Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

If this happens (and I'm not all convinced it will, I think this is just Amazon posturing) then Cuomo, De Blasio and Amazon will have no-one but themselves to blame for it.

The secrecy around bids for HQ2 was already a joke, but the announcement for NYC even more so: De Blasio and Cuomo basically just announced that it was happening whether people liked it or not. Then said they were going to do an end-run around the NYC city council to ensure it does. Some of the objections to Amazon moving to Queens are legitimate and some are not, but you can't blame residents for freaking out when a huge, huge change like this is just dumped on their neighborhoods with zero consultation or warning.

(It should also be noted that the timing of this is probably not coincidental. An outspoken critic of the Amazon deal has been nominated to the state's Public Authorities Control Board, which has to approve of the deal. But he hasn't been confirmed yet, so I suspect this is an attempt on Amazon's part to stop that approval:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/nyregion/michael-gianaris...)

It’s worth noting that government placement of massive economic projects over the desires or even well-being of local people is a feature of Soviet and modern day Chinese economic systems.

And so it seems, American capitalism as well.

I will say that I think there is a balance. NIMBYs hold back large-scale development in a lot of area where it would be very sensible (high density housing in SF, for example). But at the same time, the community ought to have a say in a giant change like Amazon coming to town.

Who is "the community"?

On all sides of Amazon's planned NYCHQ are a million+ people living in neighborhoods that are predominantly working and lower middle class and that skew towards renters over buyers. Them.

Politicians carving out special considerations for the powerful and other people who lobby extra well is not "capitalism".

It has way more in common with government sanctioned megacorps like the British East India Trading Company than laissez faire and the invisible hand.

> Politicians carving out special considerations for the powerful and other people who lobby extra well is not "capitalism".

The mercantile class gaining the power previously held by the feudal aristocracy, including that of directing government, is exactly capitalism.

It's not the fiction invented by defenders of capitalism in response to socialist critiques of real-world capitalism, but that fiction isn't what the term “capitalism” was coined to refer to, nor is it something ever demonstrated to be practical anywhere.

I find your definition of capitalism not meaningfully distinct from already coined terms like aristocracy, oligarchy, and plutocracy. One could argue that capitalism always leads to those, but it's unclear and therefore unhelpful to conflate all of the above.

Distinction and nuance let us have more interesting conversations than the yelling matches on cable news channels.

> I find your definition of capitalism

I didn't provide a definition, I just pointed to a factor which is intrinsic too (and the fundamental motivation for) capitalism.

> not meaningfully distinct from already coined terms like aristocracy, oligarchy, and plutocracy.

The described factor is more specific than those because of the identification of which specific class is privileged. It is, however, an instance of all three of those things.

Except the word for that is already plutarchy.

Capitalists don't actually want competition, or the invisible hand turning against them. Just read Peter Thiel's essays on how great monopolies are, if you have any doubts about that. [1] [2]

When you've put in millions of dollars into a business, or are receiving millions of dollars from one's operation, the last thing you want is the invisible hand taking it away from you.

If the cheapest[3] way to protect your investment is innovation, capitalists will pursue it. If corruption and cronyism are cheaper, then capitalists will pursue that, instead. Capitalism, as an ideology, does not have any checks and balances on the morality of its participants, or about preserving a free and fair market. In fact, it very explicitly opposes any such checks, or balances.

Communists would say that 'the Capitalists will sell us the rope we will hang them with'. That didn't turn out to be the case, but it wasn't due to a lack of willingness on the ropemaker's end. We've got to grow rope sales 20% YoY, to justify our valuation, after all.

[1] http://www.csun.edu/~vcact00f/497CapStone/Peter%20Thiel_%20C...

[2] I suppose one could argue that PT is no true capitalist.

[3] Cheapest, risk-adjusted.

If you pursue corruption, you are corrupt. If you pursue cronyism, you are a crony.

Capitalism is an economic system where voluntary transactions and commonly accessible markets are essential. Let's not muddle terminology to get in political digs.

You seem to be complaining most about when capitalism ends or fails, not capitalism itself.

Capitalism is an economic system where the means of production, and the profits that derive from them, are controlled by private owners (capitalists).

That's it. Accessible markets and voluntary transactions, and all that other stuff is window dressing. If they actually were sufficient for capitalism, then an economic system where the profits of all enterprise were state-owned, but all transactions were voluntary would also be capitalism (Despite the noteworthy absence of... capitalists.)

If markets are inaccessible, transactions involuntary, and markets rigged, production isn't controlled by private actors, at least not completely. At best you'd be talking about a partially capitalist system with another major element involved.

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