Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030 • Hacker News Board

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#351

Post by KozmoNau7 » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 6:29 AM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #339

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"the truth is that you can’t" Only defeatist quitters speak in such absolutes. Again, it is not a dictatorship in the commonly understood terminology, but rather a term that is used for a political system where one part has political power over the other under the existence of a state, because we don't really have a proper and precise term for it.

How do you call a system of government that by definition does not operate in a free market of ideas, respects individual freedom and property rights and consists of a monolithic political ideology? >"Only defeatist quitters speak in such absolutes." Can you have a system that does not conserve energy? No, there such things as absolutes. Communism besides being the mother of all bad ideas and the most vile ideology h…

Ah ok, you've obviously bought in 100% to US-style anti-socialism propaganda. I refuse to argue with fanatic True Believers.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#352

Post by maoistinquisitr » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 7:25 AM UTC

jblow wrote: post #350

maoistinquisitr wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a fan of Obama but one good thing he was doing towards the end was cracking down on fraudulent "higher education" programs milking students and the taxpayer. He was deliberately choking off the loan subsidy fraud game. Unfortunately, Trump immediately resumed the Bush policy of pumping up the student debt for worthless degrees bubble.

But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that the legitimate schools have been able to raise their prices tremendously because the students have all this easy money given to them for just that purpose.

Well, I agree, but that's definitely a totally bipartisan scam. It's not just the loan subisidies, though. A huge amount of federal policy building over 70 years shovels tax money towards "higher ed". Most major schools are de facto defense contractors.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#353

Post by iguy » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 9:38 AM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #337

iguy wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you go back to the US of the 1910-1930s, most people lived in near poverty, ... until a socialist plan of wealth redistribution called new deal was implemented. Actually the USA in 1910 was the richest society the planet had ever seen. This was why half of Europe was busy trying to move there, to start at the bottom. (It was poor by today's standards, of course.) It's a lie to claim they got rich "because of socia…

Do you know that real people need to EAT, right? If the big depression had been even worse, it wouldn't matter if it were shorter, because most people would be dead at the end. Humans can only go a few days without food and basic necessities. This shows why conservative thinking is a dead end.

Are you claiming that there was starvation in the 19th C depressions, England / USA? This would be news historians.

Besides differences in government response, the other big difference was that employment had become more secure, more long-term, more Henry Ford and less Charles Dickens. You could indeed argue that this made it more serious. Compare a 20% drop in employment which meant 4 days a week for everyone (because they were all casual, factory or farm) vs 1/5 of workers (who thought they had jobs for life) being unemployed for years.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#354

Post by iguy » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 11:26 AM UTC

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #332

iguy wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the real meaning of words in English is defined by usage. And the English-speaking world spent half a century locked in cold war with an evil empire. That's what the word means. This imaginary utopia which some 19th writer dreamed up, to which said evil empire payed lip service, is a topic for those with special interests in 19th century utopian dreaming.

The English-speaking world spent most of a century deeply immersed in anti-socialism/communism propaganda, you mean. This historical revision of "The US and capitalism did nothing wrong" needs to die.

I make no claim that the winning side of this long war were a bunch of saints. I'm just arguing that against confusing the name of the losing side with the name of a famous utopian vision.

On propaganda, you may notice that one side's propaganda needed to be backed up at home with a gulag system, while vocal dissent on the other side was not a bar to ivy league tenure.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#355

Post by dogma1138 » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 12:24 PM UTC

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #351

dogma1138 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you call a system of government that by definition does not operate in a free market of ideas, respects individual freedom and property rights and consists of a monolithic political ideology? >"Only defeatist quitters speak in such absolutes." Can you have a system that does not conserve energy? No, there such things as absolutes. Communism besides being the mother of all bad ideas and the most vile ideology h…

Ah ok, you've obviously bought in 100% to US-style anti-socialism propaganda. I refuse to argue with fanatic True Believers.

I have no problems with social democracies I live in one, we’re talking about communism.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#356

Post by coliveira » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 1:21 PM UTC

iguy wrote: post #353

coliveira wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know that real people need to EAT, right? If the big depression had been even worse, it wouldn't matter if it were shorter, because most people would be dead at the end. Humans can only go a few days without food and basic necessities. This shows why conservative thinking is a dead end.

Are you claiming that there was starvation in the 19th C depressions, England / USA? This would be news historians. Besides differences in government response, the other big difference was that employment had become more secure, more long-term, more Henry Ford and less Charles Dickens. You could indeed argue that this made it more serious. Compare a 20% drop in employment which meant 4 days a week for everyone (becau…

> Are you claiming that there was starvation in the 19th C depressions

I am not claiming nothing of this. But everyone knows the huge toil of the great depression on poor workers. The only reason why the new deal was enacted is that people were on the verge of revolt. If the recession had been any worse, there would be blood on the streets and even more people would starve to death, and possibly the US government would be overthrow by communists who were very active at the time. That's the fundamental reason why these silly ideas pushed by conservatives never come to fruition: a completely free market is guaranteed to lead to revolution sooner or later.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#357

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 2:17 PM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #337

iguy wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you go back to the US of the 1910-1930s, most people lived in near poverty, ... until a socialist plan of wealth redistribution called new deal was implemented. Actually the USA in 1910 was the richest society the planet had ever seen. This was why half of Europe was busy trying to move there, to start at the bottom. (It was poor by today's standards, of course.) It's a lie to claim they got rich "because of socia…

Do you know that real people need to EAT, right? If the big depression had been even worse, it wouldn't matter if it were shorter, because most people would be dead at the end. Humans can only go a few days without food and basic necessities. This shows why conservative thinking is a dead end.

[deleted]

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#358

Post by whatshisface » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 2:19 PM UTC

ericd wrote: post #217

noobermin wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're just talking about Marxian definitions, it's simple: Owns means of production: bourgeousie Works without owning means of production: proletariat

Where do all the workers who have 401k plans composed of shares of all the public companies in the US fit?

I think there were other classes than just capital and prole, for example the Kulaks. So blue collar workers with enough wealth to participate in the capital market but not enough to take it easy forever would probably be some other class. Maybe "middle," class: something which was very small and weak in every country that turned communist.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#359

Post by ItsMe000001 » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 4:18 PM UTC

jadedhacker wrote: post #349

ItsMe000001 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's so well understood why is everyone including those in power acting is helpless? Even the rich warn about the problems. I don't think things like "money", "capitalism" etc are well understood at all. It may not even be possible because those are very fuzzy terms that describe vastly different things depending on what aspects you are looking at and they consist of >90% context. IMO any discussion waving around…

That's kind of a confusing line of questioning. People are pointing out problems yes (I often agree with them, I'm a socialist), but that doesn't change the definitions of words. If we muddy the words, we won't even know what we're talking about and that favors the status quo. The remedy for ambiguity is clarity.

> the definitions of words.

...is extremely ambiguous, context dependent, variable. Especially for words ending in '-ism'.

> The remedy for ambiguity is clarity.

Then don't use words from the extreme end of the range of vapor words. Instead, talk about something concrete.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#360

Post by nostrademons » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 5:28 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #341

nostrademons wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more that authoritarianism is the natural state of human nature, and capitalist systems tend to be less authoritarian because they setup multiple competing authorities and provide a mechanism for the entry of new ones, and in the chaos that results ordinary people have space for liberty by switching allegiances between titans of industry. "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition" - James Madison, Fe…

Communism has a problem with coordination. That's a classic observation. It may no longer still be true. Scaling works better now that we have enough computer power. Amazon doesn't have a problem with coordination. Nor does WalMart. Alibaba and Tencent don't seem to. All those companies are above the quarter-trillion dollar level. They approach the scale of the USSR's entire consumer goods economy. There's no longer…

Computers have proven fairly effective at augmenting or replacing middle management, but they haven't been that effective at replacing executives. These are two different skillsets: managers work to achieve a given goal more effectively and efficiently, while executives decide what the goals should be. The former is amenable to rational analysis, the latter is fundamentally emotional.

An economy with a gigantic computer-controlled execution apparatus controlled by a single individual or small group of individuals starts looking a lot like the totalitarian strongman model of Mao or Stalin. Would you want to live in a world where Jeff Bezos controls the whole economy? Mark Zuckerburg? Regardless of how efficiently they run their companies, it's a problem when they're the only arbiter of what should be available to society.

Put more succinctly, the genius of capitalism is that we can have Amazon and Walmart and Alibaba and Tencent and Google and Apple and dozens of other companies that approach the scale of the USSR's entire consumer goods economy. In Soviet Russia they just had Soviet Russia.