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Comment by black_puppydog | Hacker News Reader

> Governments do not have a history of distributing scarce resources effectively.

To be fair, "various market forces" also don't have the best track record of distributing resources, especially scarce ones. Somehow those always end up being "distributed" into the same few hands...

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To be fair, how is that even remotely true? Look at the wealth, convenience, leisure and abundance all around you. Even people with lower income experience high standards of living. The system we have now is not without fault, but it has done better than any other before in meeting our needs and desires.

I don't understand why people make wild claims that everything is distributed to only a few hands, thats preposterous. If you really believe that, you are poisoned by ideology.

> Look at the wealth, convenience, leisure and abundance all around you. Even people with lower income experience high standards of living. The system we have now is not without fault, but it has done better than any other before in meeting our needs and desires.

You should spend some time in Appalachia if you think that's true.

You are making a logical fallacy and I don't think it's worth my time to actually attempt to discuss this with you.

There's nothing to discuss because you don't really have much of an argument. "Look around. Things are better than what they were" doesn't negate the fact that market forces are bad at distributing resources. You can look at the COVID-19 crisis as well. "Market forces" led to distribution channels with no redundancy, leaving the United States with a shortage of something super basic: PPE.

You continue to state that market forces are bad, while not paying any attention to the counterargument that they are pretty good compared to the alternatives. Making an honest comparison would be a much tedious discussion.

I'm not saying market forces are categorically bad. I'm saying they're bad at some things. Market forces are terrible at distributing housing, healthcare, and primary education. As with most things, there's a happy medium between unfettered market forces and central planning.

This is patently and simply false; if you view home ownership data worldwide, you'll see distinct patters of more home ownership in countries and localities in which the building, sale, and ownership of homes is encouraged by the government, oftentimes protecting it from the exploitative practices of capital accumulation. US home ownership is low relative to its wealth, lower than former communist blocks. Best system my ass.

This is literally the opposite of what is true. Every _single_ thing that you own tells a different story than the sentence you wrote above.

You're focusing on wealth inequality/relative living standards, which while important, is secondary to absolute living standards.

And while it may just seem that the rich get richer, the poor have gotten far richer under capitalist systems than any other form of economy.

That's called communism, not various market forces.

During communism, people with the only currency left - power - manage to get all the best things (which can be food, if everyone is starving, or luxury item, if people are not starving yet). In a free market luxury items eventually become common goods.

That's why most common people have a phone, a vacuum cleaner, a microwave, a tv.

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