deciplex

Yes, it's true - they're still very mad that their Nazi collaborators who helped murder tens of thousands of Jews during the war had to face actual justice instead of getting paperclipped off to the West.

I'm not sure the average Russian would agree that the precipitous drop in life expectancy in the 90s, the rampant child prostitution, etc., along with what our idea of "democracy" for them turned out to be - you want to talk about election interference let's start with Russia in 1996 - was worth selling off their natural resources so a few oligarchs could get rich.

Well, Marxism-Leninism did more good for the Soviet Republics in its first 40 years there (beating back an imperialist invasion, rapidly developing industry, beating the Nazis, putting the first man in space, raising the standard of living nearly to par with the West despite being a feudal backwater in 1917, etc) than capitalism has done for those countries since we finally beat them thirty years ago. And, public opinion bears that fact out. So, I'd say the jury's out on just how much of our improvements to standards of living can be attributed to giving 10 people all the money in the world, vs (for example) attributing it to scientific advancement in general.

edit: sadly dang has once again taken it upon himself to stop communists from posting on HN. I'm sure most of y'all agree with this in the first place. at any rate take this as an open invitation to drag me in the comments with whatever ridiculous nonsense you can dream up. I won't be responding to any of it because I literally can't. thanks

What aristocracy? And over half the Chinese economy is state-run.

Bold to claim that anything that happened in Russia in the 90s could be called a "success." If that's what was in store for China then good on the CPC and President Xi for averting it. The "integration" of Russia into the global capitalist system was an utter disaster from both a humanitarian and a strategic perspective.

I'm begging economists to stop assuming that the lessons of their profession apply to every aspect of human behavior.

My view is biased toward to the US because that's where I live, yes, but also I think as the epicenter of global capitalism it sets the pace for the other, lesser, capitalisms around the world.

You're right that, by the numbers, there are a lot more small companies than large companies. But it's the large companies that steer our political and economic institutions. And, in many or most cases those smaller companies will have to compete with the larger ones, and certainly rely on at least some of them for their operations.

> Profit is not just "extra money for owners", its also the part that provides income security in tough times, that buys new machines, that covers over the slow seasons, that secures cheaper supply lines and a million other things.

This seems like an old-fashioned view on the nature of business. It may have been true 50 or 60 years ago (at least) but I think it's the exception rather than the rule today. Cutting loose your employees is what provides income security in tough times (for the employees not cut loose). Loans buy new machines. If you have a couple slow seasons you'll simply be bought by some private equity firm, loaded up with debt, then driven into the dirt along with any pension obligations etc., the firm may have had.

> eventually devolving into an authoritarian dystopia

Plenty of capitalisms do, have done, and are currently doing, exactly this. I should know: I live in one.

Sure, but the definition of "transactional" must be expanded to such a degree for the statement "human relationships are transactional" to be true, that the word ceases to have any real linguistic function. You might as well say "human relationships are defined by how people relate to one another."

And indeed, this is usually how such discussions about this topic proceed, with someone opening with the narrow definition of "transaction" - not necessarily monetary, of course, but at least two well-defined sets of things that two people intend to trade (and where a withholding from one party would result in a cancellation of the deal) - and then as you point out more and more human behaviors that don't work like this, they retreat to the point where, for example, a parent taking their child out for ice cream is a "transaction" because the child wanted ice cream and the parent wanted to do something nice for their child.

If that's your working definition of "transaction" then fine for you, but you can't then make some argument that it's neoliberal economics that best reflect human nature and fulfill human needs because of its insistence that all economic activity be mediated by a free market (i.e. a forum supposedly for the free and open proposal and settlement of transactions). The "transaction" of one, is not the "transaction" of the other: neoliberalism and indeed capitalism itself would not work even by their own internal logic if they assumed the same notion of "transaction" as that required of the statement "all human relationships are transactional."

More or less, but the solution to the tragedy of the commons is quite simple: collective action which ensures that the burden of providing for the desired resource / behavior / service, is apportioned fairly. Then, in exchange for the collective demands, each individual's needs are met.

The reason we can't do that anymore is that it requires something like an equitable distribution of political power. Our current system is so top-heavy in terms of who determines policy and political direction, that even simple problems with easily-mitigated failure modes are beyond us.

> My guess is that many people don't consciously acknowledge relationships are transactional.

If two people do not treat their relationship as transactional, then it is not transactional. I don't know how to make this any simpler: at least one counterparty has to, at least, agree to the notion of "transaction" entering into the interaction in the first place, for a transaction to be taking place (and, I think, it could be argued that both counterparties must approach it this way). If they don't, then there is no transaction.

You seem to regard the idea of transactions as something fundamental to all human behavior, like a law of physics. This is not the case.

What if the thing in question is something that a majority of humans would agree is worth doing, but there is no way to extract profit? Which is to say, that the loop of capital goods -> apply labor -> extract value from labor -> accumulate more capital goods, does not map well to solving the problem / doing the work, etc?

Basically the logical conclusion of neoliberal thought: nothing is worth doing unless profitable, anything not profitable is by definition not worth doing, pretty much replacing what earlier iterations of human civilization called "god" with "the market" as the arbiter of right and wrong and the main organizing force in society.

> Surely, clean water—something we all need—should be an apolitical bipartisan issue, right? ...right?

Unless there's a way to get very rich from doing it, it won't get done in the contemporary US.

Indeed. Perhaps the profit motive has run its course as the primary driver of all economic activity.

capitalists never let a good crisis go to waste

> At least the whole population will be seeing the benefit, not just the corrupt few.

Indeed. Had this happened in a country more vulnerable to regime change their government may have been couped already.

anything that elon musk says is true by coincidence only

wow an explicitly marxist-leninist instance supports an explicitly marxist-leninist state? who would have thought

I think you should read up on what Dengism actually is. You seem ignorant of it and the theory and intentions behind it.

I'm surprised it worked, in the sense that they were able to harness market economics and capital accumulation without turning into a capitalist dictatorship like happened in the West. Even with the benefit of hindsight, I'm not sure how they managed to avoid that (there is still time for it to happen though!) but I'm happy for their success.

> What do you have to say for their campaign of ethnic cleansing?

Pretty much what most of the rest of the world has to say about it, I suppose.

Are tankies Marxist? I would assert that they'd have to be - and Marxists aren't making the case for their ideas out of some sense of moral superiority. The good ones aren't anyway. China (and other communist states) aren't morally superior they are simply superior: they have harnessed the power of capital accumulation that capitalism provides while retaining the ability to move to more advanced relations of production once appropriate.

China is "winning" and will continue to win, not because they are more virtuous, but because they can move on to the next thing while we're stuck with end-stage capitalism and all the rentierism that comes with it, apparently forever.

I'm a "tankie" and my MO is to point out the millions lifted out of poverty in communist China and the fact that the Chinese are apparently a lot happier with their government than Americans are with theirs. China is the workshop of the world and meanwhile much of the American heartland is a fentanyl-addicted hellscape with totally neglected physical and institutional infrastructure. That's pretty much all you have to do: material circumstances trump all and any communist understands this.

Of course China does spook shit. What are they supposed to do: refuse to do intelligence out of some misguided sense of morality so the CIA has free rein to do whatever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want? You might as well just assert that China's bad because they refuse to get owned by US intelligence - it's an equivalent sentiment.

They came right out and told you: nobody cared if nine out of ten investments were a total loss, provided the one had enough juice to make up for it. And, "juice" is an extremely vague term here: it could mean profitability, but given that there was so much money sloshing around, usually it just meant that the stock price jumped enough for investors to cash out - but that stock price was not necessarily tied to any tangible performance, much of the time.

The real giveaway though, was the fact that stock dividends - you know, the thing that historically you buy stock for - are basically unheard of among all but the biggest companies in tech (and even unheard of among some of those). We have now an entire generation of leaders in tech for whom profitability has been this kind of abstract notion they didn't have to think about much, which explains why they all seem so ham-fisted now that they're being forced to.

Continual growth has been there for decades, what's new is a focus on this thing called "profits." Until recently the incentive structure has favored growth almost to the exclusion of anything else, at least until you got very big.

The reason so many companies are doing such a terrible job of it right now, is that frankly there aren't many c-levels in tech who are mentally equipped to think about their business that way, and even fewer who have ever been in a position where they had to. Reddit's the latest example of this: 18 years and never been profitable? And Huffman calls himself a libertarian? Good grief.

I'm glad of it. Our industry is filled with basically con-men who have no idea how to run a business profitably (or interest in doing so) but have made up for it by having the right phone numbers etc. It's good that they're being squeezed, because it creates room for people who want to run an honest business.

He gave you a recent event and you conceded the point then suggested he use something else.

And, DMCA is bad law but many companies make it worse in their overzealousness to "comply" with it.

to be even more pedantic, hawking radiation isn't exactly created by gravity

what do you mean "alleged wealthy upbringing" is this point contested somehow?

The capitalist project has failed, and our Constitution - poorly written even for the time - is wholly unequipped to deal with the crisis, nor the emergence of highly ideological political parties.

> The only other option seems to be that the final state is still a superposition and we have to reach for something like the multiverse interpretation to reconcile the fact that we indeed observe a definite final state.

What's wrong with that?