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Comment by mindslight | Hacker News Reader

Do you have a larger point, or are you just trying to play some game of Internet Gotcha?

It matters how the distribution was arrived at. If it happened as the result of decentralized market activity, say market optimization versus marginal utility, great. If it was gathered up by the government and then redistributed, that is obviously the result of centralization.

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Just trying to figure out how exactly an even distribution of money is not distributed capitalism as you defined it. So sounds like if the market magically made everyone equally rich (or poor) you would consider that distributed capitalism but if it was done through taxation then you wouldn't. Did I get that right?

An even distribution of money (and I presume you mean assets, too) would imply a decentralization of purchasing power. But if it were arrived at through taxation and redistribution, then the overall economic power would still be centrally administered. Such a scheme would intrinsically require a bunch of laws to regulate what "even" means, who is in scope, what can be saved, incentivize performing transactions despite "evening out", etc. That's all centralized structure.

Conversely, if the financial industry had grown into the centralized behemoth it has become without trillions in government handouts, then it would make sense to say that decentralized capitalism only ever exists as temporary stage and is ultimately doomed as the big players collect all the chips. This is the conclusion a lot of people have come to about "late stage capitalism", but I'd say they're ignoring the trillions in government subsidies that feed the centralized structure.

FWIW in the context of your profile, I think slowing financial industry subsidies (first step, raising interest rates) would go a long way towards reducing natural resource usage. Monetary policy certainly isn't going to stop anyone from dumping plastic into the ocean, but it would cause less throwaway plastic crap to be produced in the first place.

I'm agnostic to how exactly the biosphere is restored but I'm certain that it can not be done through market and capital dynamics no matter how clever or distributed the scheme. Money tends to cause ideological brain damage and those past a certain age with such damage are unable to imagine any kind of future without it.

I agree with your second sentence wholeheartedly [0]. Running with that, wouldn't it be better to be less forced into market dynamics? Or at least less oppressive ones? To me, that is what capital being distributed means. Say you own your own home outright, rather than renting it from a bank. That gives you a certain kind of freedom where you're not trying to make a huge mortgage every month (or at least not nearly as much, you're still paying the town rent every quarter), so you can spend less time earning wages from the financial system, and direct your efforts to non-system-legible endeavors - for example your restoring the biosphere outside of profit motives. It's the financialization of everything that drives the lifestyle inflation ratchet - since most of one's income is mandatory to service debt, one might as well have nicer things, right? Whereas without that stress, the incentive to keep earning more at the expense of accomplishing meaningful things just isn't there.

[0] With the caveat that I also see the opposite side of the coin about the utility of market signals. Both critiques are valid.

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