> Several crashes later, the gloom has returned, and the signs of autumn are once again most recognizable in the pronouncements of free-market capitalism’s erstwhile boosters.

I tried to read this sentence 3 times now, and I still do not know what it means. The same holds for entire paragraphs.

IMO the author needs a healthy dose of http://web.princeton.edu/sites/opplab/papers/opp%20consequen...

> I tried to read this sentence 3 times now, and I still do not know what it means. The same holds for entire paragraphs.

Is that sentence really that hard to read? I mean, it's definitely overly flowery, but it means almost word-for-word "After many financial crises, there is a lot of economic pessimism around again, even among free-market capitalism's biggest proponents."

The whole article is like this. Misunderstand one flowery phrase, misunderstand the entire sentence, misunderstand the whole paragraph. It's like the author hates convincing people.

https://www.google.com/search?q=define+booster

/shrug If those are familiar words to you, then I think it's a little harsh to say that they "hate convincing people" because they use them. Totally agree that a good author edits out rarer words to reach a broader audience, but I think that's a very weak vector of critique for the article as a whole.

* The editors point to previous boom/bust cycles, and the tendency of strong workers movements & chains of strikes/riots/unions to emerge during the bust periods and demand an economic shift towards greater workers rights / less control by capitalists.

* They then point out that no such strong workers movement is emerging in this bust cycle.

* They claim that this is because there is a strong line of "accelerationist" thinking among the modern left (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism). TL;DR on accelerationism: most of HN's libertarian leftism -- embrace automation, adopt basic income, make everyone their own producer (3D printing, off-the-grid electricity, etc.).

* The article claims that this movement will not succeed without significant political change alongside its technological advances, and that no such political effort is currently happening, as far as the editors can tell. "The potential alone for this sort of mass liberation isn’t a guarantee that it will ever take place"

" The old divisions of left and right seem to be falling apart and we don't know what's going to replace it yet"

The right is now collapsing into isolationist farce (Trunp being the epitome of what has happened across the Western world), the left is, well we aren't sure what. I agree with the final ideas - utopia is not destiny.

Thanks

My interpretation: Capitalism is on its last legs, but the "new left" has no idea what will be next, other than there will be robots, there is basic income and it's better than what we have now, just because.

Can't it?

Democracy is simply voting, which can easily be handled by machines.

There's quite a lot more to politics, and politics in democracy, than just the act of voting.

Voting is simply voting. If you insist on inventing a new definition, Democracy is a specific mode of a) gathering and representing the political will of the population; and b) a specific mode of forming that political will by the civil society. Voting is just the rather banal part of making the present aggregate political will visible and quantifiable. The most defining part of Democracy happens before the vote.

Its in most political science textbooks, and even on wikipedia, hidden in point 2 of the 4 point definition at the top.

Have a look at most socialist eastern european countries in the 1980s. You had multiple parties, and you could vote. But surly we both wouldn't describe that as democracy. What was missing? Formally, there wasn't much of a difference. Sure, you often had compulsory voting, but Australia has that too.

The missing part was the lack of an independent civic sector. You had no politically relevant NGOs, no independent unions etc. You couldn't simply create a new political party at will. The government was the only actor able to meaningfully influence the political landscape.

Just because you are used to the current legislative system doesn't mean it isn't replaceable.