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Comment by ClumsyPilot | Hacker News Reader

> anti-capitalist activists using iPhones, riding in Ubers, and ordering Amazon deliveries…

> every single job, iPhone, and modern convenience they enjoy exists because someone, somewhere, took a risk to make a profit.

Amazingly capitalists use things invented by socialists, like satellites, or the LED. Or things invested by Nazis and Monarchists.

Their favourite iPhone is made by communists, with minerals mined by .. well I am not sure what you call em but they are not capitalists

Every day Capitalists use public sanitation, running water, Education, GPS, police and prosecution but they imagine they could exist in a mad max world instead of dying of cholera

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China is the most economically capitalist major country on earth. In fact, they embrace capitalism more than the US if you compare percentages of GDP driven by government spending.

50% of European GDP is government spending. The USSR was 70-80%. Meanwhile China is currently at 30%.

> Their favourite iPhone is made by communists

China has been a capitalist state since the 70s with a turn to State Capitalism in the 2010s. Furthermore, China's leadership remains anti-Welfarism, with Xi himself making speeches against expanding the already weak social safety net.

> Every day Capitalists use public sanitation, running water, Education, GPS, police and prosecution but they imagine they could exist in a mad max world instead of dying of cholera

Capitalism doesn't preclude public infrastructure. That's just a facile argument.

> the LED

The modern LED was developed by Texas Instruments and Bell Labs in the 1950s.

> like satellites

Both the US and the USSR knew about how to launch satellites in space by the mid-1950s. It was the USSR that chose to prioritize it, and the US that chose to deprioritize it.

> Capitalism doesn't preclude public infrastructure. That's just a facile argument

I am measuring by the same yardstick as the OP.

If taxes to pay for public services are good capitalism, then you can’t call Europe socialist.

> The modern LED was developed by…

Whatever, take Hyperbaric welding. Will a western oil company refuse to use it because it was invented in USSR?

The fundamental accusation of the OP is totally hypocritical.

> I am measuring by the same yardstick as the OP.

Fair enough! Didn't see their argument. Yea that was dumb.

> Their favourite iPhone is made by communists, with minerals mined by .. well I am not sure what you call em but they are not capitalists

Do you think those miners are volunteering out of revolutionary solidarity? Or perhaps "disposable cogs in the global supply chain" was the term you were looking for?

> Do you think those miners are volunteering out of revolutionary solidarity?

Miners were getting paid in USSR too, are they capitalist too by this logic?

The USSR was a state-run economy. Workers got wages, sure, but the mines, the profits, the whole system was controlled by the government, not private owners chasing profit. Capitalism isn't just "getting paid," it's about who owns the means of production and how wealth circulates.

Exactly, so with that in mind can you please explain how mines in Africa controlled by war lords represent capitalism?

Because if they do, then capitalism is horrible, and if they do not, then the argument made by the OP is hypocritical

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