The last few years, though, while anything "anti-capitalist" or overly critical of some big tech companies that hits the front page gets flagged by bots pretty quickly, the overall feeling I get from the comments is much more skeptical of big tech and is pro-socialism.
Speaking for myself, I think we've become jaded after the constant barrage of big companies spying on us, charging more for less, enshitifying their products, and so on. I used to be optimistic about the future and my prospects, now I'm just hoping I can hold on and keep my health insurance until I retire. I worry about what my school-age kids are going to have to deal with in 5-10 years.
I disagree that most here are pro-socialism, that's a (very) vocal minority. Our democracy has entered a failure mode (two-party stage managed hegemony) and it's being tacitly supported by mega-corps because it's easier to game than a functioning free market democracy. Every complex system has failure modes, that doesn't mean free markets aren't long-term far better on average than socialism (although some redefine socialism so vaguely it seems conceptually little different). I've seen two flavors of socialism up close. Never want to again.
> I worry about what my school-age kids are going to have to deal with in 5-10 years.
Having a teenager, I share your concerns but I'm also a bit more optimistic about the longer term. It's easy to forget that our parents had similar concerns for us and their parents did before them. We've had an historically long period of broad systemic stability, really since the depression and WWII. While I don't think that level of upheaval is at all likely, I think we're overdue for a disruptive correction bigger than 2008, maybe something more on the order of Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive Era trust-busting to reset the two-party duopoly and crony corperatists both perpetuating each other's hold on power.
It may get rougher and more uncertain for a while, but the worst thing would be to lose the ethos of 'free minds, free markets, free choice' by falling into socialism, communism or totalitarianism.
These values are not specific to western democratic systems. For example, under Islamic Law (Shari'ah), the aforementioned apply as well.
And since when was Churchill an expert at this topic?
I think that's a (very) vocal minority.
Over my ~9 years reading HN daily, I'd say most of the HN community broadly realizes there is no perfect system, just different sets of trade offs, but that history has shown generally democratic systems built on enlightenment values (uniform rule of law, respect for individual civil & property rights, free markets, etc) usually net better overall outcomes in the long-run - despite still being very far from perfect.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, it's the worst system... except for all the others (which are even worse). :-)