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Seven Fixes for American Capitalism

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Re: Seven Fixes for American Capitalism

#71

Post by mruts »

dnautics wrote: post #54

No mention of ending inflation, which is a deliberate state-driven policy to steal from the poor to give to the rich and make the state "look good" by lowering the metric of unemployment: https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-hi... "even in the long run, it’s really, really hard to cut nominal wages. Yet when you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a significan…

What are you talking about? The point of inflation is to encourage the spending and investment of money. It doesn’t really have anything to do with unemployment.

Re: Seven Fixes for American Capitalism

#72

Post by merpnderp »

kadendogthing wrote: post #37
merpnderp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is reasonable? And more to the point, what non-capitalist system has ever been more reasonable?

>What is reasonable? I think not having a continual decline in purchasing power and living standards despite increases in productivity and consistent technological breakthroughs is pretty reasonable.

Is that reasonable when heath-care costs, at 20% of the economy, are increasing at 10+% a year? The economy is not growing even close to fast enough to offset this. Our productivity is not increasing even close to fast enough.

Re: Seven Fixes for American Capitalism

#73

Post by chasd00 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #41
fallingfrog wrote: post #30

You can buy and sell almost anything under capitalism. You can buy or sell property. You can buy or sell pieces of a company (stocks). You can buy or sell human labor. And the way that businesses make money is by essentially arbitraging some market, for example by buying something in one place and selling it somewhere where it is more expensive, or by buying labor and selling the products of that labor at a profit. B…

Thank you - this is a concise definition and gives a working pov that can be widely applied - do I own my personal data, can I sell it? Its an easy one to think around As an intellectual framework this is a great jumping off point. I hope you don't mind if I suggest you may not have originally thought of it - where can I read more?

you can sell your own personal data all day long, how could it be otherwise? Finding a buyer is another story but there's zero barrier to putting it up for sale.

Re: Seven Fixes for American Capitalism

#74

Post by pseudolus »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #46
simplecomplex wrote: post #13

Anti-trust isn’t equipped to deal with anything because it’s arbitrary and vague. “You’re too big because some bureaucrats said so” is not law. That’s not justice. It’s totalitarian. How can a company avoid breaking the law if they don’t know they’re breaking it?

I saw this argument in another HN post that I found very convincing. The current antitrust standard of "consumer welfare" isn't necessarily wrong, but in the current world of tech it is wrongly applied because "the consumer" has been misidentified. As we like to say so often "if you're not the paying customer, you're the product." Then in the world of Facebook and Google, the customers are really the advertisers, who…

I think the earlier post you're referring to was a review of Tim Wu's "The Curse of Bigness" in the Los Angeles Review of Books [0][1]. It's a great overview of antitrust issues with respect to technology.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19079526

[1] https://www.lareviewofbooks.org/article/trust-busting-as-the...

Re: Seven Fixes for American Capitalism

#75

Post by stcredzero »

davidivadavid wrote: post #31
perfmode wrote: post #2

> “I don’t even think stasis is compatible with liberty,” he told the Washington audience. - Bezos Suppose one were to attempt to steelman Jeff’s statement. Is there any credible basis for this statement? Or is it just one of those things that powerful people say because it makes them sound profound and they don’t have to follow it up with substantive supporting evidence.

On the face of it the statement looks like one of those things that is either a tautology, or false. If society is in a state of stasis, that means no one is allowed to do things that go beyond what society is doing in the present. That means you don't have the right to innovate, to try new things, and so on, which seems integral to individual liberty. So his statement is obviously true. However, if you consider libe…

However, if you consider liberty as a social construct that means you're allowed to do things as defined by society

In fact, you have just demonstrated that liberty can't exist permanently as a social construct. Therefore, liberty needs to be based on something apart from and beyond society. For example, we could have a society which is based on universal and inviolate principles of personal liberty. (The United States gets laudably close to it.)

There are things which are beyond social constructs, like math, science, and nature. People who claim otherwise are just trying to use a social construct to get you to act as if all those other things are ours to define arbitrarily, because ultimately they want to have power over you and other people.

(EDIT: The fact that the US and Britain have had something like universal principles of individual rights is precisely what allowed societies to eventually reject their socially constructed acceptability of slavery. So also beware of people who advocate reducing or infringing on individual rights. We know that things like freedom of speech, property rights, and judicial due process are important for liberty, precisely because in the historical record, authoritarians have suppressed speech, taken property, and manipulated judicial processes to squash political opposition.)

Re: Seven Fixes for American Capitalism

#76

Post by EpicEng »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #50
hevi_jos wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What socialism system are you talking about? Just name one socialist country that applies your ideal scenarios. IMHO this system only exist in your mind, it is not real. Countries that people say are Socialist like those in the north of Europe, are really capitalistic societies. I have known plenty of real socialist countries in the world, and they only share misery. In those socialist countries, like Venezuela or Cu…

I am constantly surprised by the reaction to the word socialism . I live in the UK, where the government takes 50% of GDP, and spends it mostly on communal activities - shared ownership. We share our resources so that the sick can get treated, our children educated, our air space protected from Russian invasion. We are sharing most of our national resources, and handing them out according to principles of those who n…

>We share our resources so that... our air space protected from Russian invasion

The US subsidizing more than 70% of NATO probably helps a bit there.

Re: Seven Fixes for American Capitalism

#77

Post by AnimalMuppet »

chobeat wrote: post #32
m000z0rz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that exactly what joshuaheard said, though?

No because capitalism, even on paper, will still imply poverty as a structural element. Without poverty and exploitation, the system cannot sustain itself. This without considering waste: Capitalism, being competitive at every scale, implies that to give feedback to the system, you have to waste. Waste resources, waste time, waste lives. The more waste, the better the outcome. If it works by different assumptions, it…

One definition of capitalism is simply the re-investment of profits into improvements - better tools, for example. That in no way implies poverty as a structural element.

Re: Seven Fixes for American Capitalism

#78

Post by jiveturkey »

dnautics wrote: post #54

No mention of ending inflation, which is a deliberate state-driven policy to steal from the poor to give to the rich and make the state "look good" by lowering the metric of unemployment: https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-hi... "even in the long run, it’s really, really hard to cut nominal wages. Yet when you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a significan…

a. isn't krugman arguing FOR inflation?

b. why is low unemployment bad? let's say we have a deflationary economy, doesn't that lead to high unemployment which is a feedback to more deflation? how is that not a bad thing?

excuse my naivete

Re: Seven Fixes for American Capitalism

#79

Post by dnautics »

jiveturkey wrote: post #78
dnautics wrote: post #54

No mention of ending inflation, which is a deliberate state-driven policy to steal from the poor to give to the rich and make the state "look good" by lowering the metric of unemployment: https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-hi... "even in the long run, it’s really, really hard to cut nominal wages. Yet when you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a significan…

a. isn't krugman arguing FOR inflation? b. why is low unemployment bad? let's say we have a deflationary economy, doesn't that lead to high unemployment which is a feedback to more deflation? how is that not a bad thing? excuse my naivete

His arguing for inflation, exactly. And read the quote. The way it works is by stealing from workers.

> "let's say we have a deflationary economy, doesn't that lead to high unemployment which is a feedback to more deflation"

I suppose in a deflationary economy the equilibrium state is no one will have a job?

Re: Seven Fixes for American Capitalism

#80

Post by chasd00 »

komali2 wrote: post #64

>Among their recommendations is preventing tech platforms from vertically integrating into different lines of business, where they can potentially favor their own services and harm rivals. In this view, Facebook shouldn’t be allowed to own Instagram. Weird, I would argue that Facebook buying Instagram was a horizontal integration. Amazon buying cloudflare is more something I'd think is vertical but it's possible I ju…

the issue is you didn't directly attack Facebook and therefore are in violation of the groupthink de jour.
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