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Americans – including many Republicans – are losing faith in capitalism

cnn.com

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Re: Americans – including many Republicans – are losing faith in capitalism

#31

Post by tinyplanets »

cregy wrote: post #15

i lost faith in CNN way before. Why is politics/ communism being pushed on hacker news? You have to know, government is incredibly inefficient, so indifferent it can barely do its basic work. When you put it in charge of the details of the economy, everything breaks down, basics disappear, people starve. And then they start arresting people complaining about it, and they build walls so you can't escape. It has all th…

So then who should be "in charge of the details of the economy"? Multi-national corporations? The Trump Family? How's that working out for everyone else?

Re: Americans – including many Republicans – are losing faith in capitalism

#33

Post by cucumber3732842 »

xenadu02 wrote: post #24
bediger4000 wrote: post #2

This headline indicates we should feel surprise that Republicans are losing faith in capitalism. That's a little odd, given the abrupt reversals of policy preferences we've all seen since 2017. "Law and order", free trade, free markets, low tariffs, personal responsibility, judicial restraint, checks and balances, the importance of character, all at least tacitly abandoned.

I didn't leave the Republican party, the party left me. Then again I'm some kind of crazy nut for believing that principles matter even if you lose the election and that cruelty isn't something to be praised so what do I know.

>Then again I'm some kind of crazy nut for believing that principles matter

People all across the political spectrum are saying things like this.

I think the next 30yr will be unkind to the idiots who were perpetually all in on the "new hotness" because they did all sorts of mental gymnastics to do so and record of their lack of principals is recorded all over the internet for all to see. And there's AI to dredge it up for us.

But on the other hand my magic crystal ball called history says that none of that shit matters and the worst people are always rewarded

Re: Americans – including many Republicans – are losing faith in capitalism

#35

Post by zaptheimpaler »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #6
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #3

Nothing quite dampens your belief in hard work paying off when you see an openly corrupt government self-dealing billions of dollars.

> Nothing quite dampens your belief in hard work paying off Such a belief was not grounded in data to begin with. Like a religion, its based in faith. Humans are tricky, emotion and vibe driven; suboptimal mental models die hard. Humans want to believe in free will, they want to believe that their success was because of hard work and not luck. Older cohorts benefited from a golden period in US macro history that will…

All of this macro only ever obfuscates the real picture. The rich are getting much, much richer. The houses are more expensive because people obstruct construction. The salaries haven’t kept up with CEOs salaries or productivity because the employers have more power. None of this is some mysterious inevitable macro, it’s a conscious choice of an oligarchic system to crush people and launder the blame.

Re: Americans – including many Republicans – are losing faith in capitalism

#36

Post by tstrimple »

tstrimple wrote: post #14
JohnFen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seem stuck in thinking that the Republican party is still conservative. It's not. It's become extremist and radical -- the opposite of conservative.

I think MAGA represents mask off conservatism. Largely they support the same things. They have the same "enemies" and targets. I think for too long Americans have bought into the myth that conservatism is just about a slow and measured rate of change. That's what conservatives want you to believe because they know they can't say the real things out loud. So they speak in euphemisms. Trump let's them dispense with the…

In addition. It's perfectly historically accurate. When have conservatives fought the hardest? It's always at the distribution of rights which were always supposed to be "equal". Conservatives started a civil war to maintain slavery. They fought against women's suffrage. They fought against civil rights. They fought against gay rights. They are fighting now against trans rights. Conservative's most defended positions are about hierarchy and how they can maintain it. It's literally just bigotry. Always has been from Edmund Burke through Jordan Peterson. Conservatives will always fight at any minority group approaching peer status with them. They are afraid the minority will treat them the way that they always have treated the minority. Fortunately the world isn't made up of conservatives.

Re: Americans – including many Republicans – are losing faith in capitalism

#37

Post by cregy »

tinyplanets wrote: post #31
cregy wrote: post #15

i lost faith in CNN way before. Why is politics/ communism being pushed on hacker news? You have to know, government is incredibly inefficient, so indifferent it can barely do its basic work. When you put it in charge of the details of the economy, everything breaks down, basics disappear, people starve. And then they start arresting people complaining about it, and they build walls so you can't escape. It has all th…

So then who should be "in charge of the details of the economy"? Multi-national corporations? The Trump Family? How's that working out for everyone else?

A distributed adaptive system with local knowledge and fast adaptation, efficient resource allocation. It's called capitalism or freedom. Stop asking for everyone's freedom to be taken away. Our family escaped communism the hard way. Communism is like a guy in a club who says he's selling ecstasy but it's giving out cyanide.

Re: Americans – including many Republicans – are losing faith in capitalism

#38

Post by EarthAmbassador »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #35
toomuchtodo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing quite dampens your belief in hard work paying off Such a belief was not grounded in data to begin with. Like a religion, its based in faith. Humans are tricky, emotion and vibe driven; suboptimal mental models die hard. Humans want to believe in free will, they want to believe that their success was because of hard work and not luck. Older cohorts benefited from a golden period in US macro history that will…

All of this macro only ever obfuscates the real picture. The rich are getting much, much richer. The houses are more expensive because people obstruct construction. The salaries haven’t kept up with CEOs salaries or productivity because the employers have more power. None of this is some mysterious inevitable macro, it’s a conscious choice of an oligarchic system to crush people and launder the blame.

No, people do not oppose construction. The very wealthy have chosen not to build for average people, but instead build for a higher net wealth demographic. Also, productivity gains are not shared downstream, which is a choice. Salaries and wages have not kept up with CEO salaries since the late 1970s--also a choice. It all adds up to a systematic shift of wealth upward at the expense of a healthy middle class, while foreclosing all social mobility to the working class.

Re: Americans – including many Republicans – are losing faith in capitalism

#39

Post by Timon3 »

boznz wrote: post #17
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #3

Nothing quite dampens your belief in hard work paying off when you see an openly corrupt government self-dealing billions of dollars.

All governments are corrupt even poster children like here in NZ, its all about degrees of corruption. however one system of politics allows you to call this out and potentially vote out the perpetrators, the other will suppress you, lock you up and, once you've fallen down that rabbit hole, never vote again. Choose your poison.

Not only is the current US government on a completely different level of corruption, but it's also actively trying to suppress dissent in increasingly forceful ways. And they're working hard to export this anti-human ideology all over the world.

Re: Americans – including many Republicans – are losing faith in capitalism

#40

Post by danwills »

boznz wrote: post #17
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #3

Nothing quite dampens your belief in hard work paying off when you see an openly corrupt government self-dealing billions of dollars.

All governments are corrupt even poster children like here in NZ, its all about degrees of corruption. however one system of politics allows you to call this out and potentially vote out the perpetrators, the other will suppress you, lock you up and, once you've fallen down that rabbit hole, never vote again. Choose your poison.

I agree with your sentiment but myself I'm not convinced that either politics or corruption are actually (in reality) one-dimensional as you're suggesting, despite fairly widely reported trends towards world-wide political polarisation, and various different groups/parties/companies trying to appear as if they don't harbour corruption in a black-and-white way (how ridiculous!?) these things affect all systems to varying (nonzero) degrees.

I think there are actually still plenty of other dimensions/axes/structures one can think and argue/discuss about even if not many people (or politicians) actually do!

Authoritarianism surely sucks on so many levels though, I will echo that for sure!

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