starting all the way back from Clinton\Bush\Obama\Trump to AOC these leaders
are the wrong fit to make change happen in polarized times. They are great for
media rating but not much else.

I want to see a non-charismatic figure who is not evaluated by how much
dopamine they produce in my head through an instagram pic or a cool speech.

I am tired of these leaders who think that's the route. They have all failed.
I can't believe no one sees that.

~~~
magduf
As the other responder said, boring non-charismatic people do not get elected
in the US for President. The Democrat Party has been trying this over and over
and over, and losing easily-winnable elections as a result. The latest
election with Hillary losing is the most visible example of this phenomenon:
she had no charisma at all, and lost to someone who was extremely polarizing.

It doesn't work this way in other countries because they don't elect their
executives. In Parliamentary systems, the Parliament chooses the executive,
rather than that person being chosen in a popular election. So the executive
only needs to be charismatic enough to win a seat in parliament, not so
popular as to win a nationwide popular election for a single and critical
post.

~~~
bryanlarsen
When marking the ballot in a parliamentary election, people put the X beside
the name of their chosen representative for their local district, but in
practice that name often has very little impact on the vote. The party and its
leader have far more sway in most voters' minds than the local representative.

------
joshuaheard
The title implies Capitalism is broken. It's not. Capitalism has provided more
benefits to more people than any other economic system in history. American
Capitalism has produced the telephone, the automobile, the personal computer,
the cell phone, the internet, and made us one of the richest countries in the
world.

A better title would be, Tweaks that can make American Capitalism Better.

~~~
clavalle
Ok. We found a good move. But did we find the best move? Or, somewhat more
weakly, can we find a better move?

Don't let the good be the enemy of the better.

~~~
m000z0rz
Isn't that exactly what joshuaheard said, though?

~~~
chobeat
No because capitalism, even on paper, will still imply poverty as a structural
element. Without poverty and exploitation, the system cannot sustain itself.
This without considering waste: Capitalism, being competitive at every scale,
implies that to give feedback to the system, you have to waste. Waste
resources, waste time, waste lives. The more waste, the better the outcome.

If it works by different assumptions, it stops being capitalism. So if you aim
to remove these elements, you're aiming at destroying capitalism.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
One definition of capitalism is simply the re-investment of profits into
improvements - better tools, for example. That in no way implies poverty as a
structural element.

~~~
claudiawerner
I believe what GP is trying to say is that capitalism necessarily creates such
an element, since they view it as a class structure society.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I believe that's what they are saying, too. I think it's flat-out wrong.

If you and I are both working stiffs, and we both have $50 left at the end of
the month, and you buy some beer, and I buy a used sewing machine so I can
take sewing jobs in the evening, then I'm a capitalist and you aren't. That
doesn't make us of different classes, though, (except that I may be mentally
at a different place than you are).

~~~
claudiawerner
>and I buy a used sewing machine so I can take sewing jobs in the evening,
then I'm a capitalist and you aren't

I don't think that's true. In the traditional schema (for its faults and
advantages), a capitalist is someone who both owns capital and employs wage
labour. If you hired people to work on your sewing machine and kept their
produce, that would likely make you a capitalist. At the end of the day, these
examples don't work well to illustrate the notion of capitalism as a social
phenomenon, rather than one involving two individuals who buy beer.

------
fallingfrog
You can buy and sell almost anything under capitalism. You can buy or sell
property. You can buy or sell pieces of a company (stocks). You can buy or
sell human labor. And the way that businesses make money is by essentially
arbitraging some market, for example by buying something in one place and
selling it somewhere where it is more expensive, or by buying labor and
selling the products of that labor at a profit.

But there are certain things you already _cannot_ buy and sell in our current
system, and this is key to seeing the way forward. You can't buy and sell
people, for instance. That would be slavery. The purest form of capitalism
would include slavery also. You can buy labor, but no more than 40 hours per
week without paying overtime.

The socialist point of view on this is that it isn't just buying the life of a
person that is morally wrong; buying their lives piecemeal 8 hours at a time
and then arbitraging the value of their labor is wrong as well. So under
socialism when people work, they work always and only for themselves or as
part of a cooperative that they are an equal owner of. So they are taking part
in a voluntary activity, not selling themselves. Ultimately that's the only
way to fix our economic system; allowing the arbitrage of labor leads to
fundamental instabilities and inequalities that cannot be resolved. Otherwise
the pressures within society will continue to grow until the society tears
itself apart or relieves the pressure by going to war.

~~~
hevi_jos
What socialism system are you talking about? Just name one socialist country
that applies your ideal scenarios. IMHO this system only exist in your mind,
it is not real.

Countries that people say are Socialist like those in the north of Europe, are
really capitalistic societies.

I have known plenty of real socialist countries in the world, and they only
share misery. In those socialist countries, like Venezuela or Cuba, the old
Soviet World, differences between those in power and those that are not are
enormous, bigger than in any capitalist system.

In Venezuela for example, those in power made deals selling the gold of the
country, the oil and until recently, had access to favorable exchange of
currency that they sold in the black market making a tremendous profit.

In Cuba people earn a maximum by law of something like 30 dollars/month. But
people in charge sells access to country resources like permission to place a
Hotel or a factory and make millions. All the heroes of revolution living in
Mansions in front of the sea while normal people do not have permission to
change a broken electrical switch in their houses or feeding the cow in front
of their house, starbing.

Cooperatives, like Mondragón in Spain or kibbutz in Israel have their own set
of problems. If you pay everybody the same, the best people just get out soon.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I am constantly surprised by the reaction to the word _socialism_.

I live in the UK, where the government takes 50% of GDP, and spends it mostly
on _communal_ activities - shared ownership. We share our resources so that
the sick can get treated, our children educated, our air space protected from
Russian invasion.

We are sharing most of our national resources, and handing them out according
to principles of those who need, not those who have money.

Call it whatever you like but it smells like socialist utopia.

Now if 99% of the resources were allocated such, would the whole thing
collapse? Would we be better off if only 25% of resources were shared?

I think the difference between vibrant capitalism and collpasing communism is
the efficency vs fairness trade off

~~~
EpicEng
>We share our resources so that... our air space protected from Russian
invasion

The US subsidizing more than 70% of NATO probably helps a bit there.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
making us more of a socialist civilisation .. ?

~~~
EpicEng
Yes. Things may look quite a bit different without ~700B in US NATO funding.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Normally I would not do this but it's worth checking this as it has seemed a
big contentious issue and I wanted to get a view

So USA _total_ expenditure on defence is around the 700bn mark - at about 4%
GDP roughly double the major EU countries at the 2% Nato recommended mark. The
UK is listed below at 50bn (~2%) but I happen to know the UK Blue Book has 95
Bn - so even basic accounting is a difficult issue these days...

However this is not the same as the Nato budget or "contributions" \- the NATO
countries contribute very little to NATO specifically (a building in Brussels
etc). An aircraft carrier belonging to the US Navy still belongs to the US
Navy whether it's on NATO exercises or on patrol by Hawaii.

I think Trump makes a fair point saying those that are not spending 2% on
defence should increase the defence expenditure as they agreed - but equally
that is mostly considered an _internal_ political decision. Having
international agreements that get in the way of internal politics is ... well
Brexit, NAFTA, most wars ...

Interesting to do a little research and get an understanding of the problem -
thank you for the prompting - but I think the USA is not going to stop
spending 700bn - the issue is will they step away from a mutual defence pact?

In the end I can still be a well armed socialist ;-)

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_militar...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures)

[https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2017_...](https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2017_06/20170629_170629-pr2017-111-en.pdf#page=7&zoom=auto,-274,826)

[https://www.factcheck.org/2017/12/distorted-nato-funding-
fig...](https://www.factcheck.org/2017/12/distorted-nato-funding-figure/)
(little disappointed by fact check article quality here)

~~~
EpicEng
>However this is not the same as the Nato budget or "contributions" \- the
NATO countries contribute very little to NATO specifically (a building in
Brussels etc). An aircraft carrier belonging to the US Navy still belongs to
the US Navy whether it's on NATO exercises or on patrol by Hawaii.

Sure, but that carrier costs a lot of money to operate. If we're doing so in
accordance with a NATO treaty/policy/request then it's still an expense.

Of course the US doesn't do this for completely altruistic reasons. We
obviously have a vested interest in the stability of western Europe and the
safety of our allies. That does not change the fact that the US contributes
the vast majority of resources used to defend NATO allies and that things in
that region would look quite a bit different if e.g. we decided to massively
scale back.

It is complicated however and I don't pretend to have a high level of
understanding on all of the details. There's a lot I could learn here.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
>>> t the US contributes the vast majority of resources used to defend NATO
allies ...

That seems unlikely ... i mean all the armies of the non-US nation's are by
definition based in Europe.

>>> things in the region would look different

absolutely- but there is a world of difference between sabre rattling in order
to get changed spending commitments and some positive domestic press and a
truly isolationist foreign affairs policy

(Yes the US will look East more than West for the future, and that will mean
scaling back. But Russia remains belligerent.)

------
simplecomplex
Anti-trust isn’t equipped to deal with anything because it’s arbitrary and
vague. “You’re too big because some bureaucrats said so” is not law. That’s
not justice. It’s totalitarian.

How can a company avoid breaking the law if they don’t know they’re breaking
it?

~~~
pseudolus
>>Anti-trust isn’t equipped to deal with anything because it’s arbitrary and
vague.

That's something of a gross mischaracterization of antitrust law. The Sherman
Act and other laws provide various guidelines as to what constitutes
anticompetitive conduct. Through the succeeding decades since the introduction
of antitrust legislation courts have also consistently built up case law that
provides further guidance.

~~~
posterboy
You are arguing in favour of the above argument. If case law has to be
established on a case by case basis, then because the law is a priori
insufficient.

~~~
pseudolus
No individual statute can encompass all possibilities hence the need for case
law to clarify the law - it's a distinguishing characteristic of common law
systems and, at least with respect to interpretation of statutes, also civil
law systems.

~~~
posterboy
> No individual statute can encompass all possibilities

In the same sense, a benevolent reading of OP's would find that it doesn't
implicate all Anti Trust decisions, but just alleges that it's prone to, well,
miscarriage of justice, I guess, having left specific examples to be specified
by the factfinders, other commentators. I get that leaving arguments open like
that is considered bad form.

No need to tell me that Anti Trust is based on prior case law and thus based
on Examples. I wouldn't know. I feel that they didn't feel the need to spell
those cases out again is a general problem, and I see that as a problem more
from a coding persöective. It's horrible spaghetti code and bound to be buggy.
As debugging has it, inspections run very slow and for a really good
development experience you have to pay suppliers for support and fixes. Vice
versa, some vital functionality may be outsourced from the OS to third
parties, or restricted by the OS. Complaints against such practice yield the
typical recommendation to use free software or implement your own stack,
instead.

