171–180 of 309 posts
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> the establishment only permits fervent discussion about gender and skin color. Do they? Try making a case that we don't need more than two sets of gendered pronouns in your tech job.
Are you saying tech isn’t establishment? IDK about percentages, but it’s definitely not the 90s anymore.
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Yes, lets bring in loads of uneducated, poor immigrants instead of addressing the issues causing fertility rates below the replacement level. Why let our children have families when we can import them for cheaper?
Because educating immigrants is cheaper? If you support immigrants, surprisingly, they tend to embrace the existentially important parts of your culture and integrate smoothly. But my guess is that you take issue more with their skin color.
Right. He is clearly a racist for challenging the preferred economic policies of both right and left leaning billionaires and multinational corporations, who incidentally, have the health of the planet as their primary concern and in no way would love the commoditization of human beings.
This whole "capitalism bad" debate feels incredibly black and white. I think what most people are really against is the one way street that capitalism established. It's a broken system, and it wouldn't matter if we had any other system as long as it would still be broken and abused. On a global level, there are tax loopholes that allow multi billion corporations and individuals to pay essentially no taxes. This money…
> It has nothing to do with capitalism
> But if we moved towards actual, functional capitalism
What you are making is the classic "it's the fault of faux-capitalism and not my idealized version of capitalism" argument.
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> We have absolutely no incentive to work hard when doing so doesn't materially affect income. And you think that would improve under socialism or communism?
It would likely improve under democratic socialism (which is not the same model as communism or socialism). Especially if we disconnect healthcare from employment allowing workers more freedom to pick employers or entrepreneurship. People want purpose, but they also need their basic needs met. They have to have hope they won't spend their lives on an economic treadmill where one slip will cause their demise. This is…
That means our garbage would never get collected or our toilets cleaned, because I don't think anybody's intended purpose is doing sanitation.
If you're just assigning jobs to give a purpose, you're forcing labor. If not you have dirty living quarters and a glut of artists.
>After the 2008 recession, President Obama and the Democrats effectively saved capitalism from itself; a more radical leadership would fight to replace it with a better system. This time around there may be far more pressure from below to do just that, especially with a more organized left and more class conscious young people. As a former soviet occupied country citizen, I am amazed that westerners would want to ove…
It is a complex topic and my own views are still being defined, but I think it is safe to say that for most the issue isnt capitalism, it is unchecked capitalism. The idea that we work for the system instead of the system working for us. My grandparents saw our country mobilize for war and create liberty ships. The country was in the space race - I've seen an article (Popular Mechanics) from 1950 that thought we woul…
Maybe I’m naïve, but to me the word “capitalism” is not an “economic policy” that can be changed through deliberate action, but rather a framework of analysis that makes predictions on supply, demand, and pricing in markets that are varying levels of free. I’m confused when people in my generational cohort say things like “capitalism is unfair” or “capitalism sucks”, in reference to the system of government and benef…
Of the aforementioned experts, Marx was the most critical of capitalism, but most who are unfamiliar would be taken back by the amount of common ground shared between him and Smith.
Some basic working class complaints about capitalism in a very economic sense are concisely introduced in this essay: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour...
Like most HN readers, Marx believed work is an integral part of a healthy human life. His concern was about the relation of humans with the value they produce. He gave a prescient analysis of what we appear to be experiencing today, in his Theory Of Alienation. See: https://www.marxists.org/subject/alienation/
Maybe I’m naïve, but to me the word “capitalism” is not an “economic policy” that can be changed through deliberate action, but rather a framework of analysis that makes predictions on supply, demand, and pricing in markets that are varying levels of free. I’m confused when people in my generational cohort say things like “capitalism is unfair” or “capitalism sucks”, in reference to the system of government and benef…
For example, socialism, to many of its proponents in 2019, means using the collective power of the government to tax the rich in order to purchase better outcomes for all citizens--even if those purchases are from private parties. Lots of people are in favor of "single payer" government health insurance... not nearly as many folks are saying let's force all doctors to work only for the government. That's what socialism meant 100 years ago. But that's not what socialism means today to most folks in the U.S.
Likewise, the popular understanding of "ending capitalism" in 2019 mean ending the political, regulatory, and tax regimes that enable complex financial engineering that results in huge paydays for Wall Street and tax avoidance for rich people and big companies. "Capitalism" in this sense is not intended to be a technical term referencing property ownership rights... the word is being more like the name of belief system or set of values--one that doesn't care about income inequality and poor people.
"Socialism vs capitalism" for most people in 2019 is really a fight over values and political priorities. The words are placeholders for systems of belief. It's not a fight about private property rights in general like it was 100 years ago. I mean, maybe it is to a few people, but not many, relatively speaking.
That is, lots of people are fighting about extracting wealth from rich people and huge companies... not many are fighting to end their own right to own any property, to surrender it all to the government.
Maybe I’m naïve, but to me the word “capitalism” is not an “economic policy” that can be changed through deliberate action, but rather a framework of analysis that makes predictions on supply, demand, and pricing in markets that are varying levels of free. I’m confused when people in my generational cohort say things like “capitalism is unfair” or “capitalism sucks”, in reference to the system of government and benef…
"Capitalism" is used as the label for the policy one might more precisely describe as "regulatory minimalism"; the philosophy that opposes minimum wage laws, that opposes collective bargaining by employees, that opposes safety and environmental regulation, that opposes universal health care, etcetera. This philosophy is associated with the term "capitalism" because its proponents tar any improvement of the social con…
The market isn't the problem, it's government interference with the market that's the problem.
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So the pronouns thing is literally about being nice to people and respecting their ability to define their own identity. It's less "we need more than two sets of gendered pronouns" and more "people use pronouns other than he or she and we want to make space for that".
And any sort of diversion from that approved narrative, like suggesting that some of this is going a little too far, will make you a pariah in the industry. This is what I'm getting in, in questioning how much "the establishment" allows vigorous debate.
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Yes, lets bring in loads of uneducated, poor immigrants instead of addressing the issues causing fertility rates below the replacement level. Why let our children have families when we can import them for cheaper?
> addressing the issues causing fertility rates below the replacement level Myself and many of my friends who have decided to have zero children or only one child rather late in life, cite the burden of having to take care of children, when one is already tired after work, one would like to pursue leisure activities that do not involve children present, etc. Even in countries where the state provides abundant infrast…
What I predict will happen: Government will reduce pension and social security payments to those that did not support the system by having 2 or more well-raised children.