Blame Cronyism, Not Capitalism • Hacker News Board

Re: Blame Cronyism, Not Capitalism

#211

Post by Gunax » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 5:27 PM UTC

cheeseomlit wrote: post #160

hypersoar wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The broad concept of "lobbying" is really just people bringing their concerns to elected representatives. I don't really see how you would ban it entirely.

There seems to me a massive difference between corporate interests openly bribing lawmakers in a brazenly material fashion vs. a group of concerned citizens merely voicing their concerns, yet the two are always conflated. Money is not speech and corporations are not people, I don't see why people tolerate this.

Bribery is not legal, never has been, and is not being advocates for.

If you want to call lobbying 'bribery' in a sort of exaggerated way, go ahead.

In my experience most of the rhetoric around bribery is reapoy just interested groups doing regular politics stuff--like 'if you do not support bill xyz we will tell our million newsletter subscribers you're a bad person'.

Re: Blame Cronyism, Not Capitalism

#212

Post by boringg » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 5:27 PM UTC

serverholic wrote: post #128

boringg wrote: post #79

Corruption (Cronyism) is the route of issues in ALL economic systems (much worse in other systems such as autocracies, socialism, authoritarian socialism, etc). So let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater (see US scientific accomplishments in the last decade). What needs to happen in the US to help right the ship is that the legal system needs to be tightened up and money needs to be significantly taken out of…

I definitely think there is a lot of "grass is greener" thinking going on right now. Especially amongst those on the far-left who are pushing communist/socialist ideas on twitter. I had a discussion on reddit recently with a communist and the gist of their argument was basically: 1. I'm having a tough time in life because I have skills that aren't very profitable under capitalism. 2. Under communism the idea is 'from…

Agree. A lot of it is knee jerk reactions to the current situation. Its not to dissimilar from people voting out the current government because they are unhappy with their situation but without vetting the alternative (see brexit). Anyways its a dangerous situation as there is foment-able rage on the left (and many cases it is warranted).

Re: Blame Cronyism, Not Capitalism

#213

Post by 6510 » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 5:29 PM UTC

lbriner wrote: post #88

shove wrote: post #54

Two things can be bad.

And I would expect many of capitalism's detractors would say that capitalism encourages cronyism. Personally, I think all governments of all persuasions have proved their ability to line their own pockets, sometimes subtly and sometimes with bare-faced shame. Many people think the go-to is more laws to try and dictate what is and isn't acceptable but that also doesn't seem to work, just creates more jobs and more mon…

You have to set the punishment high enough to prevent repetition of the offense. The death penalty seems suitable as great harm is done to a huge number of people. One bad move and democracies kill and maim millions.

Re: Blame Cronyism, Not Capitalism

#214

Post by goodlinks » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 5:29 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #177

goodlinks wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if there was a lottery defined 99% of your life outcomes at birth would that be a bad thing? if it was possible for an accumulation of wealth within one group to essentially divide humanity in different groups that could never be changed despite skill level compitance or morals of the individuals in each group would that be bad? so someone whose great great granddaddy did something now has power for no reason. and th…

>AFAIK its not one person being paid more than another thats the issue.. its those that are paid because they were born with money and add nothing to society that i think bothers people. Sure, but how many wealthy people inherited their wealth and contribute nothing? It's actually a tiny fraction. It is quite common for people from better off backgrounds to be more successful, but arguably that's result of the previo…

Sure, sorry, they question was wide open so i gave the most generic and introductory of answers..

I trust fund babies are the extreme on the spectrum but any time your parents wealth is the biggest factor in whether or not you are a success the system is broken.

imho i see many people who had support or investment from their parents doing very well when they are average or below average abilty.

Education is ulimately the absolute most important thing.. a nation (or humanity as a whole) has a limited number of assest: land, infrastructure and people. the people being the most dynamic with the largest value multipliers possible. IMHO its a no brainer that you want to invest in people via education as a top priority as it will in turn multiply up all other investment (and anything that means money has a bigger sway than ability i think is a bit broken).

To be clear i am not looking for the systems to be perfect, thats silly.. but i do prefer for example the idea of private education being illegal to ensure that grades actually mean something (not just how much money was spent on you).

Also as a side note i belive that people who think they are worth many times more than others within their oragnisation dont understand how their value is derived and where it came from.. so while i dont seek for all salaries to be equal, i do think within an org they should all be within a certain range (e.g. highest paid no more than 5 or 10 times lowest paid).

I have made / saved millions of dollars with a few hours work - but it was the existance of the org, the customers and the history that gave me the chance to do such good work more than it was my skill. people who can deliver solutions are actually more common than you think - good requirements and problems ripe for solving are thin on the ground.

Re: Blame Cronyism, Not Capitalism

#215

Post by bradlys » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

Gunax wrote: post #211

cheeseomlit wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to me a massive difference between corporate interests openly bribing lawmakers in a brazenly material fashion vs. a group of concerned citizens merely voicing their concerns, yet the two are always conflated. Money is not speech and corporations are not people, I don't see why people tolerate this.

Bribery is not legal, never has been, and is not being advocates for. If you want to call lobbying 'bribery' in a sort of exaggerated way, go ahead. In my experience most of the rhetoric around bribery is reapoy just interested groups doing regular politics stuff--like 'if you do not support bill xyz we will tell our million newsletter subscribers you're a bad person'.

There is very clear bribery going on though… speaking engagement fees, expensive vacations that are under the guise of lobbying, etc.

And it’s very clear that at least people in congress are very happy with this situation.

Re: Blame Cronyism, Not Capitalism

#216

Post by seventytwo » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 5:38 PM UTC

pibechorro wrote: post #68

seventytwo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corruption can’t be decoupled from any human organizational system, though. The system needs to be designed in a way to take corruption into account and minimize it. In unregulated capitalism, corruption provides a huge competitive advantage, so controls must be put in place to counteract that. Typically that’s done with government intervention. The idea that we can “blame cronyism, not capitalism”, is a red herring.…

Unregulated free trade doesnt reward corruption, it's the opposite. It rewards value to the consumer. Goverment intervention is what rewards corruption when it eventually becomes captured and now insiders control the levers of the economy forcing themselves on the end user. You need to invert your thinking, we need more freedom and less interventions by middle management. Market feedback needs to be emergent from the…

I’d argue that absent any regulations, there’s no such thing as corruption, just like without laws, nothing is criminal!

But is that the world we want?

The fact of the matter is that corruption, like crime, will always exist, so the system within which the corruption exists better be able to handle it, or it’s a poor system.

The author’s argument is basically the opposite - “the system is fine, it’s the pesky non-idealities that are the problem!”

My point is that this is a totally useless take. It’s like trying to build a rocket and wondering why it collapses on the launchpad because you hand waved away all the non-idealities: “oh, the rocket design was fine, it was those pesky non-idealities that we’re the problem!”

Re: Blame Cronyism, Not Capitalism

#217

Post by bradlys » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 5:40 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #177

goodlinks wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if there was a lottery defined 99% of your life outcomes at birth would that be a bad thing? if it was possible for an accumulation of wealth within one group to essentially divide humanity in different groups that could never be changed despite skill level compitance or morals of the individuals in each group would that be bad? so someone whose great great granddaddy did something now has power for no reason. and th…

>AFAIK its not one person being paid more than another thats the issue.. its those that are paid because they were born with money and add nothing to society that i think bothers people. Sure, but how many wealthy people inherited their wealth and contribute nothing? It's actually a tiny fraction. It is quite common for people from better off backgrounds to be more successful, but arguably that's result of the previo…

The issue isn’t the number of people who are inheriting massive sums of wealth or what not - the issue is what people with lots of wealth end up doing (solely improving their own lives) and how that wealth could be used otherwise. (improving the lives of all)

Re: Blame Cronyism, Not Capitalism

#218

Post by vannevar » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 5:40 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #194

vannevar wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the fundamental problem is that there is a strong feedback loop between capital and income, so that the more capital is accumulated, the more it produces income. In practical terms, it means that the rich can not only buy rewards for the work they've put in, they can also buy opportunities for additional income---opportunities that poorer people could've won with hard work but now are no longer available. This f…

>the fundamental problem is that there is a strong feedback loop between capital and income... As long as that capital is devoted to productive activities, such as investment in a company that employs people, or equipment that had to be manufactured and is used productively, I've no problem with that. None of those economic functions could have been substituted by labour, it took capital to do it, and in fact those a…

>So we need to incentivise productive uses of capital, and tax unproductive uses.

I would agree that this would probably improve the situation, yes, as long as the concentration of wealth isn't leveraged to drive wages down.

>What's important is that capital is mostly used to benefit society, and capitalism has proved incredibly good at doing that efficiently.

However productive the economy becomes, if its fruits are not shared more widely than they are today, it won't benefit society as a whole in the long run. In the last 40 years overall productivity has boomed, but the wealthy have grabbed a wildly disproportionate share of the resulting economic growth simply because their disproportionate share of capital gives them the leverage to do so.

Re: Blame Cronyism, Not Capitalism

#219

Post by ajuc » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 5:47 PM UTC

flavius29663 wrote: post #30

ajuc wrote: post #4

That's like saying blame authoritarianism not communism. Communism led to authoritarianism in every country where it was tried. Blaming one means blaming the other indirectly. Same here.

The difference is this: in communism you always end up with authoritarianism, while in capitalism it happens less and less frequently. For this reason you can associate communism with authoritarianism. The corruption is NOT typical to capitalism, both capitalism and communism have plenty of corruption. As a citizen of a former communist state, I can say that communism has even more corruption in general. I think this…

What actually happens - you get communism and capitalism and both are equally evil when applied 100%. But you can get make them less concentrated, add less or more regulation and get to some sane compromies. You end up with some kind of social welfare state with mostly free market economy. At that point it doesn't matter where you started off, it's just branding.

Re: Blame Cronyism, Not Capitalism

#220

Post by jjk166 » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 5:52 PM UTC

cheeseomlit wrote: post #160

hypersoar wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The broad concept of "lobbying" is really just people bringing their concerns to elected representatives. I don't really see how you would ban it entirely.

There seems to me a massive difference between corporate interests openly bribing lawmakers in a brazenly material fashion vs. a group of concerned citizens merely voicing their concerns, yet the two are always conflated. Money is not speech and corporations are not people, I don't see why people tolerate this.

Well we do have laws against openly bribing lawmakers.

Lobbyists aren't handing over wads of cash, they are spending money on things like ad campaigns, surveys, studies, talks, busing people in to talk to their representative, etc which are meant to legitimately sway the opinions of both the elected officials and the electorate. Maybe to get more politicians to show up the lobbyists pay to serve nice steak dinners at a talk, and in the extreme maybe the talk is just a thinly veiled guise for what is really an expensive gift of steak dinner, but conceptually it's no different from any other potential catering option, and there is no simple way to ban it. Sure you can make specific schemes illegal, but there will always be another loophole. So long as you allow people to interact with their elected representatives and speak freely, there will be people who have their politician's ear. You might be able to eliminate lobbying by sequestering the politicians throughout their term, but that's going to have the opposite of the desired effect of making government more democratic.