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Comment by Panzer04 | Hacker News Reader

I hate these glib comments that don't remotely reflect reality.

Go look at the goods people got in countries that didn't practice capitalism. They were worse in almost every way, more expensive if you could get them and often the things people wanted were completely unavailable because there was no market incentive informing production.

In my experience, this sort of comment is usually followed up by some personal preference of the commenter. Great. I don't want the same thing, so I guess something has to mediate the resource allocation and effort of society towards providing that want/need at a certain quality/price.. and guess how we do that?

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Are you looking at the USSR and countries that followed its model?

I don't think you can look at any authoritarian regime and make assumptions about how an economic system performs. The autocratic features tend to cause society to break down.

For an actual anarchist production model, look no further than Open Source. It's built by people who self organize, to solve problems that are real (and often to make silly, inefficient things). It's often (but not always) motivated by something other than profit. It's people who believe in a credo organizing themselves around that credo and building the tools to sustain that credo.

But imagine if open source was behind an autocrat, there's no way it'd be nearly as rich or flourishing.

> imagine if open source was behind an autocrat, there's no way it'd be nearly as rich or flourishing

Maybe not the best argument to anyone responding from their Linux computers, as Torvalds is generally viewed as Benevolent Dictator For Life.

I'd look for more examples, but using Wikipedia for any sourcing feels too on-the-nose, considering Jimmy Wales seems to be in a similar BDFL position

Voluntary hierarchy is different from autocracy. If the community really felt Linux was better worthy Linus, they could make that happen. Linus isn't operating secret police that scare the shit out of people.

State regulations, to prevent market distortions like monopolies, price fixing, lying about products and selling poisoned food, among other things?

> I don't want the same thing, so I guess something has to mediate the resource allocation and effort of society towards providing that want/need at a certain quality/price.. and guess how we do that?

This. Freedom of choice is the simplest way to describe the advantage of capitalism (free markets) over socialism. Obviously, markets don't solve everything, but the US certainly is not some anarcho-capitalist's libertarian fantasy.

I guess the lived memory of socialism's failures has passed and experience is the best teacher.

"goods people got in countries that didn't practice capitalism" are generally built to last.

> something has to mediate the resource allocation and effort of society towards providing that want/need at a certain quality/price

Yeah, exactly, not "squeezing every last bit of value out of a product to appease the shareholders", see "enshittification".

> "goods people got in countries that didn't practice capitalism" are generally built to last.

No they are not. They were simple and people were poor so were forced for fix them for eternity, don't use them and absolutely not abuse them. Nobody gave a fuck about their craft in USSR. Everything was made from cheaply and from scraps.

Few things that might've survived (and I don't see _anything_ in my parents or in-laws homes) are literally prime example suvivorship bias.

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