Comment by WalterBright

13 hours ago

> capitalism is the driver of equality?

Nope. It is the driver of opportunity, though. It's up to individuals to take advantage of the opportunity, or not.

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WalterBright

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tardedmeme  11 hours ago

Capitalism incentivizes risk taking because the payoff is enormous - the most successful risk takers get to own the world 50 years later.

The problem: there's a second phase 50 years later, where the risk takers from 50 years ago own the world and do their best to prevent further rewards flowing to new risktakers. We are in that phase now.

The other problem: when the reward is so great, you do everything to get ahead, even illegal things, because the expectation value (winning*P(winning) + prison*P(caught)) is still positive.

  • WalterBright  2 hours ago

    > the most successful risk takers get to own the world 50 years later.

    Musk creating wealth has taken nothing from me. How about you?

    > there's a second phase 50 years later, where the risk takers from 50 years ago own the world and do their best to prevent further rewards flowing to new risktakers. We are in that phase now.

    Did you know that Hackernews is run by wealthy people who fund startups?

    What illegal things did Bezos do to get rich? Jobs? Gates? Musk?

    • hackyhacky  2 hours ago

      > Musk creating wealth has taken nothing from me. How about you?

      That's exactly what he'd like you to believe. Where did that money come from? Did he just print it himself?

      > Musk creating wealth has taken nothing from me. How about you?

      Considering that billionaires are actively involved in writing the laws that ostensibly apply to them (see also: regulatory capture), I hardly think that legality should be highest bar that we hold them to. After all, the lords of medieval France acted "legally" when they executed their tenant farmers for failing to pay rent after a bad harvest.

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joe_mamba  13 hours ago

>It's up to individuals to take advantage of the opportunity, or not.

The problem is that after decades monopolies consolidated and you have massive offshoring of labor to cheap countries and offshoring of profits to tax havens, there's not much opportunities the working class individuals can take, as all the opportunities are now geared towards the asset owning rent seeking class.

  • WalterBright  13 hours ago

    There are endless businesses you can start with little to no capital.

    • hackyhacky  9 hours ago

      > There are endless businesses you can start with little to no capital.

      Well, that's good news. I guess the cause of poverty must simply be laziness.

      That's convenient, because it allows me to demonize the lower economic classes without having to address the systemic inequality that rewards capital ownership over labor.

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