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Comment by carlosjobim | Hacker News Reader

You're never going to be able to change the economic system for the entire population where you live. Better to vote with your feet and move to a country where all economic activity is arranged for "the common good". There are many, many such countries. You're not the first with that idea.

That of course won't mean that you will have the privilege of deciding for everyone else what counts as "the common good". It's unfortunately not like the Arch Linux terminal where you are omnipotent.

I say that sincerely, as somebody who had to do just that. It's easier for Mohammad to go to the mountain.

Edit: To say: I voted with my feet and moved to a place which better aligns with my values. From a "common good" society to a "freedom" society.

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One small question: how did those places manage to change the economic system for the entire population?

Usually extremely violent revolt

I don't think the appetite is there in most places

I'm not sure this is true. My analysis shows that 75% of economic transitions are completed without violent revolt.

Just a quick glance at the 44 historic economic transitions in my dataset, most of them aren't well known. The most likely reason why we think economic revolutions are associated with violent revolt is due to selection bias - violent revolts are more memorable, take up a larger section of history books, etc.

Happy to take at look at your dataset and compare notes.

Many EU countries are pretty nice places to live, and didn't need a violent revolution to make it happen. All it took was democracy, a population willing to stand for its rights, and an elite which understood that building a welfare state is preferable outcome over having a violent Communist/Fascist revolution.

A capitalist system with right amount of social democracy to prevent worst concentration of wealth is the best model there is, at least for the well-being of its citizen and survival of its democracy.

> a population willing to stand for its rights

"Stand for it's rights" is just weasel words for "Was willing to use violence in order to obtain their rights"

Even if they never actually had to become violent, violence or the credible threat of violence is the only thing that has ever in history convinced "The Elites" to change things

>and didn't need a violent revolution to make it happen

You really need to read more history about Europe.

There was no such revolt in the country where I live, and in many others. Also if you are talking about France it was to create democracy, not to change the economic system, with democracy you can change the economic system without a revolution.

> Also if you are talking about France it was to create democracy, not to change the economic system

I'm no expert on the French Revolution but I'm pretty sure that "We're all poor while the monarchs are all rich" was a huge driving force behind the French Revolution. "Let them eat cake", etc

It also didn't create democracy, they more or less immediately wound up under Napoleon, a self crowned Emperor

Democracy came later

> It also didn't create democracy, they more or less immediately wound up under Napoleon, a self crowned Emperor

It did create democracy, the French Republic, Napoleon did end that though but its much easier to reinstate democracy later than to create it from scratch.

> I'm no expert on the French Revolution but I'm pretty sure that "We're all poor while the monarchs are all rich" was a huge driving force behind the French Revolution. "Let them eat cake", etc

Revolutions to loot the rich happened a lot throughout history, but here the explicit goal was to end monarchy and create democracy not just looting the rich, that is a big difference.

I think the majority of European countries had a violent revolution. And the German invasion of many neighboring nations had the same characteristics, they were welcomed with their new world order by the populace in many places.

The war in general ushered in new economic systems.

Most famously they did it by a "great leap".

Can you explain how that model isn't generalizable while avoiding describing the consequences? I want to know why it can't work not how it fails.

After Stalin's death, the Soviet union wasn't a total failure. And few can argue that China is a total failure today. But they paid a much higher price than what's acceptable. To make a somewhat successful "common good" society you first need to exterminate large swatches of the population. (This includes Scandinavian countries, which is less common knowledge). Then you can build on the new generation which won't resist - for a while. And the results are still lack luster, depending on your measuring stick.

There's no general way to model, only empirical evidence. Unless I'm supposed to enter the mind and soul of people and see their motives and reasoning.

But I'll give a one word answer: pride.

Kind of sounds like what is happening now in the west under our current financial/economic system, albeit slowly by manufacturing crisis's and health problems to whittle down the population.

>To make a somewhat successful "common good" society you first need to exterminate large swatches of the population

It sounds like you are conflating "common good" with authoritarianism.

Common good happens at the grass roots level and then spreads by consensus. Doesnt mean it will happen on a large scale, esp if there are larger forces at work.

It seems like this is a population size problem to me. Or at least a concentration of large populations in a small area (Cities). Maybe the trick is to spread out the population a bit more and prevent areas from becoming over populated somehow.

I don't have the data in front of me right now, but there are some sources that say when groups become to large people vie for attention which causes the most egoic people to try and dominate the areas that they are in.

Thus this creates social circles that try to gain power for powers sake and do not contribute to society.

> when groups become to large people vie for attention which causes the most egoic people to try and dominate the areas that they are in.

You may be interested in this essay from the feminist movement in the 60s: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm. It describes how the lack of structure or process forces the group to be run primarily by social dynamics like friendship, charm and influence.

There are lots of effects that happen as groups scale. But this capture of consensus-based and flat groups by ego-centric charismatic members happens in even tiny groups.

That's why successful flat groups (e.g. parliaments) have structure (e.g. Robert's rules) and make decisions by majority vote rather than consensus.

Yeah I can see some truth in this. Structure and processes help us deal with this problem. And my experience has been that structures and process get corrupted, kind of like what has happens in or political systems over the years.

IMHO, it seems like it easier to deal with ego when the groups are smaller. When they get too large, we tend to use bureaucracies to manage decision making logistics. Bureaucracies make it easier for people that want power over others to hide.

> After Stalin's death, the Soviet union wasn't a total failure. And few can argue that China is a total failure today. But they paid a much higher price than what's acceptable. To make a somewhat successful "common good" society you first need to exterminate large swatches of the population. (This includes Scandinavian countries, which is less common knowledge). Then you can build on the new generation which won't resist - for a while. And the results are still lack luster, depending on your measuring stick.

What do you mean by exterminate large swatches of the population in Scandinavia? Yes the way the Sumi have (and to a degree still are) been treated is atrocious, but I'd argue that if anything this is not a feature of creating a "common good" society. I would argue that strongly capitalistic/mercetalistic societies have a horrible track record of treating (and still treat) indigenous populations.

They're called Sami, and I don't think they've been treated much worse than any other ethnicity in Nordic countries.

What I'm referring to are the eugenics programs in Sweden, where unfit people were sterilized and/or had their children taken from them. These kind of programs were also present in North America, for what it's worth. The complete extent of these programs will probably forever be unknown, in all countries. Scandinavian countries are probably the countries who are most open about this, just like with suicide reporting.

As for Finland, they had a communist revolution and a very brutal civil war about the same time as the Russians. So their "common good" society was also born from a bloodbath, although the communists lost the war.

Norway is probably an exception. They're building a "common good" society on oil fortunes, just like the Gulf states have no problem with giving generous welfare for all of their citizens.

Please name a few such places

Off the top of my head, Costa Rica, Bhutan, Canada, Norway/Sweden?

A good read: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/costa-rica-enli...

Switzerland... the best actually long term sustainable and working capitalism I've seen.

All freedom US craves so much for (and much more) while stronger social state than next to nothing US has for its weaker part of society

Switzerland is not a good place for working moms. It is a very conservative country, for example working moms are systematically discriminated. The society, police, insurance, and banks enforce a conformity to a conservative, male-dominated society.

https://www.businessinsider.com/female-breadwinner-moved-swi...

Any communist country of your preference.

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