Courtesy of TFA and capitalism:
"In 1985, if you were a reasonably affluent American, the best computer that you could afford was the IBM PC AT. The PC AT would cost you about $6,000—$19,400 in 2026 dollars—and thus represented about a quarter of the median American’s annual income; and it ran on an Intel 80286 processor, capable of something like 900,000 instructions per second. Today, if you find yourself in a market stall in Nairobi or Lagos, you’ll be able to find a cheap smartphone—like the Tecno Spark Go, manufactured by China’s Transsion—for somewhere between $30 and $120. That phone will run on a processor capable of billions of calculations per second."
This quote has nothing to do with capitalism.
Please note that "commerce" and "capitalism" are not synonymous, and that the former does not imply the latter. Capitalism is in no way a prerequisite for technological development.
"Capitalism" is an ever shifting ambiguity that exists to be a scapegoat to attack but is completely meaningless in its concrete usage by the attackers.
But "capitalism" in its historical and practical meaning means nothing other than commerce, i.e. the society based exchange, the system of production based on exchange. It was only through capitalist accounting methods that businesses were able to conduct commerce in such a way as to contrast costs and proceeds, and therefore create the optimizations that lead to mass computer production or, what is the same, cheap computers for the masses.
> But "capitalism" in its historical and practical meaning means nothing other than commerce, i.e. the society based exchange, the system of production based on exchange
Completely wrong. Many of my comments here distinguish commerce from capitalism.
Commerce, ie the exchange of goods and services, has existed longer than civilization. Even some animals do it.
Capitalism is specifically the substitution of labor with ownership as a means of profiting. This produces an imbalanced market: some people compete for resources by selling their labor, while others compete simply by owning capital: the means of production. The problem is that the latter mode allows unlimited accumulation of wealth, while the former is limited by time and effort.
Imagine if Elon Musk was working a salaried job that paid $60000 per hour. How long would he have to work in order to earn his current fortune?
Every socialist tries to make this distinction and falls to their own guillotine. You do realize that "substitute with" is merely a synonym for "exchange"?
The exchange of labor, to be sure, has existed nearly as long as civilization itself, perhaps longer, as all people cooperate by exchange through the division of labor right down to the family, and it is exchange whether the articles to be exchanged are money or physical things or even intangible, ephemeral things like love, pride, loyalty, or otherwise. Since human society is human cooperation by the division of labor, by your definition capitalism is nearly synonymous with human society itself. Fine by me.
This argument does not make any sense.
I have no problem with the concept of money. Commerce always the exchange of good and services, including on a symbolic level: as you point out, affection, money, etc. "Money" is not the distinguishing factor between commerce and capitalism.
At the risk of repeating myself: the distinction is how wealth is acquired. Capitalism allows one to acquire wealth merely by possessing capital, which in turn engenders unlimited capacity to acquire more capital. Capital is unique among all those systems for that reason.
I mean we don't really have any counter examples even China didn't really start advancing in any meaningful way until they started moving towards capitalism.
We didn't have any examples of states without a divinely appointed absolute monarch until we did. Things can change.
And as a matter of fact, there are many examples of non capitalist societies.
Capitalism is in no way a prerequisite for technological development.
Really? Who else builds stuff?
>Who else builds stuff?
The Chinese, famously?
China is a great example of a counter point to the argument. They only started making things once they realized capitalism was better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_and_opening_up
> The reforms [starting in 1976] de-collectivized agriculture, abolished the people's communes, relaxed price controls, allowed foreign direct investment into China, and led to the creation of special economic zones, most prominently the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and the Shanghai Pudong New Area. Private enterprises were allowed to grow, while many state-owned enterprises were scaled down or privatized. Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange were established in 1990, allowing a capital market system
> They only started making things once they realized capitalism was better.
Free commerce is not the same as capitalism. A country where production, wages, and ownership are decided centrally can hardly be said to be unfettered capitalism.
> A country where production, wages, and ownership are decided centrally can hardly be said to be unfettered capitalism.
The reforms in China I listed heavily cut down on that. Are you claiming that China is somehow less capitalistic now compared to 1976?
By your metric the US isn't capitalistic because NASA and various govt agencies and entitlements worth trillions of dollars a year of taxes exist.
Please avoid straw man arguments. I didn't say that China didn't use capitalism: I said that it didn't use unfettered capitalism. Its capitalism is strongly tinged by its authoritarian rule with the explicit goal of reducing poverty.
The US, like China, continues to use a mixed approach to economic management in the form of regulated capitalism. The degree of regulation in the US has been declining since the 1950s, resulting in larger wealth inequalities and more poverty.
On the subject of straw men, there is no such thing as "unfettered capitalism." That is something you invented to support your argument.
Put another way, capitalism, like communism, is one of those pure ideologies that has never really been given a fair shake. In fact, human nature rules out the possibility of a fair trial for any pure ideology. We are political creatures, not ideological ones. If you really are beyond your high-school years, as your account age suggests, this should be obvious.
Unsurprisingly, the most successful systems are those that have proven to be better at meeting human nature on its own terms. Hence the triumph of capitalism as it is practiced today, which for all its flaws has the advantage that you don't have threaten people at gunpoint to force them to engage in it.
For all of your rah-rah capitalist boosterism, you failed to address the actual content of my argument, which is that the reason during the last 50 years that the China has had decreasing poverty, while the US has had increasing poverty, has nothing to do with capitalism, and everything to do with restrictions on capitalism (or their absence).
As others have pointed out, that's a naïve and frankly incorrect reading of Chinese history, but it's also not something that can be addressed here.
It evidently can be addressed here, as you yourself mentioned. No one has yet pointed out to me why my reading is "naive and frankly incorrect," so feel free to be the first.
I listed the reforms upthread that you ignored.
All the reforms fit a capitalistic model, not just a free commerce model.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48231586
And of course, Mao's communism was very anti-capitalistic.
All well and good but you still haven't addressed my point which is that China's reduction of poverty is due to its central control of wages, construction, and capital.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48236489
An assertion made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
[flagged]
> Really? Who else builds stuff?
Said the Christian in pre-Englightenment Europe: "Well, of course Christianity is the one true religion. After all, the whole civilized world is Christian."
That doesn't answer my question.
That's because your question is silly. I'll spell it out for you: Just because all modern states are capitalist does not mean that all states must be capitalist, as evidenced by the many erstwhile states that were not capitalist. Your failure to see beyond your immediate surroundings and ignoring the first sentence of my previous comment is perhaps the reason for your silly question.
> Just because all modern states are capitalist does not mean that all states must be capitalist, as evidenced by the many erstwhile states that were not capitalist
However, I doubt anyone else would instead want to live in current day North Korea or pre-1990 eastern bloc countries, or in East vs West Germany.
> However, I doubt anyone else would instead want to live in current day North Korea or pre-1990 eastern bloc countries, or in East vs West Germany.
An astute observation, if your knowledge of history begins and ends with the 20th century.
So not a single country out of ~200, not one, emulated the alleged great successes and utopias of historic non-capitalist economies for a century plus. Which is why you're unable to name one in the 20th century. Hmm I wonder why.
Maybe we can look at societies where the modern era hasn't touched, like some places in Africa. Why is the quality of life so great there that everyone wants to move from hypercapitalistic societies like the US to Africa instead of the other way around?
Wow, talk about moving the goal posts. I was pointing out that capitalism has not always been the universal economic system, and now you're trying to make me explain why years of exploitative colonialism and corrupt authoritarianism haven't yielded a better alternative. Well, isn't it obvious?
300 hundred years ago, every country in the world was ruled by an absolute monarch, and that fact alone was considered persuasive explanation of divine will: the world must always be thus. Since then, the philosophy of rulers has changed, but small-minded apologists for the status quo have not evolved in their thinking. "If our current approach isn't the best option," say the small-minded apologists, "why isn't anyone doing anything different?" The answer to that question, in case it wasn't obvious, is the same as it was 300 years ago: entrenched interests.
Are you seriously arguing that it is impossible to allocate today's abundance of resources in a more fair and productive way than our current system does?
The problem is that your proposed approach has been tried again and again and has failed every single time with disastrous consequences for several generations.
Once people are given all the resources they want they are not motivated to work. The productive people get tired of the product of their hard work being forcibly taken away and stop working since they would be given resources anyway. That's how the system collapses since there aren't enough resources for everyone to sit and consume. Thats exactly what happened in the eastern bloc. https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When...
How many times should we run the same failed experiment and ruin millions more lives?
https://www.africadatahub.org/blog/what-usaid-funding-of-afr...
https://www.ft.com/content/c10e4f2f-5564-42a4-8aa7-66c78ca1c...
https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/kathy-hoch...
> Once people are given all the resources they want they are not motivated to work
You are again straw manning an argument. I said nothing about giving people all resources with no work. In fact, I explicitly said the opposite: I want a society where people compete to provide labor in order to gain material advantage.
My argument against capitalism is that that competition should be fair: people should compete for resources with labor, and not against those who contribute no labor.
That makes no sense because labor needs capital to take risks so they get salaries. For example new drug discoveries cost a lot of money and a huge percentage fail with big losses that go to paying labor but not eventually benefiting from it. Banning that model where capital is risked by passive investors would've meant far fewer life saving drugs being invented, literally making mankind worse off.
If someone wants to passively invest $3M into a new coffee shop and pay labor to work in it, banning it like you want to do will kill the economy and disadvantage the little guy.
> That makes no sense because labor needs capital to take risks so they get salaries.
Total non sequitur. Labor (and salaries) predate the existence of money, as well as capital investment.
You don't have to demonstrate this kind of ignorance of human history on main. Aren't you embarrassed? Do you value knowledge even a little bit?
When did capitalism begin? How was 'stuff' created and distributed prior to that? How do other, distinct and contemporaneous modes of production create 'stuff'?
Capitalism began when Thag, who was a good hunter, brought home two dinosaur steaks. His buddy Grog was a lousy hunter, but was good at making spears. Thag traded a dinosaur steak for a new spear.
That's commerce, not capitalism.
Capitalism began when Thag declared that he owns all the dinosaurs, and anyone who hunts a dinosaur must pay him 10 percent of the meat as a tribute, or else he will stab them with his spear.
Um, Grog had the spear.
If you just want to troll, go to reddit. thx.
> Capitalism is in no way a prerequisite for technological development.
Communist countries copied technology, their inventions are very few. Capitalist countries routinely exhibit rapid technological development.
I was just watching "Shock and Awe", a documentary on Amazon, about the development of electrical theory and products.
It was driven largely by people who wanted to make money off of their inventions. None of the progress came from communist countries.
Did you know that Gutenberg invented the printing press in order to make money?
Did you know the Wright Bros invented the airplane in order to make money?
And so on and so forth.
> It was driven largely by people who wanted to make money off of their inventions.
I am getting a little tired of repeating myself, but you're evidently confused so I'll indulge you.
The opposition to capitalist as a monetary system does not imply the opposition to the profit motive. As I've said several times, and which you continue to ignore, the exchange of goods and services in the form of commerce requires the profit motive. Conflating my position with communism is a straw man.
Well, you do repeat Marxist tenets, like the class struggle and the labor theory of value.
Just because they are Marxist tenets doesn't mean they aren't true. Feel free to refute them if you feel otherwise.
That has little to do with what I said.
A third of the world lives in poverty. That's the fault of capitalism.
About 90% of the world lived in poverty before capitalism.
Besides, America's poor have a higher standard of living than medieval kings.
The fact that some countries (mostly the political west) developed a wealthy middle class post WW2 was not due to capitalism but due to social democracy.
Capitalism by itself does not produce egalitarian wealthy society. The system divides the populace into "capital owners" and "workers" who are in direct conflict.
There are plenty of capitalistic countries where most people are poor. In fact many of the as said Western countries has also high levels of poverty while running capitalism in the 1800 etc until post WW2 social democratic movements.
Once you dismantle those social democratic constructs such as labor unions and start shifting more power to the capital holders you'll see how the society splits apart to rich and poor. The rich use their wealth and power to rig the system to benefit themselves even more and become richer at the expense of everyone else. Ultimately they will remove democracy because functional real democracy is a threat to their wealth.
The middle class emerged in colonial America. During the 1800s, scores of millions of people came to the US with little more than a suitcase. They went into the middle class, and some into the wealthy. We know this because:
1. Average height increased throughout the 1800s
2. Life expectancy increased throughout the 1800s
3. Plenty of photos and paintings of towns that consist of middle class housing
> The system divides the populace into "capital owners" and "workers" who are in direct conflict.
That's what Marx claimed. I've had many jobs. In none of them was I ever in conflict. It was a negotiated relationship, where I provided labor and expertise in exchange for money. I've also been a boss, and if you ever have been you'd know you had no power over your employees. They only work for you because they want to. When they stopped wanting to, they simply disappear, and there's not a thing I could do about it.
In the US, every worker has the power to walk away and start their own business. The wealthy in America did not come from wealthy immigrants, they came from poor immigrants.
Most employees have absolutely Zero leverage. Ask any Amazon warehouse worker how much liberties they have and how much in practice they can negotiate. Just because some employees have had some leverage doesn't change the underlying power dynamics between employers and employees. In fact we're now seeing this play out in software as well with the AI hype train and I expect a reality check to hit many people previously in their cushy office jobs.
People living with room mates working 80 hours a week have a higher standard of living than kings?
Do you even listen to yourself?
Let's enumerate a few things:
1. Today's poor are as tall as rich people, meaning they get plenty of nutritious food. They're taller than medieval kings.
2. Fresh vegetables and fruit from all over the world 365 days a year.
3. Flush toilets.
4. Air conditioning
5. Central heating
6. Infinitely better medical care
7. Endless amazing entertainment at the push of a button
8. Can communicate with anyone in the world, for free
9. Anything you want to know, at the push of a button
10. Far better clothing
11. Cars you can drive anywhere
12. Fly at 30,000 feet in complete luxury across the country
13. Free education, in any field you want
14. Hot and cold running water
15. Hot showers
16. Microwave ovens
I can go on if you like.
> Besides, America's poor have a higher standard of living than medieval kings.
Only if you define the standard of living in a consumerist way.
Would you willingly swap your life (or the life of your child) for that of a medieval king?
I sure wouldn’t.
Neither would I.
> A third of the world lives in poverty. That's the fault of capitalism.
So what you're saying is that capitalism lifted about two thirds of the world out of poverty.
Thanks to capitalism, I don't have to toil in the fields.
> Thanks to capitalism, I don't have to toil in the fields.
No, that's thanks to commerce not to capitalism. Capitalism benefits those those who hold capital, which is not me.
The fact that there are more than enough resources for no one to live in poverty should suggest to you that something is wrong with the distribution system.
"It's true, Mr/Ms Rationalist, that our patented Miracle Medical Snakeoil caused a third of your leg to become necrotic and fall off, but be glad for the two thirds that did not fall off!"
> > Thanks to capitalism, I don't have to toil in the fields.
> No, that's thanks to commerce not to capitalism. Capitalism benefits those those who hold capital, which is not me.
Are you toiling in the fields? It seems to me like your attitude is that "If I can't be rich, then no one should be rich."
> The fact that there are more than enough resources for no one to live in poverty should suggest to you that something is wrong with the distribution system.
So instead of two thirds of the world not living in poverty, everyone should live in poverty equally?
> It seems to me like your attitude is that "If I can't be rich, then no one should be rich."
The problem with capitalism is not that some people get rich and some people don't. The problem is that of an unfair playing field.
Everyone has a body and a mind, and commerce allows us to rent out those features in exchange for pay. People who are smarter or stronger or work harder or work more will be able to benefit more. That's how I got rich. But there's a limit to how rich I can get, because I have only one body and one mind and there are a finite number of hours in the day.
The other way to get rich is to own things. If you own a factory or real estate or bonds you get to charge other people and make a profit even though you are expending no effort. And in this case there is no limit on your profit, because you can use your profit to buy more capital and make more profit from that. The result is eventually a winner-take-all economy, where the winners own an increasing amount of society and everyone else pays them to use it. If that sounds familiar, it should, because it's feudelism, and is the eventual end state of capitalism.
You should really read a bit about the philosophy that you're arguing so vehemently for, apparently without knowing anything about it.
> So instead of two thirds of the world not living in poverty, everyone should live in poverty equally?
No, that's ridiculous.
It's interesting how when you talk to people who are vocally in favor of capitalism, they always turn out to be in favor of an imaginary version of capitalism where everybody is a small business owner, rather than in favor of how the system works in practice and the outcomes that it necessarily creates.
> The other way to get rich is to own things. If you own a factory or real estate or bonds you get to charge other people and make a profit even though you are expending no effort. And in this case there is no limit on your profit, because you can use your profit to buy more capital and make more profit from that.
Risk : Reward, that's obvious, isn't it? I have known many relatives who bankrupted themselves trying to "own" stuff. I also know some who succeeded and are rich. Starting a business is very hard, try it.
> Risk : Reward, that's obvious, isn't it? I have known many relatives who bankrupted themselves trying to "own" stuff. I also know some who succeeded and are rich. Starting a business is very hard, try it
In order to risk one's own capital, one must first own capital. Today's working poor, just like the serfs of times gone by, have nothing to invest but their own labor. It's hard to build a business when you're fully occupied in working to buy food.
You've inadvertently pointed out the fundamental inequality of capitalism: in order to get the (potential) benefits of capital, you must first belong to the capitalist class.
> You should really read a bit about the philosophy that you're arguing so vehemently for, apparently without knowing anything about it.
You had a good comment until you wrote that. Don't lower your standards with stupid personal attacks.
> The problem with capitalism is not that some people get rich and some people don't. The problem is that of an unfair playing field.
I would love for things to be fair, but I grew up in the real world and learned that things weren't fair back when I was a kid in primary school.
Instead of lamenting about something that I can't control, I decided to focus my efforts on what I can control. Instead of tearing other people down, I built myself up.
Unless you can change the human characteristic of greed, the world will always be unfair. You can spit into the wind, or you can set a sail.
> You had a good comment until you wrote that. Don't lower your standards with stupid personal attacks.
I apoligize for judging you based on the things that you write.
> Unless you can change the human characteristic of greed, the world will always be unfair.
There is nothing wrong with greed or unfairness, to a degree. As I said in my previous comment, some personal characteristics will naturally lead to inequality of outcome. That's fine, because everyone is deriving profit from the (variable quality) work that they are personally able to produce. I would say that greed and unfairness are essential to any system of commerce, which I support.
Capitalism, on the other hand, allows inequality on a grand scale that necessarily results in a society that no longer rewards hard work: the lords own all property, everyone else works for them, and there is no way to achieve wealth competitive with that of a lord simply by labor. The laborers work to surive, and the owner class consumes all the benefits. This is the system that we spent a century of war fighting to end. It seems silly to go back to feudalism just to appease the modern-day lords.
> Instead of tearing other people down, I built myself up.
Who, do you suppose, am I tearing down? I want a society that rewards hard work. A system with no social mobility is not that system. I want people to improve themselves in order to make more money. What I don't want is a society where the owner class are able to be parasites on everyone else, producing no labor (physically or intellectually) but showing giant profit. The modern day US is increasingly distant from its much more socially mobile past, and it's only going to get worse.
I'm not saying that the current crop of billionaires haven't worked hard to get where they are. I am saying that their work is not proportional to their benefit, and at a certain point they are able to continue benefitting despite producing noting of value.
> I apoligize for judging you based on the things that you write.
I apologize for thinking you were willing to have a decent conversation. I won't waste any more of your time.
> I won't waste any more of your time.
Thanks!
> Thanks!
You're welcome!
Really? What other systems are better at lifting people out of poverty (without killing a few tens of millions in the process?)
There are so many other places where this sort of low-effort high-school edgelording fits in better than here.
> There are so many other places where this sort of low-effort high-school edgelording fits in better than here.
A good sign of low-effort edgelording is championing an obviously broken system by using a straw man to disparage the alternatives.
[dead]
The third of the worls that lives in poverty obstinantly refuses to adopt capitalist methods.