Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 135 posts

Re: A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

#101

Post by jstewartmobile »

smokestack wrote: post #100
jstewartmobile wrote: post #62

I think the rub is that the public debate confuses the triumph of the old British system of aristocracy and privilege with "capitalism". Just as they had the "corn laws" in the early 19th century, we have pharmaceutical import bans, region coding, the "dutch sandwich" and many many other privileges to keep the winners winning with a minimum of effort. If that's what passes for capitalism, who wouldn't reject it? Peop…

Equal opportunity, not "equal justice under law". Capitalism favors those who are lucky. It's nothing to do with law. Edit: who wouldn't reject these things if they weren't benefiting from them (vast majority of people)?

It has everything to do with the law.

If a small bank got into the insurance business prior to financial services dereg of 1999, it would have been crucified by the feds. Citibank and Travelers did exactly that, but since our justice and regulatory structures are pay-for-play, and their market capitalizations were high enough, they were able to proceed without controversy.

On an individual level, our prison population is disproportionately black, and disproportionately locked up on minor charges with an inadequate defense. A prison stay has far-reaching consequences on wealth, employment, and social status.

As a small business person, if I were to copy an idea from Apple (like, say rounded corners), they would sue me into the ground (I think their suit with Samsung is already over $1B). If they were to steal my idea, I would go broke on attorneys fees long before I ever got to a courtroom.

Equal opportunity isn't worth much without equal justice under the law. You'd have a good run, only to have the house take back all the winnings in the end.

Re: A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

#103

Post by boomboomsubban »

edblarney wrote: post #60
Gustomaximus wrote: post #34

The cold war branding of anything communism/socialism as evil is being seen through as rhetoric, and more people are seeing merit of using blends of governance than pure free market. People 50 years ago had to support one system of face real consequences. We can now debate the merit of concepts like "privatise luxury, socialise necessity" without being a 'commie bastard'. With the irony being socialist policy was far…

"The cold war branding of anything communism/socialism as evil is being seen through as rhetoric" I can hardly believe that anyone who was alive during the 'cold war' would ever say that. I grew up in an immigrant community in Canada, and most of my friends fled those disastrous, oppressive and totalitarian 'communist paradises' all over E. Europe, China, Vietnam, Cuba - and also - Sweden, by the way. Nordic countrie…

>Communists are definitely 'dirty'. They represent, in reality - the world's greatest movement of mass murder and oppression

The second greatest is capitalism throughout the period of colonialism, and who knows which would win given an equal population at the time. Very few of the things you list have even tangential links to an economic system, and the few that do are confirmation of a central tenet of Communism, the need of a worldwide revolution.

People aren't ignoring the lessons history with their continued support of Communism/Socialism, they're looking past the surface commonly brought up. One of the first acts of the Bolsheviks was the elimination of any Soviet that had been formed. They went for a totalitarian approach from the start, and any small hope of that succeeding died when basically every nation in WWI declared war on them. This is very similar to what happened in the French revolution, and the results are very similar.

Economic theory isn't to blame for the atrocities committed during revolution and by tyrants. There are a host of reasons those events happened, and capitalism isn't some magic shield stopping them from happening again.

Oh, and food definitely has been socialized. The combination of farm subsidies, insurance programs, and welfare programs work to ensure everyone has access to it.

Re: A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

#104

Post by mindcrash »

Yes, because a society based on Marxism will be so much better. Because that is the big idea right? Marxism?

But these millenials who seem to think they are all smarter than everybody else forget one thing: of all the things we tried capitalism and democracy are the least destructive forms of governing society.

Or as Jordan Peterson, a tenured psychologist, has stated several times already: "Those who claim 'With us this time it (Marxism) will become so much better' have no idea what they are talking about"

Re: A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

#105

Post by EJTH »

Sure they reject capitalism when they are asked, but will gladly buy an iPhone or other consumer electronics designed to fail within a few years of normal usage.

They will gladly post all their private information to Facebook for that warm fuzzy feeling of people liking their updates, while they are being datamined and their profiling sold to advertisers.

But when asked, then sure everyone is against capitalism.

Re: A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

#106

Post by mindcrash »

twblalock wrote: post #44
waisbrot wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's interesting to see that "capitalism" is becoming a dirty word, when in the cold-war era it was the opposite of "communism" which was a synonym for "evil".

Yet "socialism" is an even dirtier word according to the survey results. What we really have here are young people who are fed up with the low level of economic opportunity available to them, relative to the level of opportunity they expected to have.

You are not looking for the word "socialism". The word you are looking for has the highest approval rating in this poll. Then everything makes sense.

Re: A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

#107

Post by mjfl »

heurist wrote: post #91
mjfl wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still making the "standard of living" argument that is essentially hypocritical when you think about it globally. You are extremely privileged to be born in the USA, rich or poor. Also, you would realistically need to be taxed more like 80-95% to get to the global mean.

So the ultra rich should grow wealthier faster than middle class Americans because there are poorer countries in the world? Absurd.

In any case their wealth shouldn't be redistributed to the American middle class, rather the global poor, as should the wealth of the American middle class and poor.

Re: A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

#108

Post by mjfl »

Joof wrote: post #94
0xfaded wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society has to decide what "right" people have to a certain minimum quality of life and access to services. It turns out the level can actually be quite high, one only need look to the highly successful Nordic states. The argument in america seems to be that if you work hard, you can have a decent life and a house in the suburbs. There are already problems here, what of the people born with disabilities? But assuming…

Why does any single person deserve the enormous amount of power that being so absurdly wealthy can bring?

You say "deserve" as if there is some God or universal parent dictating people's fortune like they are handing out cookies for being a good boy. You might say someone you really like deserves much better fortune then they have realized, but that's something that's completely subjective to you - it's because you yourself like them. You might say that someone who is very fortunate deserves less because you don't like them, that is also very subjective. Since wealth makes you intrinsically less likable, it's pretty natural people would think that the wealthy deserve less. But does that have any objective significance? No.

Re: A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

#109

Post by Retric »

friedman23 wrote: post #57
Retric wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you mean before written history then no. Governments have been mediating property disputes at least as far as the written word and likely though the last 100,000+ years.

Do you believe that when we all lived in huts that the feudal lord would send out knights to defend you if your neighbor decided to take your property?

It's not that clear cut. If a poor person gets robbed today the cops will do basically nothing. Feudal lords will defend vs Viking raids. So, they both sit betweeen 0 and 100% on this.

Re: A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

#110

Post by Clubber »

Retra wrote: post #73
Clubber wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the theory of communism economics is we've only seen it implemented a few times, and they've all been terrible. Communism, I believe, was to be implemented in a post industrial country. When Russia implemented it, they were pre-industrial, and during a massive war. As an aside, Germany actually shipped, by train, an exiled Lenin to Russia to destabilize it during WWI.

The problem with communism is the same problem with unregulated capitalism: when you give extraordinary power to a small minority, everyone else suffers. There's also the problem that violent revolutions are extremely risky, and are unlikely to result in anything but a dictatorship, exacerbating the previous point. Most failed communist communist governments have these problems, as do most failed capitalist governmen…

I don't think you can reasonably compare the suffering of any capitalist society with the suffering of Soviet Russia, especially in the 1930s.
Post reply on HN