Is capitalism a threat to democracy? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#191

Post by rayiner » Fri, May 11, 2018, 4:57 PM UTC

_jal wrote: post #118

rayiner wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a common view, but I don't think the evidence supports it. What "corruption" and "regulatory capture" did Amazon or Google leverage in coming to dominate multiple verticals? Instead, I think technology is the culprit. Technology pushes out the boundary where economies of scale give way to diseconomies of scale. Mom & pops can't compete with Amazon not because Amazon has a few senators in its pocket. They can't…

Capture and corruption doesn't help small startups become big[1]. They help big companies stay big. I think you're right that Google and Amazon (and others) leveraged something new - the catalog-sales and cat-video dynamo we call the internet - to get where they are. And I think I'm right that they will increasingly leverage government to stay big now that they are. [1] You might say 'Uber' in response; I'd say the c…

How about Apple, Microsoft, Walmart, and IBM? Does Apple stay big due to regulatory capture, or because its massive size allows them to create a supply chain nobody else can match?

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#192

Post by rayiner » Fri, May 11, 2018, 4:59 PM UTC

_jal wrote: post #177

root_axis wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I think I'm right that they will increasingly leverage government to stay big now that they are. IMO that's not a convincing argument. Your response to two specific counter-examples is "one day you'll see that those examples actually prove my point instead of yours"

That's nice. If you'd like to convince me I'm wrong, you'll have to explain why these companies, which are subject to the same pressures as others and hire from the same pool of execs, will behave differently than the rest of the herd of large public firms. If you want to argue they'll lobby, manipulate and bribe less than average among peer-firms, well, that argument could be made. But if you want to argue that ther…

> If you want to argue they'll lobby, manipulate and bribe less than average among peer-firms, well, that argument could be made.

You’re begging the question by assuming that this conduct is what keeps “peer firms” big. That’s the point in dispute.

I’d say that there is good reason to believe why that isn’t true. Walmart spent just $7 million on lobbying last year. It’s a company with $500 billion in revenue. Does it make logical sense to infer that the $7 million in lobbying is what keeps the $500 billion spigot flowing? Much smaller competitors could out-lobby Walmart, raising the market price of corruption. Why doesn’t that happen—with hundreds of billions of dollars on the line?

People take as a shibboleth that lobbying is corruption and corruption keeps big companies big. But that flies in the face of the actual data.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#193

Post by spiralx » Fri, May 11, 2018, 4:59 PM UTC

noir-york wrote: post #172

dragonwriter wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK is a western democracy and does not describe itselg as a republican anything, though opponents to certain elements of the current constitution describe themselves that way. There is an overlap between democratic republics (or, to use the less common phrasing, “republican democracies”) and limited representative democracies, but they aren't the same.

The UK is what is called an aristocratic republic* as it retains the Roman Republic's setup: - Sovereign / House of Lords (Senate) / Lower house. The US Founding Fathers copied England, and Rome's model but replaced the sovereign with a President. Representative democracies are necessarily republics - although some, like my country, skip the upper house. Rome introduced consuls / republican model because the populati…

> The UK is what is called an aristocratic republic*

It's a constitutional monarchy based on a parliamentary system.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#194

Post by nickik » Fri, May 11, 2018, 5:10 PM UTC

This is interestign article, but sadly I must say that I have some very large problmes with it. The article is to large to go threw all the historical details.

I would argue the article is very nice example of what is sometimes called history as popular myth. Many historical periods or events have many different interpretations and one is favored depending on politics. This piece nicely collects all of these and makes a nice overall story out of it that then perfectly leads into the politcal system favored by all non-communist modern leftist, scandinavian capitalism. How could anybody disagree with this logical chain?

On thing that bugs me is that recessions are only blamed at those in power during the recession, while ignoring structural problems that existed before. It all only went bad in 1973, before that it was awesome, nothing happened before is responsable for the problems.

Also calling the economy of the 60s 'Keynsian' is just a slightly strange leftists phrase that is not really used by econnomists. Keynsianism has perticular technical defnition, it does not mean big government with regulation. Many this about this version of the 60s and how the left loves to call it 'Golden Age Capitalism' and then follows it up with 'but it was actually Socialism, look at the marginal tax rate'. This is a highly stylised version of events works thanks to selective selection of metrics.

Most economist agree that the Great Depression was caused by central bank mismangment. We know know this quite well, and people like R. G. Hawtrey (worlds most well known economsit back then) prediced the Great Deflation pretty exactly, with the correct explaition that we still use today. It had nothing to do with free markets, or the evil small government polices of the 20s. Much the same argument could be made about 2008.

Again, one can not take account of the whole article in single comment, but I would just point out that there are many different interpretations of these events. One could easly turn it around and tell a equally convincing story with the opposite point.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#195

Post by nickik » Fri, May 11, 2018, 5:12 PM UTC

yosito wrote: post #51

I'd answer this question by asking another: Is it profitable to destroy democracy? If so, someone is going to try it. That doesn't mean capitalism is any less compatible with democracy than socialism or any other system. But if we value democracy we need to defend against economic forces that threaten it.

It is not profitable to destroy democracy complitly. But it is profitable to undermine democracy so that in your particular case you get an exception to the rules everybody else has to follow.

If enough people get that change of rules, democracy is pointless.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#196

Post by AnimalMuppet » Fri, May 11, 2018, 5:14 PM UTC

kahnpro wrote: post #83

baddox wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Government is unique because of its “social license” to govern, meaning that the vast majority of people recognize its authority to do things other people or groups cannot do (like make laws, imprison people, or collect taxes). Corporations don’t have that social license, which is why they need to cozy up with government to take advantage of that unique authority.

Without a government they can start to take this authority themselves in much the same way that local warlords do. Gradually by force, because they have power and you don't. A small / weak government can't do anything to stop them.

Small != weak. Did the US have a large government in 1900? Certainly not by the standards of today. Yet it was still able to take on Standard Oil.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#197

Post by snappyTertle » Fri, May 11, 2018, 5:15 PM UTC

yosito wrote: post #140

monocasa wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Individually weak people can band together and vote to steal from the less weak, but smaller groups. Does voting and being represented make stealing moral?

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#198

Post by AnimalMuppet » Fri, May 11, 2018, 5:16 PM UTC

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…

It's also easier to achieve equality in a tyrannical dictatorship. If you aren't part of the (very small) inner circle, you're poor and exploited, just like everybody else.

But most of us don't want that kind of equality...

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#199

Post by nickik » Fri, May 11, 2018, 5:21 PM UTC

Stranger43 wrote: post #183

nickik wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they do. Adam Smith already understood this. However, just because any group in society wants to change the rules of society to their benefit, does not make the existance of those groups a bad thing per se. Sometimes people act as if that was unique for capitalist. In fact Unions, Activists, Government burocracies and so on have the exact same insentives, they want to change rules to benefit them. The reaso…

The right is just as bad as history and have mostly manage to erase the economic system Smith wanted abolished, and according to Marx had re-emerged after Smiths dead. Or to put it differently capitalism was never envisioned as a critique of socialism, but as a critique of nationalist mercantilism, which is the same system international socialism was supposed to tackle a century after Capitalism had failed. Though by…

Honestly I have no idea what you mean by the words you say.

By no strech of the imagination was did capitlaism fail. In fact the strech from 1870 to 1914 was the largest and strongest period of growth thanks to capitlaism and increasing trend, specialisation and so on.

Feudalistic order as a system of economics had long stopped in most of western Europe and even in Russia. The feudalistic titles still being around and having some meansing does absoutly not make the economics system feudalistic.

I am not defending imperalism, of course those nations that were under fogin occupation did not really participate in this system and therefore could not get the same benefits. However it is equally false to say that capitlaism only worked because of imperalism.

In fact, as Adam Smith said, it would be better if everybody were equally capitalistic. The raise of nations like Japan, Taiwan and so many others made us all richer. I wish nations in Africa and Latin America would also manage to adopt a better system.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#200

Post by Rescis » Fri, May 11, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

nickik wrote: post #164

malka wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

imo, capitalism leads to oligopoly. oligopoly leads to corruption. Capitalism can only ends with corrupted states imo.

That is just old marxist economics that has been disproven. Economists agree that markets do not automatically lead to oligopoly. This is why Marx has no credibilty in economics. All his predictions turned out to be false not because 'economists are the hand maidens of capital' as leftist like to claim. In fact Marx economics was very popular amoung economist at one point, it was then deconstructed theortically and d…

I agree with your statements; however, I feel like your argument would be much stronger if you had sources for your claims that Marx has been disproven and deconstructed.