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Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

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Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#131

Post by icebraining »

mschuster91 wrote: post #25
gameswithgo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the absence of big government, big corporate will become defacto government even more easily.

Actually, we see this with the social media giants live in action: they may decide to terminate your account at any time for arbitrary (or none at all) reasons for your whole life, and you have no way of legal recourse. There have been way too many stories alone on HN about people losing e.g. their entire mail archives or Youtube deleting evidence videos of war crimes, to let this situation continue for any longer. G…

"Too many" is subjective, but I would say they are quite few. Gmail has over 1 billion users. We hear stories like that, what, once year? Sometimes twice?

I'm not opposed to government regulation (I support the GDPR, for example), but I really don't see Gmail bans as a problem needing intervention.

YouTube banning videos is more concerning, but how would you regulate that? And which government decides what rules apply, considering that YouTube is international?

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#133

Post by isaiahg »

david927 wrote: post #66

I, for one, am looking forward to the nuanced, subtle discussion that will ensue here. For the love of all that is holy, please don't comment unless you've read the article and want to discuss what it is trying to say.

I wish there was more data on the subject of alternatives to capitalism to make comparisons. Really it's most likely any conclusion is in vain with only half of the picture. The best we have is china and the soviet union and those are faulty sources at best considering none of them actually had a socialist economy. Any other systems come from small societies without known large nation scale examples.

Maybe democracy is a fragile construction at its core or maybe all political systems have an inherent fragility to them.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#134

Post by rizzom5000 »

athenot wrote: post #38
mindcrime wrote: post #4

Simple answer: No. More nuanced answer: not exactly. Not Capitalism per-se anyway. But clearly you can see an unhealthy degree of commingling of big government and big business, in a way that is damaging to society at large. But to my mind: a. that's corruption, not capitalism b. that's an argument against big government, not an argument against capitalism

Corruption is just the free market between those who have power but (relatively) no wealth, and those who have wealth but (relatively) no power. It's treating power and influence as just another asset that can be purchased (with wealth).

Those who have power can freely take wealth e.g. taxation but those who have wealth cannot freely take power. Corrupt politicians might treat power as a free market commodity; but that's still corruption and not a market.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#135

Post by CM30 »

levosmetalo wrote: post #80
mindcrime wrote: post #4

Simple answer: No. More nuanced answer: not exactly. Not Capitalism per-se anyway. But clearly you can see an unhealthy degree of commingling of big government and big business, in a way that is damaging to society at large. But to my mind: a. that's corruption, not capitalism b. that's an argument against big government, not an argument against capitalism

I listened recently on a radio an interview where the claim was that it's easier to achieve equality in a benevolent dictatorship than in capitalistic democracy. Capitalistic democracy tend to distort to an organization influenced by lobbies and corporations, and in the long run governments have to take that and pay back by allowing monopolies and their clients. In a benevolent dictatorship, corporations can't have a…

To be fair, it's arguably easier to do anything right if you have a benevolent dicator who knows what's best for society and doesn't care too much about whether people disagree.

The problem is finding anyone who's truly 'benevolent' or would stay as such once they've got power. It's the same issue we see with a lot of systems; in everyone was a perfectly rational, decent person who only did what was right they'd be a utopia, but that's never the case.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#136

Post by acdha »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #106
gameswithgo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the absence of big government, big corporate will become defacto government even more easily.

As one of the other posters mentioned, big government _helps_ create big corporations. Even the legal idea of a "corporation" with the corporate veil to protect employees & those who control it from direct liability enables mega-corporations. If we simply eliminated corporate legal entities, we might have more careful business dealings. In the absence of this idea, you'd be free to take legal action against someone w…

> It is a similar thing with the EPA and FDA, if a corporation meets their requirements, you can't sue them, even if they are polluting your town.

Do you have a citation for that? States, cities, and individuals sue all the time. Saying you met the federal standards may be part of the defense but it’s not immunity.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#137

Post by spiralx »

debacle wrote: post #122

Are there any capitalist systems that don't tend towards hierarchical structures? Corporations are hierarchical to a great degree, but what would a system look like that incorporated the benefits of democracy into a capitalist entity? In a democracy, people are in theory given a level playing field through voting that means that Bill Gates's vote is just as valuable as anyone else's. In capitalism, people are given t…

> In capitalism, people are given the ability to create value to their fullest extent.

In capitalism people have the ability to create value to the extent they have the capital to do so, a requirement which excludes most people from achieving what they could.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#138

Post by xg15 »

nickik wrote: post #111
MereInterest wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>b. that's an argument against big government, not an argument against capitalism A government that is not large enough to upset an even playing field will also not be large enough to level an uneven playing field.

False. A government power derives from its monopoly of violence not from the size of its budget. There is litte correlation between the size of a govenrment and its ability to regulate.

Are there sources for that claim?

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#139

Post by billbrown »

aggie wrote: post #28
mindcrime wrote: post #4

Simple answer: No. More nuanced answer: not exactly. Not Capitalism per-se anyway. But clearly you can see an unhealthy degree of commingling of big government and big business, in a way that is damaging to society at large. But to my mind: a. that's corruption, not capitalism b. that's an argument against big government, not an argument against capitalism

> a. that's corruption, not capitalism This is the same logic used by people who argue "That's corruption, not socialism." If everywhere there is capitalism, there is corruption, you can't simply wave it away. Edit: I originally asked "How is this argument different from 'that's corruption, not socialism'", which some seemed to interpret as a defense of socialism. I'm just pointing out the flawed logic in both argume…

What we have today throughout the world is a mixed economy: a blend of intervention and freedom. You're exactly right that laissez-faire has never been fully tried: we've come close at various points and various places.

There have been industries that were free of corruption and meddling even though the larger society was rife with corruption. I'm thinking of the Scottish banking system in the late eighteenth century because it was completely unregulated. Its example showed what laissez-faire might look like in that sector.

Silicon Valley in the 80s, 90s, and 00s was similarly left alone. We all saw how it flourished and almost entirely stayed out of politics.

The American constitutional system provides an excellent approach to limiting corruption through checks and balances and enumeration of powers. It has plenty of loopholes and those have been exploited from inception on.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#140

Post by yosito »

monocasa wrote: post #121
yosito wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is a system designed to give representation to the vulnerable. I suppose you're saying that it's possible to have a poorly designed democracy such as one that gives representation to the majority at the expense of the minority, which I agree with.

Pure democracy can be described as three wolves and a sheep deciding on what's for dinner.

Ha! That's funny. :) But not entirely accurate. The word "democracy" comes from the word "deme" which essentially a group of individually weak people who band together to make sure that they're all represented against other groups.
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