Comment by qznc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by qznc | Hacker News Reader

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I agree with the authors general point. If you would settle to a 60's life style, you could probably achieve that by working only 15h per week. However, there is a big industry which constantly tries to persuade you to improve your life style. You need a better iPhone/car/home/TV! Very few people manage to break out of that brainwashing and we do not respect them much. So, is Apple evil when it tries to persuade you to buy the new iPhone? No, we clearly give them the right to do that. Our system gives them the right. Our system is called Capitalism.

Nevertheless, the author uses "evil" persuasion techniques himself. At one point, he appeals to the "evil elite" meme:

> The answer clearly isn’t economic: it’s moral and political. The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger (think of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the ‘60s).

Later, he says it was just evolution:

> Clearly, the system was never consciously designed. It emerged from almost a century of trial and error.

But to think people decide to work because either they want things or because the mass media convinces them too is really missing the point of the issue. Maybe that's why you or I or many people do things but the vast majority of work being done is by people being forced to work by a ruling class who demands they work when the only real reason is so they don't have time to improve the real problems they have. Because the ruling class is the problem they have.

Even if you have the right to do something, it can still be evil. Capitalism has been given plenty of rights that turned out to be evil, slavery is the simple example.

If the ruling class decides what to try and what is considered an error, both those statements can still be correct.

It's interesting that slavery existed for millennia, and then virtually disappeared within a century or so of the emergence of capitalism.

I wouldn't say that, slavery is still existent as alternative forms around the world, not discounting the fact of so-called sweatshop slavery

So only committing an evil for a couple centuries means it's OK? As I still see it as a fine example of capitalism given the right to do something that was evil.

Capitalism does not necessarily imply in slavery, actually some could even argue the opposite: that a desperate mass of 'free' people feeds and operates the economical machinery in a much better way. That was the breakthrough of the Ford model (workers that could buy cars).

Of course, assuming that you meant the classical meaning of the word slavery.

This does not invalidate your general argument though.

Slavery existed long before capitalism.

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