Comment by greggyb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by greggyb | Hacker News Reader

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> Isn't the whole idea of capitalism to force most people to align themselves to exterior goals?

No more than a subsistence living as a hunter-gatherer, and in fact, likely less so. If you live absolutely primitively, then your circumstances force you to align your life and habits to those behaviors that sustain life. There is something external to yourself which constrains the actions that contribute to your continued survival.

The whole idea of capitalism is this: If you want something you do not have, then you must offer to those who have it something that those people value. There is something external to yourself which constrains the actions that contribute to your continued survival. This may force you to align your life and habits differently than in the subsistence scenario, but not necessarily more so.

In each scenario, there are things you can control, namely your actions and behavior. You can take actions which convert into shelter, water, and food. Whether there is nature or human volition on the other side doesn't matter so much. There are actions you can take which support your survival, and actions which don't. That the actions are different is not germane to the question as posed - there are external constraints that determine which of your own actions contribute to life.

As a side note, there is nothing inherently uncapitalistic about the subsistence scenario[0]. If you build yourself a shelter, do you consider that you own the shelter and get to control its use? If you do, this is capitalistic.

[0] This is phrased as a negative on purpose. I am not claiming that the subsistence scenario is inherently capitalistic.

What you cited as the whole idea of capitalism is actually the whole idea of trade, which existed long before capitalism. The idea of capitalism is that the profits brought in by one's assets and labor can be reinvested in more assets or rented labor, which further increases the inflow of money as long as there is unmet market demand for whatever it is that you're doing.

Likewise, building yourself a cabin in the woods is not a capitalist enterprise unless you plan on renting out that cabin and using the proceeds to build more cabins.

Capitalism is fundamentally based on private ownership. The rest falls out of it.

If I own and control something, and you own and control something else, trade is a natural byproduct.

If I own and control something, then of course I can reap benefits from it in the future. Building a completely isolated cabin in the woods that I have no intention of any other human even seeing is capitalist insofar as I assume property rights over it. I am investing time and effort now to build a large, durable structure that I may reap the interest for the remainder of my life, that interest being the durability in storms and the saved effort of rebuilding semi-permanent shelter on a recurring basis.

This is exactly profit brought in by one's assets and labors. I may choose to invest the saved time in other activities, such as tool-building to make the rest of my life easier.

Of course, no man is an island. The concept of capitalism means little in the absence of other humans, though as we see above it can still have some small meaning.

If I exist in some loose society where I interact with others and they may see and interact with my cabin, it matters much more if I assume property rights over it. Even if I do not ever allow another human to interact with the cabin, I reap the same benefits of my investment discussed above.

Note, I've not brought up the idea of money yet. Money is absolutely not required for us to be able to describe something as capitalistic. This is a common misunderstanding, as "capital" today often refers to cash and cash-valued assets.

Now, I am not trying to make a claim that capitalism is necessary for trade, simply that capitalism is sufficient for trade. Similarly capitalism is not necessary for the idea of investing for the long term, merely sufficient.

We could, of course, talk through a thought experiment where humans in a socialistic society build a cabin or cabins and this community accrues benefits as we've discussed.

"What you cited as the whole idea of capitalism is actually the whole idea of trade, which existed long before capitalism."

Trade and property are what people usually mean by 'capitalism'. I mean, yes, Marx popularized the term to refer to specific things he saw in the economies of Europe in his time, but when people refer to 'capitalism' today they mostly aren't referring to those things. They are referring to an economy built on private property and free markets.

Noting as a reply, rather than an edit. Neither scenario I described implies that the entirety of one's life must be devoted to subsistence.

The fact that the vast majority of people participating in a capitalistic society consume at a rate greater than mere subsistence indicates that they value luxury[0] more than passion, at least over some curve of resource consumption beyond subsistence. There may be an intersection point where marginal passion is valued more than marginal luxury. I will make no statement or judgment about where this intersection occurs, though you are free to.

[0] Here, I am using "luxury" in a non-standard way - to indicate those things which are beyond subsistence. In this definition, all resources beyond the minimum required to support life are luxuries. I don't have a better word to use. This is a reductive definition. Anything beyond the barest shelter and minimum calories to survive is luxury for the purpose of this definition and the argument in which it is used.

I agree. But being a hunter gatherer or farmer is much easier than working in today's society. We are working very hard and have little time to invest in our natural interests. If you look at existing hunter gatherer societies, the actual time that is required to be invested in subsistence is much less than the 40 hour weeks of today's society. Capatilism doesn't give us the rewards of our labour, it only gives us enough to subsist at the maximum amount of output that we are able to provide. This is written into the dynamics of the system.

This is so true. And also ironic, considering the massive amount of productivity increases we've seen in the last couple thousand years, at least 100 fold or more.

But, the cause is not capitalism. There are many causes and all of them link back to regulation, government and an unwillingness to allow for lower cost options for (housing, transportation and medical insurance). For example in housing. Consider this: We could build the type of homes humans had 1000s of years ago very easily and it could be super cheap, only costing maybe a few dozen hours worth of wages to through up a couple of wooden walls and a ceiling but none of that is legally allowable. We've created an environment where only housing of the highest possible quality is legally allowable, thus forcing everyone to work long hours to afford all that whether they want it or not. this is further compounded by the fact that we're forcing people into a very tiny amount of land, thus driving up the cost of land needlessly when there's soo much empty space out there that can't be developed.

In this imaginary hunter gather scenario, you certainly must account for life expectancy being what, 40 years? Infant mortality rate 50%?

If given the choice, I think most beings would select into a stream optimizing for actual existence. Sounds strikingly close to evolution.

You realize that the average life expectancy already includes the infant deaths, right? It does not mean that a healthy 18 year old is unlikely to live past 40. Only a newborn baby is.

Does it? https://krusekronicle.typepad.com/kruse_kronicle/2008/02/inf...

But the math is different one you have already not died as an infant, isn't it?

> If you look at existing hunter gatherer societies, the actual time that is required to be invested in subsistence is much less than the 40 hour weeks of today's society.

40 hours of work provides much more than subsistence, even at sub-minimum-wage income levels in the US.[0]

The vast majority of people earning an income in the US earn greater than the minimum wage. Only 2.1% of hourly workers earn at or below the minimum wage in 2018, and it's been trending downward for decades.[1]

Both a hunter-gatherer society and modern capitalist society offer opportunities for luxury[2] beyond subsistence. These are different. A value judgment between the two would be just that, and I don't want to fight about any differences among the things that you and I value.

EDIT : updated BLS link to latest, and reference to 2018, instead of 2017.

[0] Personal experience. I have lived at $10K/yr within the last decade in the US. My sister has, too. Note, this would be a full time $5/hr.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage

[2] See my comment sibling to yours for this non-standard use. I don't have a better word. Here, I mean "luxury" as "beyond subsistence".

I think this is quite a rosy view of being a hunter gatherer or a subsistence farmer. From what I've read, there's like, a LOT of murder in existing hunter gatherer societies. And back when everyone was either a hunter gatherer or a farmer, lots of people starved to death all the time. It may be true that a farmer of 500 hundred years ago got to keep all of the rewards of their labor (though many... most(?) of them had to give up some portion to the local strongman), but those rewards generally amounted to barely enough to make it through the winter, and certainly not enough to survive, say, two bad harvests. As crappy as capitalism is sometimes, most people in the developed world are very, very far away from worrying about starving to death on a yearly basis. The biggest problem is that what we consider subsistence is way more expensive that what an existing hunter gatherer considers subsistence. If we were willing to live on nothing more than barely enough food and have almost no clothes, or housing, or possessions, we'd be able to work a lot less too.

...rosy view of being a hunter gatherer or a subsistence farmer.

There is a vast difference between hunting/gathering and what you think of when encountering the phrase "subsistence farming". You're on the right track when considering "the local strongman". Sedentary farmers of scheduled-harvest process-heavy plants (most grains) are vulnerable to the predations of government in a way that people who live more in tune with nature are not.

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