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Comment by sidcool | Hacker News Reader

I have always maintained that Communism is a good idea on paper that is not very practical. The sheer amount of misery it's been causing is a testimony to this.

On the other hand, pure capitalism is harmful as well, to a lesser degree though. The sweet spot may be the right balance of Socialism and Capitalism.

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"Great in theory, lousy in practice" is a misguided saying. What that really means is that the theory itself is lousy.

Social safety nets and the correction of market failures in capitalist economies really have nothing to do with communist theory at all. All they have in common is the very bland observation that "life in a capitalist economy isn't perfect." But the meat of Marxism isn't about that. The core of Marxism is a bizarre theory and a prescription of how to fix the world that leads to misery and slaughter.

The fact we need to smooth the rough edges of the free market does not entail admitting even a mote of recognition to Marxism.

> pure capitalism is harmful as well,

It's not like we have ever experienced it. We have never seen capitalism running free without major State intervention. At best we get Crony capitalism these days which is nothing like "pure capitalism".

We have, back on 1600s when joint stock companies were first invented, eg Dutch East India Company. They had their own armies and we got slavery, colonisation of Philippines, India and other places, all through private, profit-driven enterprise.

You can say we have had the very same thing with full state Powers that had nothing to do with Capitalism, since the beginning of History, so putting it on the back of "Capitalism" is kind of tenuous. Anybody or any organization in a position of ultimate power will go in that kind of behavior. Plus, the East India Company was pretty much a proxy for States involved in the area.

The point of capitalism is that you are supposed to have a lot more competition because of fragmentation.

I think the opposite is true. Pure capitalistic free market naturally tends towards monopoly or collusion. State intervention is needed to ensure competition.

And then corporate interests collude through and ultimately control the state, and we've arrived at an interesting system of two party democratic republican fascism

I think we came close in the 19th century.

Any market based system starts to break down in terms of efficiency and value when there isn’t a robust competitive environment. It really requires small players. Look into any major corporation for an example — internally they look more like a command economy than a rich marketplace.

I guess I feel like your sentiment is silly when the same is easily said about America (and capitalism). To say lesser degree is to say “I value occidental ideology and problems over those of others.”

The sweet spot lacks corruption. It’s as simple as that. To inflate one over the other seems silly as they’re all good on paper and failures in reality.

We’ve neve had capitalism, we have cronyism and “socialism for the rich,” as my economics professors would...

Only if by theory you mean "let everybody magically have everything and be happy". If you get to the particulars of how that is supposed to work, turns out the theory is pretty crappy too. E.g. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem

> If you get to the particulars of how that is supposed to work, turns out the theory is pretty crappy too.

E.g. see "The free market efficiently matches demand with supply."

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