Americans – including many Republicans – are losing faith in capitalism • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by Natfan » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 12:11 AM UTC

cregy wrote: post #37

tinyplanets wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

and your thoughts on socialism?

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

#42

Post by Natfan » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 12:25 AM UTC

laughing_man wrote: post #26

There has been a sustained anti-capitalist propaganda campaign in the last few years, so this isn't surprising. Most people are sheep.

there has been a sustained pro capitalism propaganda campaign over the last hundred years or so. no wonder people are sheep

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

#43

Post by roenxi » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 3:22 PM UTC

jdlshore wrote: post #28

laughing_man wrote: post #26

There has been a sustained anti-capitalist propaganda campaign in the last few years, so this isn't surprising. Most people are sheep.

A “propaganda campaign” implies intent. I’ve seen a lot of dissatisfaction about capitalism, too, particularly among Gen Z, but to me it looks like an expression of the loss of faith the headline is talking about. What makes you think this is a propaganda campaign and not a zeitgeist?

"Propaganda campaign" is the wrong term, but there is still an interesting effect - in the 20th century we tried a bunch of things and liberal capitalism underpinned by democracy won the battle of ideas so badly that the alternatives were basically discredited.

But that didn't convince many people to actually change their ideologies. Instead, the authoritarians rebranded themselves as a type of liberalism and the communists rebranded themselves as a type of capitalism. The net result is there is a lot of intent that tarnishes liberal capitalism, but it is mainly people who aren't remotely liberal capitalists trying to rebrand their bad ideas as compatible with liberal capitalism.

In effect it looks a bit like a coordinated effort because there are a bunch of people working hard to associated prosperous ideologies with bad outcomes.