Comment by d1zzy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by d1zzy | Hacker News Reader

I grew up in a Communist dictatorship in Eastern Europe. Capitalism is far from being perfect but it was much better for my friends and I than communism. It wasn't as good for older people that lived most of their life in the previous regime tho (but we cannot say how capitalism would have treated them if they haven't had lived almost all their lives in communism).

I do not know what the solution to capitalism's problems is but I do know it's not communism. I also realize that rejecting capitalism doesn't imply embracing communism but in practice I don't see anyone suggesting any other alternatives to it.

With the rise of social-nationalism/right-wing activism again in Europe and elsewhere I sometimes wonder if this isn't just collective memory forgetting the horrors of the past that were brought upon by hate and simplification (to me most political ideals like communism and nationalism are the result of minds that refuse to view the world in the highly complex state it is in and are looking for simplifications/shortcuts), we are forever doomed to repeat those mistakes. :(

Does democratic socialism not have a place in your solution set?

The idea that stakeholders >= shareholders should be enshrined in our governing policy.

Capitalism has a flaw in that if it isn't actively maintained (i.e., anti-trust, regulations, tariffs to prevent abuses) it simply becomes oligarchy (USA is an oligarchy in all but name).

Social democracy cannot be replicated in countries like USA or Eastern Europe. It has had been abused in Eastern Europe to maintain communism 2.0.

> Social democracy cannot be replicated in countries like USA or Eastern Europe

Why?

Because of mentality and being very prone to the too much free power makes one too cocky. We can actually see how it works when corporations get lazy and mismanage very hard.

Mentality can be changed for good (the past few years show how it can be changed for evil).

If it can't, then it's a missed opportunity of planetary proportions.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/20446694?mag=socialism-make-peo...

You are highlighting a problem of too much centralization, not a problem of economic left or right. Centralization has this problem independent of whether it manifests in government or corporations.

People get way too hung up on what I'd consider the theoretical government + economic label a place runs under, and overlook the power structures and how the powerful operate with respect to the needs of people. Along those lines, maybe we have something labelled democracy in America, but the power structures responsiveness and effectiveness (esp with the current tax vote), is getting closer to a communist dictatorship rather than moving away.

How so? Didn't the people elect congress?

No, the people do not elect congress, until every congressman/woman runs without a single dollar from donors, and uses only public platforms to promote themselves.

Money buys politicians, which buys elections which buys what they do/don't do in congress. It's all an organized but legal crime syndicate. Extortion, bribery, etc are legal in politics, because politicians make the rules.

I agree we should get the money out of politics, but let's be honest with our terms. The people do elect congress, though corrupt money is allowed to influence the people.

Yes. Couldn't agree more. Politics in so called democracies is nothing more than legal organized crime syndication.

In other words, politicians run legal protection rackets. Mafias.

Major Study Finds The US Is An Oligarchy

http://www.businessinsider.com/major-study-finds-that-the-us...

> Researchers concluded that U.S. government policies rarely align with the preferences of the majority of Americans, but do favour special interests and lobbying organizations: "When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it."

Sure, so we can say that people vote against their interests. We can't say that the U.S. is a dictatorship. Let's be precise with our terms, rather than contributing to political polarization and blustering.

Systematically studying a range of issues supported by voters and comparing them against actual congressional votes is not blustering. It's rather methodical and data driven.

The study isn't blustering. Claiming that America "is getting closer to a communist dictatorship" is.

Communist dictatorships don't have the characteristic power structure of a close circle of oligarchs that overall decide policy?

...who aren't chosen by the people. That's the defining characteristic.

Neither are the oligarchs in America.

The economic left to right axis, and the authoritarian libertarian axis are orthogonal. I hope this helps.

I think the key term here is "dictatorship". There's been capitalist dictatorships as well, and they've been terrible (Franco in Spain comes to mind for example).

I wouldn't be worried by the modern rejection of capitalism, because it's definitely not a rejection of democratic systems. In fact, if anything, it's fueled by the failure of democracy in the face of the inevitable oligarchy product of capitalist economics. If anything, I see this as a wave of people trying to save democracy.

Thanks for that post. It's an interesting perspective, from a background different than my own.

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