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Comment by alchemist1e9 | Hacker News Reader

Except history shows us that in 100% of the cases that working people seize the production and allocate the gains they do a unbelievable bad job. Socialism is the single most failed idea in human history, yet we refuse to properly teach that in our education system. I suspect in the future it will be view a bit like refusing to teach other scientific subjects, like evolution.

In reality a mob of people end up producing nothing without capitalists and markets. There is a joke that the IQ of a mob is roughly the highest IQ in the mob divided by the size of the mob.

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>There is a joke that the IQ of a mob is roughly the highest IQ in the mob divided by the size of the mob.

How can you possibly be saying this and "the wisdom of the crowd in markets is all-knowing" in the same thread?? Did you forget to say "and multiplied by the wealth of the mob"? :)

Do you mean Communism instead of socialism above? Socialism has nothing to do with "seizing the means of production". For socialism it is sufficient to regulate private industries to achieve social good.

And flavors of socialism are very successful so far. Most first-world countries (particularly in Western Europe) have adopted aspects of it and significantly improved individual quality of life compared to those countries who haven't.

Nice strawman.

Western europe is being left behind and it’s politicians are getting nervous. Claims of higher quality of life are false information.

> Socialism is the single most failed idea in human history, yet we refuse to properly teach that in our education system.

Well... let's see until we have the capitalist end game before we draw that conclusion, there is a fair chance that it will make the failures of socialism look like a picnic.

> I suspect in the future it will be view a bit like refusing to teach other scientific subjects, like evolution.

Economic systems aren't science, they are just means of organizing large numbers of people in ways that are hopefully sensible. A system that maximizes for growth can work, for a while, but isn't long term sustainable. So depending on your horizon you may think it is a great idea or a terrible one. Markets aren't bad per-se, but they have the potential to lead to catastrophe and if you don't acknowledge that potential and deal with the risk then the chances of it happening increase.

Refusing to view economic systems scientifically and quantifying objectively is a seriously big problem. Gotta stop the fairy tales.

The problem is that every economic system ever proposes is predicated on a bunch of assumptions that do not necessarily hold true over time. So you end up with a model that may work for a while but that's not how science works. Science extracts facts from observations using the scientific method. Social constructs - and social sciences of which economy is a branch - effectively model people and people are emphatically not as predictable as lab equipment and substances.

So you will always end up with fiction dressed up in a scientific coat. It looks and talks like science but it really isn't. There are no testable hypothesis, there is a ton of politics and there will never be consensus.

Cool joke.

I encourage anyone on the fence between this libertarian and I to read the "Concessions" essay I linked up above.

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