Wealth is power. Power decides what we use our collective time and resources on. The more concentrated power is, the less we use that time and resources on things that improves the life of the average person, and more on things that matter to the few with wealth.
I’m going to assume that this is just some edgy post, but you should read up on the relationship between wealth inequality and corruption, social mobility, and similar factors.
Not trolling. It has served me better than most heuristics.
If there is something subjective and if you cannot find a critique of it, it’s usually a super power to assume the opposite is true barring obvious exceptions.
> simply because opposite of this is the prevailing normie zeitgeist
We'd love to be able to have reasoned discussions about economics and the pros and cons of wealth concentration vs redistribution here. But this is not the way to do it, and the comment led to an entirely predictable flamewar. Please don't do this on HN, and please make an effort to observe the guidelines, as you've been asked to do before.
I would say if there is a decline in society, the normies are wrong. And if there's steady improvement in quality of life, then the normie zeitgeist is correct. But there's always a delay in these things, at least a generation.
I don't think that applies when the normies lack power; which is precisely the problem with wealth concentration. That would be like blaming the serfs for the failures of feudalist governments.
Man it's hard to read stuff like this on the internet. When has wealth concentration ever been a good thing? Wealth is power and power leads to abuse almost universally.
You underestimate the resources the subset of society who it actually benefits can, will, and do use to distort views on how wide that benefit actually is.
Like all of the startup founders and all of the folks here working at tech companies and investing in their 401ks, happily cashing out RSUs, and such right?
I don't know about the IT worker part but I dare you to talk about capitalism to the nurses, school teachers and police officers who cannot have lucrative business models like us HN folks.
Why people here brandish Communism when someone critics Capitalism? It’s like we’re still in the coldwar. Those two views have many sub-categories and there’s others in-between and on the sides. Just a few in the last decades:
- socio-democratic countries are the norm in Europe, namely Norway, Denmark and Sweden.
- Ordoliberalism: Germany, Switzerland
- cooperative economics: Japan, Spain
- market socialism: China, hungaria
- Parecon: brasil, Argentina
- Ubuntu: South Africa
- Anarcho-syndicalism, The third way, Islamic economic…
Wealth is power. Power decides what we use our collective time and resources on. The more concentrated power is, the less we use that time and resources on things that improves the life of the average person, and more on things that matter to the few with wealth.
By far the biggest concentration of power is the US federal government.
Any power centers outside that decentralizes power.
Sure, but in its current form that power can be bought and therefore mostly serves the interests of capital. That should be obvious at this point.
I’m going to assume that this is just some edgy post, but you should read up on the relationship between wealth inequality and corruption, social mobility, and similar factors.
Advocating for increased concentration of power is quite a take.
Assuming you're not just a troll, it doesn't seem very reasonable to be against something simply because many people support it.
Not trolling. It has served me better than most heuristics.
If there is something subjective and if you cannot find a critique of it, it’s usually a super power to assume the opposite is true barring obvious exceptions.
You can't find a critique of extreme wealth concentration? There are many. Here's one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce...
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> simply because opposite of this is the prevailing normie zeitgeist
We'd love to be able to have reasoned discussions about economics and the pros and cons of wealth concentration vs redistribution here. But this is not the way to do it, and the comment led to an entirely predictable flamewar. Please don't do this on HN, and please make an effort to observe the guidelines, as you've been asked to do before.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Can you write off everything popular with the normie zeitgeist?
I would say if there is a decline in society, the normies are wrong. And if there's steady improvement in quality of life, then the normie zeitgeist is correct. But there's always a delay in these things, at least a generation.
I don't think that applies when the normies lack power; which is precisely the problem with wealth concentration. That would be like blaming the serfs for the failures of feudalist governments.
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Oh well in the case, we should just wait and see and die.
What if QoL improves for some but goes down for others?
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How would we be able to measure decline?
Man it's hard to read stuff like this on the internet. When has wealth concentration ever been a good thing? Wealth is power and power leads to abuse almost universally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy
Capitalism is made possible by the people. If it does not serve them well, it should be fixed or abolished.
You underestimate the resources the subset of society who it actually benefits can, will, and do use to distort views on how wide that benefit actually is.
Like all of the startup founders and all of the folks here working at tech companies and investing in their 401ks, happily cashing out RSUs, and such right?
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I don't know about the IT worker part but I dare you to talk about capitalism to the nurses, school teachers and police officers who cannot have lucrative business models like us HN folks.
1 reply →
Why people here brandish Communism when someone critics Capitalism? It’s like we’re still in the coldwar. Those two views have many sub-categories and there’s others in-between and on the sides. Just a few in the last decades:
- socio-democratic countries are the norm in Europe, namely Norway, Denmark and Sweden.
- Ordoliberalism: Germany, Switzerland
- cooperative economics: Japan, Spain
- market socialism: China, hungaria
- Parecon: brasil, Argentina
- Ubuntu: South Africa
- Anarcho-syndicalism, The third way, Islamic economic…
5 replies →