People are ragging on capitalism because they're looking over the pond to countries that see capitalism as a tool to serve democratic interests rather than as moral worldview, and they kind of like that idea. Interestingly, those countries aren't really less capitalistic (the Heritage Foundation puts the U.S. in the same bucket on their Economic Freedom index as Sweden and Germany), but their culture is less centered around glorifying the capitalist.

I think you've made a great point here - but I've seen people explicitly saying they want communism. Look at how often /r/LateStageCapitalism, an explicitly communist subreddit is on the frontpage of reddit.

If people were just pushing for a few more socialized services, I think they've got a good argument to make there. There are good tweaks that can be made. But if they're pushing for a complete change to the system I think they're off their rockers.

The key is what happens to suggestions for "good tweaks". Do they get considered reasonably and implemented fairly? Or are people denounced for even seeking tweaks?

Flexible mixed-economy capitalism seems to be pretty stable. Capitalism that's blind to inequality produces an increasing long tail of disaffected victims with nothing to lose. Hence the rise of kick-over-the-table politics, epitomised by Trump.

At the end of the day, the actual change in the mix of social services might just be tweaks, but you're also talking about a very significant change in worldview.

Don't get me wrong: you can totally stay!

People have been hating capitalism since the invention of capitalism, it's not new. Americans might just be starting to hate it but thats due to the fact that they really haven't been able to ever have a fair and honest discussion about the various economic systems of the world because of 80 years of capitalist propaganda and suppression of socialists and communists

Most politicians who claim to support capitalism actually are supporting nothing of the sort. It then becomes convenient for the media to label capitalism as a corrupt system. It is true that our economic system has become quite corrupt and has abandoned free markets. So when politicians defend that system as a capitalism, then naturally that is where the association has been built.

The problem is the "regulatory capture" part, not the "capitalism" part, in my view. What we have now is capitalism + rules that serve a small percent.

To me capitalism versus socialism are kind of red herrings. The real issue is creating and nurturing competition, which is kind of orthogonal to those issues.

It's completely predictable to end up with "crony socialism" just as much as "crony capitalism".

The way I see it, the appropriate goal is increasing and maintaining competition. Sometimes this means government protection of human capital pools through welfare and social programs, sometimes this means actually regulating a market to increase competition (net neutrality), sometimes this means introducing government services to compete with private services, sometimes this means privatizing things, sometimes it means deregulating...

I also think fairness is another big problem; nominal value and actual value (of labor, goods, etc.) are often different. So in either system you will end up with individuals (you can call them free-riders or psychopaths or whatever) who will take advantage of loopholes, errors, biases, and misspecifications in the system for their own gain. E.g., to me the fundamental problem with income inequality isn't that there's variation in income, it's my sense that that income variation is unfair, in the sense that some people's contributions are being undervalued, or others' are being overvalued, or that there are unrecognized benefits from public services (e.g., net neutrality vis-a-vis ISP's right-of-way grants, government bailouts of financial firms), etc. that aren't being fairly compensated or recognized in regulation.

I worry a bit that framing the debate as capitalism versus socialism only perpetuates problems. The problem is really corruption and fairness.

If an industry is benefiting unfairly from regulatory capture (e.g., in the form of patents, or physician groups, or whatever), focusing on capitalism versus socialism per se only allows the beneficiaries of that capture to come back with accusations of "liberal communism", and then no one is talking about the capture or the corruption, which is the actual problem, and then it continues.

Saying there is no meaningful distinction is truly disingenuous. Like saying there is no difference between a fresh apple and a rotten apple. Obviously there is and there are reasons as to why the different states exist. One state is extremely beneficial and the other state is not.

"[The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes." Article 1, also allows for them to make laws ensuring they can execute that directive.

Congress can, however, make laws whose explicit terms make their effect contingent on external facts, including the actions of officers in particular executive-branch agencies.

For reference. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/supco...

“Regulatory agencies” are simply a label for a subset of executive agencies defined by certain traits; I think it would be very hard to argue that the Necessary and Proper Clause does not authorize creating agencies with these traits as a means of exercise of Congress other enumerated powers.

It would still be questionable that most regulation is actually within the enumerated powers. https://fee.org/articles/are-there-no-limits-to-federal-regu...

The title of news article is funny because monopoly cannot even exist in real capitalism nor can corruption. Both are features of socialsm/communism.

Popularity of disliking/hating capitalism is probably due to the lack of proper basic education in the US.

[Citation needed]

You seem to believe that these things are exclusive to capitalism. But none of those things are capitalism, nor would they automatically be excluded in a non-capitalist system.

Although USA economy is still bigger than China, it might change soon and then your presumption would be dismissed.

Why can't China's system produce a better per-person outcome than the USA's? Well, China was starting from a much lower point after western domination, then Japanese invasion, then civil war, and then Mao's blundering and oppression. But apart from that, China's government has too much power. This gives too many opportunities for corruption, and corruption drains the life out of the economy. (And yes, the USA's government has too much power, too. The USA (I think) less corrupt than China, but the corruption is there, at least in the form of people using the government's power to hinder competitors. More direct forms are starting to show up, too, or at least we're starting to hear about them more than we used to.

What system really works? A government strong enough that it can prevent people abusing the market (collusion, fraud, unsafe products), but not so strong that it's easy or useful to use the government as a mechanism of abuse, and not so cumbersome that it gets much in the way of normal (non-fraudulent, non-collusion, safe products) business.

/s

More seriously, the lesson we should apply from Monopoly is that once the money is in few enough hands the "game" of capitalism is over.

Although, it probably in some respects does represent the popular idea of capitalism and the reality of our current regulated economic system.

The game monopoly better represents a non free market economy. The players are constrained within the limited confines of the game. As players accrue money and resources they can't invest that into new businesses. The is no representation in the game of other economic pressures of supply and demand of human resources. All these limits are more analogous to a heavily regulated economy. And of course, part of the game is based simply on chance. Players aren't complete free to engage in free trade as they would see fit.

I think people understand the world is more complex than either planned economies, or pure free market ones, and hybrids are necessary. The question is how to make regulating them proactive rather than reactive which is how political based moderation of capitalism's excess are managed today.

And I think that's because people are becoming suspicious of absolute ideological positions that think they have everything figured out. And that's because things are more complex. Just because you can't explain that complexity doesn't mean it's intellectually honest to fall back on a hand waive of propaganda "we need less regulation and more free market solutions" which is binary logic.

Upon discovery that binary logic isn't how humans works, and maybe isn't how future computers will work, people are becoming more comfortable with nuance, layers, and dynamic approaches to problems, rather than tribal grunts of capitalism being perfection as if there's no such thing as market failure.

Not one of these points is limited to capitalism. Markets are a necessary but not a sufficient condition of capitalism. People's urge to create wonderful things did exist in the millenia before 1750, they did exist in the eastern bloc, and every day today multiple great things people do in their free time, making no economic sense at all, pop up on HN.

Even in capitalist societies many if not most of the groundbreaking inventions and discoveries were and are state-funded.

The USSR beat us in almost every space milestone and would have beaten us to the moon if not for the untimely death of the guy running their space program.

It's like comparing North Korea with Germany - NK can send rockets to space, while Germany can't. But can you say that NK is ahead of Germany in terms of inventions?

That said, I can't stand it when people downvote comments pointing out objective, verifiable facts that they don't like. It happens all the time, and I despair a bit for the quality of discourse even possible in a community where that's a thing that people do.

That's what people born today face.

And/or starting the game with sums of money that differ by orders of magnitude between players.

Logically, everything will eventually be driven to that point. I'm not saying when it will happen, I'm not even saying it's a good or bad thing. I simply accept that at some point Capitalism is no longer going to be needed.

While capitalism does have its weaknesses, it also seems to be one of the driving forces behind modernity, which I think most of us can agree is a supremely good thing.

We've tried tearing down the system before. Communism failed, not because of failed implementation, but because the concept itself is a bad one. This is not to say that we should close ourselves off from thinking of new ways to organize our societies, but it seems that capitalism and all that it encourages is responsible for the 'rising tide' of global human civilization we've witnessed over the course of the industrial revolution to now. Sure there is inequality, but as they say, a rising tide lifts all boats. Would you want to be the average middle class or poor person 300 years ago, or today?

As innovation continues to change the material conditions of the world, our economic systems will evolve in response, probably for the better. Capitalism will not look the same in 100 years or 1000 years as it does today. But over time gradual development will improve the system, not some grand scheme that calls for tearing down capitalism and replacing it with something else.

This is a frustrating and arrogant thing to say. If you can honestly go through and thoroughly criticize the core collective works of great socialist thinkers like Engels, Marx, Lenin, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman and the uncountable thousands who have poured thousands of hours into tomes which are freely available online to study and understand, then you should do so. I would love to read this! You'd probably become a very famous person! But coming out gung ho and so arrogantly conclude that all these people, and all the hard work they have done in both theory and praxis is kaput without a very strong argument behind you is pointless and childish. It stifles conversation and is the reason discussing economic systems with people who don't understand them is an exercise in futility.

If you want proof that "hard work" isn't necessarily "valuable work," simply start digging holes in your backyard. It is hard work. At the end of the day, though, you'll have constructed nothing of value (unless you appreciate the value of holes).

But, as you see, value is a subjective concept. Communism believes it to be objective. But what's valued in communism is simply the biases of its architects. Resources, then, aren't allocated through an objective pricing system weighing conflicting values, but through waits, favors, loyalties, and fiat. Eventually, the system becomes so corrupted it fails.

We've objectively seen the failure of the communist system across cultures over the last 100 years. By now, there should be no doubt about its inherent ills.

Now you've misunderstood me, I'm not saying that because they've done a lot of hard work that what they say is immediately relevant. I'm saying what they've said is relevant, and they've put in a lot of hard work to get their points across. You can't just handwave because in your ignorance you believe you're right and everyone else is wrong, you have to actually confront what they've said

There are plenty of examples of work not being valuable in capitalism too.

I'd put most obscure financial instruments up as one example.

But on the whole, much of communist ideology and theorizing is far removed from reality and suffers from a lack of understanding about human nature. Socialist description and perspective on society is interesting and can be enlightening, but its prescriptions are bad.

Many scientists and thinkers over the course of history have dedicated their entire lives to theories that are ultimately shown to be fairy-tails. It happens all the time.

You probably never played Monopoly as a child then :)

Also, perhaps you will find capitalism less cool when, say, Google decides to go into the exact same business as you are in now.

You know what's really really cool? A lot of people inventing stuff. Not only the ones that have parents that can help them live until their late twenties without have to work for a living. Socialism/communism aims to fix this. What I see is that China is having a tremendous creative boom right now.

1000x yes. It's incredibly frustrating to see folks whining about capitalism all the while doing so using an iPhone and MacBook Pro, not understanding the irony.

Thank heavens that the czars of capitalism have given us such a generous outlet for all that latent human potential—unlike say, starting a family, starting a full-time art project, starting a humanities Ph.D without crippling debt, starting a round of chemo while unemployed, or starting our dinners at 6pm like our ancestors managed to do for ~200,000 years.

Let me also say that I don't hate capitalism per se, it's more or less just a tool with no moral obligations. The problem with capitalism are the humans, like always, and Monopoly is perfect to experience the bad side of human nature: greed and the me vs. them attitude.

Do you think it would be possible to come up with rules for Monopoly, where everyone would be a winner, living in abundance? Absolutely, but that would be boring. If I can't be the best of all, then why bother. It's Me vs. Them, and totally screw Them...

Those people, whose families played Monopoly for long enough until now, and who were able to amass a lot of wealth and keep it within their small circle, they won't allow to change the rules. Because then they wouldn't be the Winner anymore. It's always Me First, and everyone else can die trying.

Edit: I've been really depressive the past 15 years, it started once I was old enough to realize how our world is run. The lack of empathy and social justice is really sickening. I tried to play the game, but I'm not good at it because I lack the attributes that are required to become good at it. I don't care about money, I just want to stay alive, take care of my family and code cool and useful things.

But I started to get a tiny little bit of hope that eventually things may drastically change in the future. Like I do think that we may be able to develop an AGI within this century. One that is rational and smarter than humans. I can totally understand Musks fear of an AGI that would try to destroy humanity (personally I hope it'd go only after the bad leadership :)), and while I think Musk has generally good intentions, he's still a hardcore capitalist, and I'm not sure if I want him and his buddies have too much say in this.

Another shorter term solution to some of the problems we have with capitalism is to setup systems based on Blockchain technologies. I'm really no expert in this area, but I believe it would be possible to set up a financial system that allows for transparency, privacy, but no anonymity and no speculations like we experience nowadays with cryptocurrencies. Something that prevents corruption, black money, etc.

Such blockchain technology could be also adapted for a voting system, where voter fraud then becomes impossible. One promising project I've recently discovered is Cardano SL [1], and the team behind it looks like they really want to make a change. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

[1]: https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-sl/

A persistent campaign of propaganda aimed at capitalism. Because there are always either misguided "true believers" or corrupt glad-handers looking to exploit others for their own benefit, who are out there proselytizing for some socialist ideology and trying to tear down capitalism.