
Are You Ready to Consider That Capitalism Is the Real Problem? - Fripplebubby
https://www.fastcompany.com/40439316/are-you-ready-to-consider-that-capitalism-is-the-real-problem
======
jandrese
Every system has problems. Capitalism is the best we have found at managing
resources at scale. The problem of course is that wealth tends to create
wealth, which causes wealth to accumulate at the top. This leads to a
completely distorted economy, civil unrest, and eventually a crash. The usual
solution is to task a government with making sure that wealth is taken from
the top and reinjected at the bottom to keep the system from crashing. It's an
ugly hack, but it's the only thing that has worked. The big problem with this
is that wealth also tends to accumulate political power which weakens this
check on capitalism. There's no easy solution, but the first place to start
would be strengthening campaign finance rules and conflict of interest rules.
The legislators should never be cozy with industry. In fact the heads of
industry should be angry with government pretty much all of the time, if they
are not then the government is probably not doing its job. Apple should be on
a massive propaganda campaign about how cruel and unfair it is that all of the
world governments are taking away their profits and giving them (indirectly)
to poor people. They should be crying about how greedy governments have stolen
like three quarters of a trillion dollars from them. Hedge fund managers
should be angry about how the government is always there when they make huge
windfalls. It should seems super unfair what the government is doing, because
what capitalism does to the poor is just as unfair.

~~~
justforFranz
Oh, but business interests are always complaining. They face no price or
consequence for griping. They set up TV networks to do 24 hour pissing &
moaning, and they call it "news."

What blows my mind is that the middle class and the poor who should know
better, are simply to damned lazy to stand up for themselves. And many of them
simply want a strongman to tell them what to do. That is, when they're not
fantasizing that they'll be allowed into the club of the rich if they only
provide enough fealty. It's a completely warped populace.

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ThrustVectoring
The big danger, IMO, is the sheer _frustration_ that the modern social and
economic system puts on the demographic mentioned (18-29 year olds). "Maybe we
should start smashing stuff until things are better" is really unappealing
when you have a meaningful job, a spouse and children, a house, or are
otherwise invested into the system. And when you're frustrated enough to have
a negative view of _markets_ , well, the field is ripe for extraordinarily
dangerous mass movements.

Millennials are infantilized until later in life and, by and large, haven't
been allowed to hold real responsibility until 22 or ever later. The
affordability of passing gate-keeping milestones - such as owning a home, or
getting a degree, or affording a stay-at-home wife and children - in terms of
available opportunities has risen drastically. The divorce rate has risen
tremendously, having an unprecedented rise in adults raised in broken homes.

Like, congratulations Baby Boomers, you successfully made housing and
education expensive enough that your loans and real estate let you retire off
the proceeds of people working to pay off their crushing debt. That just means
a generation of angry single men in their twenties working pointless jobs,
living with their parents, and frustrated with their inability to fulfill
their social needs. If you're not scared of creating this demographic, you
haven't studied history and psychology.

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justforFranz
I think the deeper problem is that labor has no pricing power. Capitalism
works for more people when people who earn a salary can buy things that
increase real demand for companies. But workers are strapped for money, and
have no real political assistance or prospects for a better future. Earning a
living is increasingly a sucker's game.

Unfortunately, America's political system doesn't allow for a nuanced solution
that gently puts the brakes on rampant globalization. Instead, talking heads
who only play for ALL THE MARBLES see this as an either/or situation. I
believe in the inevitability of globalization. The question we need to ask
ourselves is, do we need to get there next week? Can we get there just a tiny
bit slower? Can we create an economic space where people not living on space
station Elysium (the 2013 movie) can have a life not defined by exasperating
financial anxiety?

~~~
jandrese
Aren't unions the way to give labor pricing power? Of course the problem with
Unions is that they are a big Prisoners Dilemma game. You need everybody in
the union or the people outside of it undercut the whole system.

Globalism makes it extremely difficult to maintain unions without significant
government support. Can you imagine a scenario where every textile worker in
the world was a member of a union? How horrible would it be if they couldn't
be kept as wage slaves and paid pennies per hour out in Bangladesh? Your
clothes would cost more for sure.

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cmahler7
Socialists/Communists not satisfied with 200 million+ deaths, must want to hit
an even 1 billion.

Blows my mind people can even be calling for socialism while we have a real
time implosion going on in Venezuela right now. It's ending like every other
socialist regime in history, cannibalism, famine, riots, and murder. Meanwhile
one of the United State's biggest problem is obesity due to being so
prosperous.

Actually I'm not surprised, just look up Yuri Bezmenov's talk on ideological
subversion he foretold everything 30+ years ago

~~~
bryanlarsen
The news must be covering up the ongoing massacres in Norway.

~~~
cmahler7
1\. Those countries are all capitalist economies, some with more economic
freedom than the US. They can't be used to defend socialism/communism

2\. We're on HN so we all now about scaling. There's a big difference between
5 million and 300+ million citizens.

3\. The US subsidizes those countries in terms of defense and innovation in
health care. Pharma makes their profits off us while they have price controls
in those other countries.

[http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking](http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking)

~~~
smt88
I think you meant to respond to me, but accidentally responded to someone
else.

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LyndsySimon
This article reads to me like a long list of problems caused by government and
blamed on capitalism.

I'm biased though - I'm an anarcho-capitalist, and I've spent orders of
magnitude more time considering these sorts of questions than the vast
majority of people who are not so politically involved.

~~~
smt88
Do you think that everyone who disagrees with you has spent less time
considering these sorts of questions than you have?

As a counterpoint, I'd suggest the thousands of political-science, economic,
and philosophy scholars who all disagree with you (as do the vast majority of
humans who have ever lived and appreciate the social contract).

You may be correct and everyone else may be wrong, but I don't think it's
accurate to dismiss other people as not having considered things as much as
you have.

~~~
pzone
Overall you make a good point. In the context of this article, I tend to think
the OP comment has thought about it harder than the author. These articles
like "Down with capitalism, didn't you hear 51% of millennials don't like it!
And what about that fire in london?" are invariably written by radical left-
wing disciplines where the authors have no evidence of deep understanding of
the issues - here anthropology.

~~~
smt88
This article is not scholarly or deep. I'm not sure we could (or should)
expect more, given its medium. It's a pop-politics article, so I found the
scope to be appropriate. I also felt the implied intent was to inspire people
to read deeper dives written elsewhere.

As for "radical left-wing," I don't disagree with the terminology. But I do
disagree with the implication that the radical left-wing is a niche in the US.
I'd say that it's quite mainstream, which you yourself support by suggesting
that it's popular among Millenials (almost half the US population).

The author of the article also suggests that radical left-wing ideas are now
mainstream, and I'd propose that that's the whole point. These ideas have
become mainstream, so let's start calling them what they are: socialist ideas.

------
HoppedUpMenace
There's a quip in the show "Archer" (forget exactly the words) where Mallory
tells everyone something along the lines of "move up to my tax bracket and see
if you keep spouting that socialist propaganda". I found it hilarious because
it is true for many out there that if you suddenly find yourself moved from
your minimum wage job with Obamacare insurance into a position of making a
huge salary with legit benefits, you suddenly shift your position on the
fairness of Capitalism and whether or not people are getting too much from the
government and how they should do what you did to get ahead.

Additionally, while it certainly appears that the richer get richer and it
does nothing to help those that are struggling, you have to ask yourself
whether or not you'd do anything different if it were you in the position of
wealth and power to change how people earn money for the work they contribute.
Then you'd have to wonder if people could truly come together and share
everything under extreme government over site, but why wonder when there is
decades of data to prove that it doesn't work?

~~~
mcbruiser3
yes, people are always motivated by self interest, even for what seems like
altruistic actions the underlying motivation is that it makes them feel good
about themselves.

~~~
HoppedUpMenace
I'm sure there's a name for this but a modern day label could be the "Facebook
Syndrome", where seemingly endless goals of altruism is at its core, motivated
by self interest and feeling good about oneself, to the detriment of the
people you profess to be helping.

~~~
mcbruiser3
I think it's called virtue signaling. and yeah, it's rampant on social media.

------
erikb
Everybody knows that capitalism has problem. The trick is figuring out what
the next better bad system would be. And as far as I can see the richest,
smartest and most powerful people are currenlty all thinking hard exactly
about that question. So far nobody has found the answer, but suggestions are
welcome.

~~~
smt88
No one has a concrete answer, but capitalism could work better if the market
were freer -- and by "freer" I don't mean less regulated. I mean that people
have more freedom to make choices.

For example, we don't currently have a free labor market because it's
extremely expensive (in terms of time and money) for a low-wage worker to find
a new job. Those people are trapped. If we had a better safety net for people
at the bottom, the labor market could be more competitive.

Another example is lacking knowledge. The market could (and should) stop
buying products that harm them, but sometimes the only party who knows the
product is harmful is the producer. Cigarettes were an example for a long time
because the tobacco companies buried their own research. The government now
forces health disclosures on cigarettes, which makes the market work like it's
supposed to.

There are tons of examples where a "socialist" policy actually leads to more
personal freedom, more efficient markets, and less need for government
intervention into individuals' decisions.

(I would include universal basic income as a social policy, but it's actually
not! It's supposed by both libertarians and socialists. It might be the "next
better bad" adjustment to our current system.)

~~~
sharemywin
The problem is if you're priced out of decent healthcare and/or education
options it really doesn't matter how much extra spending money you got.

~~~
smt88
If you're arguing that health care and education should be free, then I agree
with you.

If I were running a society, my goal would be an even playing field. Everyone
has the same access to health care, education, and any other opportunity that
affects their happiness. Beyond that, they would have the choice to pursue
whatever they wanted.

My society could not exist now, nor could it exist in the past. Miserable,
oppressed people were required to support everyone else (e.g. coal miners).

We're getting to a point in history where that may change. Robots might be
able to do all the bad, boring, dangerous jobs.

Basically Wall-E.

------
BFatts
Everyone complains about capitalism. Is there an actual solution? Is there an
alternative that benefits the community as much as Socialism does? And then,
what do we do with the crap parts of Socialism? Do we just TRY it and hope it
works? There's never been a real plan set forth other than "Capitalism sucks!"
or "Capitalism is the root of all our problems!" How do we solve for it?

Then... how do we get people to buy into it on a global scale without it
falling apart under the weight of social discussions?

~~~
jandrese
The experiments you're looking for are the socialist democracies of northern
Europe. Look at the Netherlands for an example.

------
hprotagonist
I'm pretty sympathetic to the ideals behind Distributism[0]. I just don't
know, particularly, how to make it work usefully with sectors that benefit
from economies of scale (like ISPs)

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

~~~
Rotten194
You should look into various flavors of anarchism, like Syndicalism, that have
tried to answer that question.

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random42_
I wonder how much of it is the system's fault and how much is human nature's
fault. Regardless of the system, there is always a group that will want more,
be it money and/or power. Many of the problems cited in this article wouldn't
be a problem if not for pure self interest and lack of empathy for the society
as a whole. The JP Morgan reaction to the attempt of raising wages is the
perfect example for that.

------
rsrsrs86
Consider that vast amounts of capital come from pension funds that invest in
companies which have a duty to provide returns to shareholders. Would pension
fund stakeholders agree on having lower pensions when they get old so that
current workers earn more? Economics is far more complicated than altruism
supposes.

