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Comment by yeahitslikethat | Hacker News Reader

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A lot of us think so. Assuming that uncoordinated market forces and powerful people seeking profit is the best way to care for human happiness comes off as absurd to a lot of people. I’m all for markets most of the time, but some good old fashioned coordination and cooperation seems lacking from bare capitalism. Luckily capitalism doesn’t prevent cooperation, we just need to get it in our heads to actually do it.

> Luckily capitalism doesn’t prevent cooperation, we just need to get it in our heads to actually do it.

It effectively does, under enough competitive pressure. Incentives are stacked in such a way that for any attempt at coordination, it's profitable to be the one to defect. In fact, a big (if not the main) job of regulations is to enforce cooperation in situations where market guides people to defect.

I don’t like using the government for these problems. I think private collectives could be very powerful here. If you have a collective of a few thousand members cooperating with another collective, the members would have to all choose profit over cooperation to defect. Our normal corporate structure with a tiny board of directors creates perverse incentives for the board to profit greatly at everyone else’s expense. Collectives can be designed without a board of directors, or the board can be better held accountable to the members. That means collectives are less likely to choose profit over public interest, because the voting members are the public much more so than the few members of some corporate board.

The people within the collective may not - initially - choose to defect against the collective, but if the collective is in competition with other collectives, it'll likely find itself defecting against them (with reciprocity). Cooperate/defect applies recursively at all levels of social structure - from individuals to countries.

As for my "initially" remark, a collective of thousands is way too big to remain flat. I'd expect it to grow at least 2 layers of internal governance, at which point the "cooperate/defect" mechanism will start applying to people at one level trying to work together under rules set by the level above.

The question is why does capitalism need to be protected from government run alternatives if it's so super duper?

You can’t “compete” in any meaningful sense of the word with a service that doesn’t need to run a profit because it’s taxpayer subsidized. To provide an example: many Asian cities have profitable private subway systems. Why can’t we have that in Washington DC? Because taxpayers pay $0.50 of every dollar it costs to run the Metro, and it’s impossible for a private company to compete with that.

I think there are some countries in which people are too quick to socialize things but that's not the case here.

(Except maybe in New York City where a city councilperson from Queens insisted that Off-Track Betting get a bailout to "save jobs" and where some other politicians will block cannabis legalization unless black people get the profits from it... it's not enough to take away an reason for mass incarceration...)

> I think there are some countries in which people are too quick to socialize things but that's not the case here.

So how many more decades do you think that US's Health Insurance Industry needs be protected from government competition?

Hopefully none. I’m really hoping Bernie can pull this thing off, even if it will be a very difficult fight.

> Then are we kidding ourselves that capitalism is our best shot at a social system?

Here is a story about government granted monopolies using their influence to manipulate government entities to impede the activities of other government entities.

What "capitalism" are you asking about?

"Capitalism" isn't a generic umbrella word for all the things in the world you don't like.

It's a little cyclical of a thing though, right? Almost paradoxical? You need capital to achieve regulatory capture; regulatory capture guarantees capital. I've always found that term "government granted monopoly" a little dishonest and overused. The institution had enough capital to buy its protection; if the institution lost its power (capital), it would lose footing on its monopoly as well.

As far as using Capitalism as a generic umbrella term, I don't think that is necessarily the case here. A government in a capitalistic country is expected to operate this way; lobbying and campaign finance being the only true democratic levers in the society.

You can't eliminate disparities in influence, or competitive self-serving behaviour by attacking people's ability to accumulate private capital. The Soviet Union had very little private capital, yet was extremely corrupt for that reason.

That's true, but it's also important to remember that there is no such thing as free market, or a market disconnected from government. Trying to make regulations work in your favour is just another thing market players do, not different in principle from opening new shops or spending money on advertising.

Cultural attitudes toward the free market can make a big difference. At the turn of the 20th century, during the Lochner Era, the Supreme Court upheld contract liberty and prevented numerous attempts by governments to undermine it. That never could have happened without the political attitudes that existed at that time.

Widespread belief in principles like private property rights and contract liberty can act as a moat to prevent things like regulatory capture.

> It's a little cyclical of a thing though, right?

I think most of the cycles we see here are due to the mental gymnastics performed to indict capitalism for the fall of every sparrow.

There is no indignation towards capitalism in my comment. I am claiming that regulatory capture, lobbying, and campaign finance are the means of democracy in a capitalist Mecca like the US. Disagreeing with that and writing it off as mental gymnastics isn’t much of a rebuttal or conversation.

I don't think capitalism is the main problem point. Denmark, Canada, Australia (and many more examples) all seem to do pretty well while having a Democratic and Capitalist society.

Unlimited Campaign Contributions and Lobbying are by very definition buying political influence (i.e. pay money to make politicians do what you want), which is the definition of corruption[1], and clearly is not how a democracy is supposed to function.

In a functioning Democracy citizens vote in politicians who share their views, so leaders are chosen based on what people want. When money comes into it, the whole thing gets screwed up. i.e. Comcast just pays millions (billions?) to make sure the politician in power votes for blocking community broadband. Even if the citizens vote out that leader and vote in a new one, Comcast will just pay the new person.

Thus it's corporate money that makes laws, not citizens through voting.

[1] After spending three years in 35 different countries in Africa, I've come to learn the developed world is just as corrupt as many African nations, we're just adverse to using that word because it sounds so dirty and uncivilized. I think it's important to call a thing what it is, lest we succumb to newspeak, so I call out corruption when I see it. Just because it's legal, it doesn't mean it's not corruption.

In Canada, the big players were forced into reselling their ISP services to third parties by governmental regulations.

>Unlimited Campaign Contributions

There are clear limits on campaign contributions.

What we don't have are limits on private ad spending, which would obviously violate free speech.

From a US legal perspective on corporate personhood, Capital is free speech. Limits on campaign finance limit a corporate persons' first amendment rights. Lobbying and campaign finance are not corruption. It is legal, systemic, and operating as intended.

Capital being the true democratic mean in the world's most capitalistic country is not surprising or incorrect. It's intentional.

> operating as intended.

Operating according to the current interpretation of the US constitution. The intentions of its writers are another matter entirely.

> Lobbying and campaign finance are not corruption

I pay a politician money, and he does what I want.

That is the very definition of bribery and corruption. Just because the people that stand to gain the most from it decided to make it "legal", that doesn't change what it actually is. Call it "legal corruption" if you like.

> Capital being the true democratic mean in the world's most capitalistic country is not surprising or incorrect.

Of course, there is only one democracy on the planet where that's true. How does that country stack up against all the other OECD countries in terms of quality of life for the average Joe citizen?

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How can you enforce fair capitalism?

- By letting big businesses fail

- By letting stock prices fall for stagnation and mistakes

- By not making regulations such as the one posted, allowing competition to thrive

- By putting in penalties on executives who presided over fraud, environment damage and harm

- By banning lobbying completely

It seems to me that the last two points require close government involvement, and that capitalism plus government involvement will inevitably lead to some kind of crony capitalism.

Yes. Government is required but needs to be not influenced by money, by law. Taking money in any form needs to be an arrest-able offense.

Do you really really really think that a bunch of billionaires will self correct themselves?

No, I think the opposite of this: that whenever you have individual people as powerful as billionaires, you have crony capitalism.

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