Re:United States involvement in regime change
by imtringued on Thursday June 17, 2021 @06:32AM
(#27538129)
The problem with communism is that it requires a lot of trust in a central authority. Capitalism only requires trust that the capitalist system keeps working. It's a very low bar and there are countries that still fail to meet it. If you raise the bar via communism, aren't you bound to fail?
One way to express the difference between capitalism and communism is that capitalism is discrete, it mostly works at first but when it doesn't it accumulates government failures until it fails completely, while communism is experiencing a continuous government failure all the time.
Given a sufficiently good government both could succeed but reality is imperfect.
When you have the potential for economic growth then the early years are the most important. Early failures compound by a lot. The later you fail, the more you gain through economic growth. If you 4x your wealth does it matter when it shrinks by 50%? On the other hand, if you only made 2x then a 50% crash will set you back as even a stable 1% gain would be enough to stay ahead. The opportunity cost is growing exponentially! Early failures compound! The cards are stacked against communism.
The boring answer is that we need to find a way to undo government failures in capitalism. We need the next incremental step, not a new system.
By the way, by government failures I not only include the things the government did wrong but also all the necessary things that the government did not do. Today capitalism is mostly suffering from inaction.
One way to express the difference between capitalism and communism is that capitalism is discrete, it mostly works at first but when it doesn't it accumulates government failures until it fails completely, while communism is experiencing a continuous government failure all the time.
Given a sufficiently good government both could succeed but reality is imperfect.
When you have the potential for economic growth then the early years are the most important. Early failures compound by a lot. The later you fail, the more you gain through economic growth. If you 4x your wealth does it matter when it shrinks by 50%? On the other hand, if you only made 2x then a 50% crash will set you back as even a stable 1% gain would be enough to stay ahead. The opportunity cost is growing exponentially! Early failures compound! The cards are stacked against communism.
The boring answer is that we need to find a way to undo government failures in capitalism. We need the next incremental step, not a new system.
By the way, by government failures I not only include the things the government did wrong but also all the necessary things that the government did not do. Today capitalism is mostly suffering from inaction.