nickpp

> capitalism is bringing international relations to pre WWI levels

And how exactly does it do that?

Offering Eastern European countries too much freedom and prosperity and thus making thugs like Putin envious and hungry for conquest? Hmm maybe you have a point.

> who cares

Most people spouting anti-capitalism rhetoric never even bothered to visit some of communism's success stories like Cuba or Venezuela, but how about living there?

> Capitalism, freedom, and democracy are all seperate concepts.

They come together. Capitalism gives you economic power and pulls you out of abject poverty. Together with free markets this gives you freedom. First freedom is to choose where you work and thus maximise your earning potential and free time. With free time you can educate yourself more, including about democracy.

I have seen this process happening in Eastern Europe with my own eyes when switching from communism, hunger and poverty to capitalism, freedom and eventual (relative) prosperity during the 90's.

I live in Eastern Europe, close to Ukraine. Never did I think that I would be pro-military complex until March 2022 but here we are.

Also San Francisco used to be one my favorite cities on Earth to visit. Never did I think that I would be pro-cop until quite recently but here we are again.

No, they want peace. But you need to invest in defence if you want peace. Like how you need a well funded police if you want less crime in your neighbourhood. I believe the opposite - defund the police - has been tried recently in certain US cities with the predictable sad results.

> triumph of capitalism at the expense of freedom and democracy

As someone who was born on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, I can assure you capitalism, freedom and democracy came together while we had communism, lack of freedom and dictatorships.

Yes, there is a danger there, and it wasn't always an easy path, but anti-tech movements were always around. Call them luddites, de-growth, doomers, anti-tech, anti-nuclear greens, anti-development (or their e economic equivalent: anti-capitalists, marxists and communists) - historically they always lost to progress.

Humanity is huge and diverse - if a group of people decides to stop evolving and stagnate, another will gladly steal their place.

Never in our civilisation history have we had so much available to so many.

Yes, nature and the planet are in a worse state but the humanity is in a much better one. And I am confident with time and technology we will improve them both. The engine of progress has already solved much harder problems than the current ones.

Of course. They're not around anymore though, so...

I miss spending time in the evenings as a child with my grandparents at candle light, before electricity got brought to their remote village. They told us stories, we watched the flame flicker and we sang. It was a simpler, smaller world. But our modern world is an undeniable better one - they were the first to acknowledge, when they were still alive.

I thought it was the direct result of millions of entrepreneurs and businesses willing to put up with onerous regulation to still offer me all those goods and services I enjoy.

By definition regulation adds restrictions and obligations making their life a little (or a lot) harder and closing down the ones who'd rather focus on making stuff than deal with bureaucratic rules.

Still waiting for an example of a regulation which directly resulted in more of the thing it regulated.

They're connected, of course: regulation favours incumbents, big players who can afford the cost and headache of compliance. Small players and startups are slowly pushed out, they never grow to become strong, competition thins out and then people complain and wonder where are the little guys and ask for more regulation against the big hypermarkets to solve the problem regulation created in the first place.

The mind boggles.

> Financial markets

There is only one of those in my whole country. Not much competition there if I'd ever want to do an IPO.

> bazaars

Here in Eastern Europe we are having fewer and fewer of those during the last 30 years. My favorite cheese maker closed her small shop and started selling direct from home since local authorities started demanding test and workshop inspections (bribes really). She's planning to switch to selling the milk directly to one of those big name supermarket diary processors soon. Less money but fewer headaches.

I wonder if there was ever any instance when regulating something has brought in more of that thing. Anybody has an example?

Very much rooting for Argentina's Milei to provide a similar lesson in modern times but I am afraid that he has very few allies helping him (besides his own idiosyncrasies) and the current laptop class would simply ignore it as they ignored Venezuela's lesson...

USA was quite the “intellectual pirate” before that though:

https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-eur...

> Who's that?

The great majority of people living today. We currently have the historically lowest percentage of people living in poverty ever. Check out the statistics. Of course it’s not 100% but it’s never been better.

Unencumbered free markets. Same system that got us the unimaginable (just a few generations ago) wealth we live in right now.

Patents. The classical government-granted monopoly. Incidentally the only type of undefeatable monopoly. Created with the best intentions, of course: to “encourage innovation”.

Have you read the post I was replying to? It was a classic anti-tech Luddite statement.

I am sure some aristocrats somewhere are pissed off that we’re not all listening to Bach and reading Kant for our entertainment, but that does not make TV a net negative. It just shows once again that we (as a society) should never give power to various “experts” over our individual choices.

Every time I get in the car, the left&right side mirrors change their position with a few extra mm to the outside. The heads-up display loses its saved position every few trips. Profile management is a mess, as is recognizing the wrong driver (me or wife) when we are both in the car. Unlocking the car with my iPhone is a hot mess. The US connecteddrive app (which I use since I have the US AppStore) does not work with the European account made on an European car (which I own).

And these are just a few of the software problems BMW has. On the hardware side I experienced electrical problems, badly installed parts, crappy rubber and complete loss of coolant. New car, lightly driven, btw.

> I'm not super convinced the end result is better.

He said from the warm comfort of his home, with a full belly, writing on a supercomputer created in SV, with software written in SV, on a platform build by SV on a global network created, of course, by the SV.

Would you give up technology then? Nobody stops you but I seriously doubt the productivity of hand-plowing fields is in any way higher than that of modern farm equipment.

TV helped changing quite a few regimes throughout history, and not always for the better. However, I do not think anybody would dispute the fact that TV was, overall, a net positive for mankind.

Same with Silicon Valley. There are certain negative aspects to it but overall we are discussing this on the amazing supercomputer it created, with software it wrote, on platforms it maintains [1]. I seriously doubt the majority of people would want to go back to a world without SV's innovations.

[1] of course it wasn't SV alone, there were many contributions from all around the world, it's just that SV spearheaded the changes and lead us on this path.

> That goes for their software also, absolute junk.

Compared to what? I am a BMW owner who would never recommend this brand to anybody because of its horrible build and software problems.

Thank God for CarPlay!

I never said he wasn't important. So was Hitler, btw. Marx's sick ideology just killed more. But I am glad you consider that an important contribution.

> They move fast and break things.

You forgot the third: they (Silicon Valley) also change the world. For the better. Most of my (and my family’s) every day work and fun are coming from SV. I would not give it up for anything else. If occasionally breaking things is the price - I am more than willing to pay it.

Aren’t they mostly coming from the lest though? Preppers mostly come from the political right, I believe.

> but it can't all go to corruption

What makes you think so?

> do you believe that it is always the best idea to continue development regardless of estimated impacts?

Emphatically yes. The possible downsides are much smaller than the expected upside (as history shows) and we are really bad at predicting either in advance anyway (also as history shows). Finally, we really really really need those upsides to change our fate as a species currently one cosmic accident (meteorite, virus, nuclear escalation, etc) away from extinction.

Also even if the good guys stop, the bad guys will certainly accelerate - so in a competitive world there is really no advantage in voluntarily giving up technological development.