Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails • Hacker News Board

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#81

Post by cubancigar11 » Mon, Nov 03, 2014, 9:21 AM UTC

rattray wrote: post #37

RangerScience wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do have a model that has successfully demonstrating certain principles which may be capable of addressing this problem: Burning Man. Bear with me for a second. I'd say (and then pointing out my lack of formal or amateurish study of economics) that the issue you're pointing at is that capitalism doesn't function well in a post-scarcity environment, which we're entering. This is because our means of determining valu…

> what if it were primarily defined by altruism? It's a fun question, but I think the answer is less entertaining: we would all be less happy. The fact is that most people are better at guessing what they themselves really want than other people are. It's a question of information. I know more about my desires than my friends do, for the most part. Altruism is nice, but inefficient. Spending quality time with friends…

A bigger problem, IMHO, is how do you define Altruism? Is bill gates more altruist because he gave up a million dollar? Or someone else who speds large amount of time outside job with NGOs working for poor people?

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#82

Post by dllthomas » Mon, Nov 03, 2014, 9:24 AM UTC

RangerScience wrote: post #31

stormbrew wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's really important to make it clear that they (well, specifically bailouts really) are also not ideas of the opposing bogeymen, though. No one who even thinks of considering themselves socialist or, say, anarchist would ever say "Yeah, let's give a bunch more money to rich people!" The tendency for power to accumulate into the hands of a few, who then manipulate the economy to their own ends, is a problem…

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" Hopefully we'll be able to do this in a less-than-literal fashion.

"The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. [...] Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them."

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#83

Post by dllthomas » Mon, Nov 03, 2014, 9:27 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #67

hindsightbias wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Iceland Not clear to me the executivies were charged for anything applicable to the overall collapse http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21577064... 3 from Iceland, 2 for stock manipulation and 1 for fraud. Not viable institutions - that would be retirement and mutual funds with hundreds of billions invested in real estate tranches? > older organism to gift Not sure where all those energetic milleni…

They couldn't lose their home to their HELOC (Home Equity Line Of Credit) because they could simply continue to pay the interest and do payments on the principal. They probably shouldn't have taken that loan to begin with but now that they have it they should simply be paying off on it. The fact that bad debt was issued required two parties to be willing partners, one to issue the debt and another to take it on and t…

"Taking on debt without having the means to pay it back is supremely stupid."

Or desperate.

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#84

Post by cmdkeen » Mon, Nov 03, 2014, 9:28 AM UTC

atmosx wrote: post #66

mattmcknight wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not an important article, it is a rant against people with "tacky mansions", a turn of phrase that is more indicative of the author's point of view than the other conventional points about not understanding creative destruction. I think it is this overly nationalist view of economics that needs to die, not "capitalism". There is not less productive work to go around, it's just not being done in the US. We are…

[...] the number of rich people in the world is growing . Thats because many more people become poor. I'm not saying they are directly exploited but indirectly they are, because it is a zero-sum game.

It isn't a zero sum game at all. China, India and Brazil have contributed to the global middle classes growing from 1.8 billion people in 2009 to an estimated 3.2 billion in 2020.

That the USA has failed to adopt sufficiently sensible policies to deal with these changes is not the fault of capitalism per se, and indeed in the case of things like a shockingly unequal education system is often driven by left wing people who dislike capitalism.

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#85

Post by Htsthbjig » Mon, Nov 03, 2014, 9:29 AM UTC

When central banks like Japan's or US print money it is called "Capitalism" or it is called "central planning"?

When in places like Spain they create a bubble in real state but then try to support the prices by any means, including the creation of "bad banks" so prices don't sink it is called Capitalism or central planning?

When States do not control what they spend and the increase the debt by 10x it is called Capitalism or central planning?

This is not capitalism, but capital-comunism: Capitalism when prices go up on the riches, private profit, communism or public sharing of the losses.

When I lived in Japan and prices went down, it was very good for the people living there, but in the international news it was a catastrophe, because the markets could not make money in the stocks.

People(family and friends) always told me: Are you ok? like I had gone to the war or something, because of what they heard on the news.

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#86

Post by bildung » Mon, Nov 03, 2014, 9:31 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #35

RangerScience wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So who doesn't?

Hong Kong and Singapore are the two freest economies. They have very minimal welfare states, with relatively light regulation and taxation. Their wealth creation and economic growth have been astounding over the last ten years. Meanwhile, most of Europe has seen zero GDP growth in real terms since 2004/05. France has seen an average of sub 1% nominal GDP growth for a decade; negative in real terms. Japan, which is a…

Hong Kong and Singapore are the two freest economies. They have very minimal welfare states, with relatively light regulation and taxation. Their wealth creation and economic growth have been astounding over the last ten years.

Hong Kong and Singapore had an astounding growth of 2.9% and 3.9%, while socialist China had a miserable 7.7%? I don't get the impression you looked at the numbers at all, or did you?

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#87

Post by mercurial » Mon, Nov 03, 2014, 9:35 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #35

RangerScience wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So who doesn't?

Hong Kong and Singapore are the two freest economies. They have very minimal welfare states, with relatively light regulation and taxation. Their wealth creation and economic growth have been astounding over the last ten years. Meanwhile, most of Europe has seen zero GDP growth in real terms since 2004/05. France has seen an average of sub 1% nominal GDP growth for a decade; negative in real terms. Japan, which is a…

> Hong Kong and Singapore are the two freest economies. They have very minimal welfare states, with relatively light regulation and taxation. Their wealth creation and economic growth have been astounding over the last ten years.

I don't know about Singapore, but the last echo I had about Honk Kong was "we have too many poor people, you can't seriously consider letting them vote".

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#88

Post by cmdkeen » Mon, Nov 03, 2014, 9:37 AM UTC

erkose wrote: post #5

maratd wrote: post #2

It's not capitalism that's gone off the rails ... it's socialism. All of the countries with slow growth and growing inequality have heavy-handed socialist policies in place.

So you're saying the US isn't experiencing slow growth and growing inequality?

The USA has an annualised growth rate of 3.5% at the moment, the UK is around there as well, the Eurozone - which didn't have many zombie banks but did have plenty of insane socialist governments mortgaging their people's futures is on the brink of recession, again.

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#89

Post by easong » Mon, Nov 03, 2014, 9:39 AM UTC

adsenseclient wrote: post #57

easong wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of his comments are rants against women/minorities (including admitting not hiring a female programmer because her resume had too many mentions of "women") and complaints about google banning his adsense account for fraud. I'm sympathetic to the "faceless shareholders are poisonous" argument as well, but...yeah. It's hard to differentiate neoreactionaries from trolls.

If you do not like an argument, factually refute it, rather than labelling its author. Otherwise your ad hominem style looks too much like Lenin's or Mao's

My intent wasn't to refute your argument (I can't imagine engaging here would be a productive use of time for any party) - I was just adding a bit of context to the above comment.

Cheers!

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#90

Post by calibraxis » Mon, Nov 03, 2014, 9:45 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #17

This is an important article, but I doubt there will be a useful discussion of it here. The developed world has incredible productive capacity. With 1% of the workforce in agriculture and 8% in manufacturing, the US produces as much stuff as China. There are no significant shortages of any manufactured good anywhere in the developed world. Quality is pretty good across the board, too. This is unique in history. That'…

The people you pass on the street can come up with many solutions which would help the world greatly, and do a better job than you + I can. There's no end to creative and effective solutions.

But these improvements aren't allowed to be implemented. (The moment enough people peaceably, legally assemble to plan a more serious democracy, armed government bureaucrats come along to break it up.)