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Comment by HappyPanacea | Hacker News Reader

Capitalism is just a reflection of people being self-interested which you can't prevent without being authoritarian which will inevitably leads also to surveillance.

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> Capitalism is just a reflection of people being self-interested

I don't think that's the case. I think most people are not self-interested, or at least not in the selfish sense. I think most people are more than willing to sacrifice _some_ direct personal gain for better community gains.

The problem is that capitalism only allows selfish self-interest to flourish, so it incentivises even the more community-oriented people to always put themselves first, a lot of the time even in detriment to their immediate vicinity.

Capitalism is a form of authoritarianism in that it really only serves a few, and everyone else is just constantly fighting for survival.

> being authoritarian which will inevitably leads also to surveillance

That's exactly where capitalism is taking us.

>or at least not in the selfish sense

Wasn't a requirement, self interest doesn't imply malice.

>capitalism only allows selfish self-interest to flourish

How's that then?

>Capitalism is a form of authoritarianism in that it really only serves a few

You're cooked, market liberalisation has led the world from >80% in poverty to <10% in under 40 years, even removing huge entities like China.

Poverty reduction has largely been the result of China’s mixed economy not unbridled capitalism. Guided markets have played a role there - but that’s because they were guided. We don’t have to accept the authoritarianism or any of other effect of markets, simply because markets have played a role in some of the positive outcomes of the past. In fact for the last 50 years in the global north, roughly the same timeframe, productivity has continued to grow but most of that growth has accrued to the wealthiest and relatively little of that benefit has been seen by the median worker.

as I said if you remove china from the data the trend is identical.

But regarding China specifically it has been the gradual transition to a more market led economy.

To say it’s identical is an overstatement, but markets have been part of China’s policy, and part of the policies many other formerly impoverished counties. Without government policy intelligently choosing how to utilize markets (which is what happened in most of these formerly impoverished countries like the “Asian tigers”), markets alone could not have have brought the gains that they did. Markets have many downsides to them as well. Additionally non-government, non-market factors like unionization contributed to the rise out of poverty as well. And in the global north, “markets” have been fairly ineffective at raising the standard of living for the median worker. They have been effective at enriching the already rich however, contributing to wealth power-concentration and de-democratization.

no it is an identical plot on the graph, not an overstatement at all.

The standard of living for the median worker has improved significantly in forty years let alone two hundred, lifestyle inflation is definitely rapid as you would expect with progress, wage growth has outpaced inflation for everyone but public sector workers.

Bad as things may seem now, we are all richer than ever before.

Productivity has grown. But that has more or less stopped going to the median worker since mid-70s (post inflation). This is known as the pay-productivity gap. There has been some increase, but most of the gains have gone to the wealthiest. Our issue today isn’t productivity. It’s redistributing the gains from the wealthy minority who have received the lion’s share to the rest.

And you mention being richer. We also have an unfolding climate crisis, authoritarianism, mass surveillance, and the real possibility of imminent nuclear war (brewing now with China). All these things are the result of a wealthy minority controlling policy for their own interests. And the wealthy minority has gotten there through the same market mechanisms that exploit workers and concentrate wealth. Are we better off when we are much closer to our own self destruction? It’s this wealthy minority that has brought us here. Their relative power continues to grow.

In fact, many of the gains in wealth we have seen are not the result of markets but either savvy government policy or the result of people pushing back on the power of the ruling class. Markets have good and bad sides. It’s best to take off our rose colored glasses and see markets for their good and bad.

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