Hacker News Reader

Comment by topaz0 | Hacker News Reader

Capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. "the invisible hand" sounds good and all, but the problem is that if the owners of capital control the profits produced by the mobilization of capital, then money and power will inevitably become concentrated enough that those capitalists both benefit from and become capable of restricting market freedom. The idea that free markets are a stable state of affairs is a faulty assumption.

[edit to note: this is only one of the many internal contradictions of capitalism, but the most relevant to your argument imo]

View on HN

While I don't agree with your hyperbole, yes it is an imperfect system, but it is the best system we have.

You have not understood what I said. I'm not talking about unappealing features of the idealized version of capitalism that GP is lionizing. I'm talking about how capitalism as described brings about the conditions that undermine free competition, by its nature. You're talking about it as though we can just agree as a society "we're doing free competition now" and that's that. Capitalists won't agree to this -- every incentive leads them to want to restrict competition. And they have too much control for a notional agreement among citizens or whatever to overcome.

Yes I generally agree that the absolute version of "Free markets" as in 0 government (it's very existence is a distortion), is not going to work either, and it will just lead to interested groups using acquired forms of power to create distortions in their own favor.

More so I'd propose a system of government which has baked into its constitution things which remove the power of capital from politics. For example lobbying and non-individual and non limited campaign donations are 2 such things that must be not allowed.

Those sound like useful bandaids to me, but it doesn't change the incentives. Historically, capital finds a way.

I'm essentially asking you what system you are proposing.

I'm not sure what gave you the impression that I was proposing something in my comments.

You don't have an opinion of a better system?

Not that would add to the present conversation. Please take your goading elsewhere.

So you want to criticize the current system without bringing in a proposal?

The proposal is clear from the comment if you read it: it's not a proposal about a socioeconomic system, but about how to analyze socioeconomic systems. Namely, that we shouldn't just think about the first-order consequences of things being arranged according to a certain system, but we should also think about what forces inherent in the system are driving it to change so that it is organized differently. That is all that I am interested in talking about at this point.

That's not at all what your top comment was getting at and you know it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com