Agree with the underlying thesis of the post, but wonder if their criteria suffers the same issues as the thing they are being critical of.
I wonder what the author would think of the Drake Equation or quantum mechanic's superposition, as they seem to check a good deal of these boxes but are widely regarded.
> ... but if you want to become super rich, and you're young and good at technology, working on what you're most interested in becomes a good idea again.
It's sad to me that the wealth inequality manifested and upheld by the current structure of capitalism, that people like Graham full throatily endorse, creates this mentality.
"If you're young" is a euphemism for "if you are free from the necessities of responsibility, and so are able to forego the lack of consistent income (and if you're in the states, a lack of employer provided health care".
pg, encourage the companies you give money to pay an equal portion of profits to their employees, and maybe even the "olds" can be free do what they love; rather than the fear induced indentured servitude currently so predominant.
May even give us better products and solutions, or as you say, allow people to do actual "great work".
> wealth inequality manifested and upheld by the current structure of capitalism
I've been having this conversation over dinner with my wife for the last few years. What else is there? Here are the broadly categorized economic systems that I'm aware of (I sincerely request correction if I'm incomplete or mistaken):
- Despotism, feudalism, and other ruler-based economies that mix governance with economy by fiat
- Marxism (and it's entanglements into governance: socialism and communism)
- Capitalism, though it eventually captures governance as a failure mode
Of these systems, with the possible exception of subsistence, only capitalism really works. All forms of Marxism ever practiced lead to despotism, which most of us can agree is a bad thing. Even with a benevolent dictator for life, that life ends and the system degenerates at most in two generations of hereditary leadership.
How do you reset capitalism so that we refresh to healthy markets (a prerequisite for capitalism to act as a force for societal welfare)? How do you turn back the clock on regulatory capture, and monopolized consolidation where firms move to become parasitic instead of exchanging value?
Is there something else?
And no, Marxism and collectivism is not it. Drowning the individual is not it. Marxism hasn't lost its appeal precisely because it's one of the few models that addresses dramatic pay disparity. But it was created in Britain thinking about the factory workers of the time. We know now that it includes errors and misunderstandings of fundamental human behavior that make it turn into tyranny every time. We also know that it necessarily leads to central planning which is fragile and collapses. So that's not it.
In my opinion, a good first step is to stop looking at socialism and capitalism in absolute terms. I think its a mistake to idealistically cling to one archetype as the best of all possible archetypes. When you go the idealistic route, you are doomed to repeat the failings of the past.
I would argue that the most successful economies are blended economies that have achieved success by blending elements of both systems and perhaps other systems as well.
For example, the USA once had working conditions as described by Upton Sinclair in “The Jungle .” Those working conditions are no longer legal thanks to regulations. But regulations are an element of command-economy, not of free markets.
An example from the other side is the rise of China’s economy. I don’t believe China could have become “the world’s factory” without introducing elements of free market capitalism.
During the cold war, propaganda made socialism the bogeyman to the west, and capitalism the bogeyman to the east. I don’t think this fear is rational. To me they are just two economic archetypes of many. Each has its own merits and faults. The key is to apply them where they make sense.
To me the real enemies are: authoritarianism and corruption.
I see regulatory capture as a form of corruption. The regulators are corrupted by those who would like to externalize their costs onto society. How do we fight corruption? It’s a tough battle, but remember it has been done before. Tammany hall, etc.
It's far too late in the history of discourse to try and change this perception, but 'Marxism' is not really so much of a system in-of-itself more than it is a grouping of influential ideas that were propagated by Marx and disseminated throughout history. Marx at no point ever attempts to describe an ideal economic system - Communism as an idea is far more intagible to him, and many 'modern Marxists' have long since re-oriented their ideological critique away from 'the establishment of Communism' and towards 'survival under Capitalism' as modern society is inexorably more alien than Marx could have ever known.
> The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid a 25.9 percent average rate, nearly eight times higher than the 3.3 percent average rate paid by the bottom half of taxpayers
> The top 1 percent’s income share rose from 22.2 percent in 2020 to 26.3 percent in 2021 and its share of federal income taxes paid rose from 42.3 percent to 45.8 percent.
The post I was replying to suggested that everyone pay the same tax rate. I'm opposed to this. Progressive taxes are more fair, due to the marginal value of money.
Capital gains tax is lower to offset the risk of taking a capital risk, which labor does not do in receiving a wage.
Much of “labor” participates in capital risk through retirement accounts and homes, blurring this 19th century distinction.
The “capitalists” are likely to sidestep taxation through politicians, lawyers and accountants (See the often quoted 1960s era “tax rate”) which is a phenomenon of power, that exists pre-capitalism.
The one that jumps out at me is implying “socialism is a form of Marxism” when it’s the opposite that is true.
There are thriving socialist governments right now. What benefit does your argument get from ignoring those?
Why do you have “capitalism” and “despotism, feudalism, and other ruler based economies” separate? Are you unable to see the oligarchy of the US?
> Drowning the individual is not it.
Spreading ownership across those necessary for a thing to exist is drowning them? Or is it drowning the Csuites?
If your online bookstore turned imitation product megastore requires the people boxing the goods and driving the trucks then they should own a piece of what their work creates; that means ownership in the company and a share in the wealth it creates.
Is it because a CEO is golfing with war criminals that they deserve to capture the economic production from the labor of so many?
The fact that a company can create one of the three riches men on the planet and have its employees who are the ones making that person’s wealth be on government assistance is absolute bullshit.
> The fact that a company can create one of the three riches men on the planet and have its employees who are the ones making that person’s wealth be on government assistance is absolute bullshit.
I agree here. Even during the feudal era, if you happened to be employed in the envoy of one of the world's richest trading fleets, you would be treated with far greater respect than an Amazon worker.
> All forms of Marxism ever practiced lead to despotism, which most of us can agree is a bad thing.
What you call a Marxist system is something that Marx said could only work in the most advanced country if it was ready for it, which in that time was Germany. He said such a system would not work elsewhere.
So what form of Marxism failed? Even Lenin, who many Marxists did not consider Marxist, was a Marxist enough to say that Russia would not establish communism. That the Russian self-described Marxists had the chance to take power in Russia and they took it. That Lenin wanted to take power in early 1917 came as a surprise to Stalin, Trotsky, Kamenev etc., in fact Trotsky was not even with Lenin then. It surprised them because it was not a Marxist idea. Then Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy, i.e. capitalism. Then he died.
Marx clearly spelled out what not to do, and some did what he said not to do, then people attribute the failures of those who did what Marx said not to do, to Marx.
This kind of argument seems to always pop up in this context.
There have been 17 attempts that I'm aware of to create a government based off of the ideals that Marx preached.
Of those 17 attempts, every one has ended up creating extreme poverty for the masses. Every one has led to massive amounts of death and abject misery. Every one has led to a dictator that sees his people as just cogs in a machine, easily replaced.
No matter how great Marx's system is (and having seen the aftermath personally of one of those attempts to enact it, I'm inclined to think that his system of thinking is semi-articulate garbage), it's obvious that we can't do what he prescribed and get the results he claimed we would.
Frankly, the part where all of the power temporarily concentrates before redistribution is the problem area: no one can withstand the temptation to just keep it.
Or possibly they never intended to let it go in the first place.
> There have been 17 attempts that I'm aware of to create a government based off of the ideals that Marx preached.
What does Marx say in the Communist Manifesto?
"The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European civilisation and with a much more developed proletariat than that of England was in the seventeenth, and France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution."
This is what Marx said, what his ideals were. A political fight in a country with the developed proletariat of the Ruhr Valley - Germany. What he can be judged by is what he said.
Marx said a precondition for his ideals would be the conditions the Ruhr Valley and Germany had. So if attempts made without the ingredients he stated failed, then Marx's ideals are shown to be correct. Your examples prove Marx was right.
I wonder what the author would think of the Drake Equation or quantum mechanic's superposition, as they seem to check a good deal of these boxes but are widely regarded.
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