[ue_]

>You can't run business if you don't serve your customers well.

Serving your customers well is entirely out of self interest, especially in large corporations; in fact, this is the easiest example of "every man for himself". You serve your customers well because ultimately it brings you more profit. Sure, it's not as sure sighted as screwing over every customer, but people who are selfish aren't necessarily stupid. I would argue that the very act of running a business in such a society is not only wrong due to the exploitation of workers, but also the motivation underlying (almost) every transaction in which your goal is to sell things in such a way as to get yourself the largest profit.

Of course that doesn't happen in real life. People have moral standards. I think I'm just a cynical ancom with regard to how people would really behave in the absence of all regulation. Let's not forget what large companies can still get away with today, and imagine what it would be like with anti-competitive monopolies, oligarchies, and two or three organisations controlling mainstream information sources.

So sure, your business doesn't last long because you were too obviously selfish. Your next plan of action is to pay a news outlet (or better yet, already be in control of one) to cover you. Or if you can't do that, there's still hope - you can band together with like minded people and start another business. Not without worker exploitation, of course. You need all the surplus value you can get.

I simply do not have the hope that "serving your customers well" is enough to prevent what actors in a capitalist system are truly capable of doing.

Let's not forget the sheer paradoxical nature of "anarcho-capitalism" (the inherent class system set up of the bourgeoisie and proletariat is the exact opposite of non-hierarchical relations).

I'm not really a proponent of central planning myself, so I agree with you on that.

[pdonis]

> the motivation underlying (almost) every transaction in which your goal is to sell things in such a way as to get yourself the largest profit

And the goal of the buyer is to buy things in such a way as to get himself the largest surplus, i.e., the most value for a given cost. So by your reasoning, all buyers are selfish just as much as all sellers are selfish.

> People have moral standards. I think I'm just a cynical ancom with regard to how people would really behave in the absence of all regulation.

Moral standards existed long before any regulation. We have moral standards because we evolved that way--i.e., because they are adaptive for a species that has to form cooperative relationships in order to survive. Cooperative relationships include economic relationships--specialization and trade. That's how we build wealth.

It is true that, as soon as people start building wealth, there is an incentive to plunder it instead of building more. One way of describing a key problem with many (if not most) modern societies is that they are set up to reinforce, or at least not discourage, the incentive to plunder.

> Let's not forget what large companies can still get away with today, and imagine what it would be like with anti-competitive monopolies, oligarchies, and two or three organisations controlling mainstream information sources.

Um, you're describing what things are like today. And the reason they're like that is, in large part, because one of the things large companies can get away with is buying political power and influence, which they can then use to plunder instead of building wealth. But the reason they can do that at all is that political power and influence can be bought, because it's centralized.

[ue_]

>So by your reasoning, all buyers are selfish just as much as all sellers are selfish.

I don't disagree with this. But I think that there is more harm that comes from the corporation to the consumer than there is from the consumer to the corporation, or at least more potential harm. And I think that arises out of selfishness that is unfortunately built into the system.

>Moral standards existed long before any regulation.

I'm sorry; I wasn't trying to make the point that moral standards have anything to do with regulation, but rather that regulation creates a "bare minimum" for the kind of behaviour expected of the participants, regardless of moral views that very much differ from person to person (and of course from sociey to society).

I think that a relationship can be cooperative, but with one side being favoured much more than the other - the capitalist who exploits a workforce. Of couse both need to cooperate - but it does not mean that such cooperation is fair. It is often accepted because there aren't fairer alternatives.

I wish for a different kind of cooperative relationship, one which I view as more equal and participatory. At the moment, I view it sort of like an EULA.

[pdonis]

> it does not mean that such cooperation is fair

"Fair" is subjective. Our moral intuitions give us fairly consistent answers for simple cases, but most cases are not simple.

One response to this problem is to point out that a free market is the best mechanism we know of for maximizing "fairness" in the sense of bargaining power. But free markets are actually pretty rare. For example, large corporations' wage structures, which dictate the terms of many people's employment contracts, are not the products of a free market; they are the products of the corporations' internal processes, which are dictated by top-down centralized control. (To some extent they are also products of negotiations, for example with labor unions, but that just extends the top-down centralized control to the unions.) So an obvious way to make cooperation fairer is to decrease the average size of corporations, in order to expose more transactions to free markets. In the absence of regulation, I suspect that this is what would actually happen, because most large corporations are the products of regulation, not of free market competition.

[ue_]

"Fair" is subjective. But from a utilitarian perspective, I think still it would be fairer for the working class to own the means of production.

From a Marxist perspective, a "free market" in which people sell their labour in order to survive isn't fair at all. Whether or not you have a corporation with a big internal centralised form of deciding wages, you still have the product of labour sold for more value than it was bought at.

It might be fairer if corporations became smaller and there was more bargaining power because there is more accessibility for decision in the free market. But I don't think it's fair in other aspects - the aforementioned exploitation (occurring even in the absence of regulation), there is nobody to defend property or even establish the validity of the concept of property, you probably have to pay to be protected by a police force, and all the egregious institutions of today would probably continue, including needlessly expensive health care, there is still the problem of sweatshop labour (which most people, even though informed, don't care enough about to do anything about; imagine how it is if Apple/Nike/whoever were to own a few news agencies too). On top of that, the fact that few exchanges are truly voluntary for many who are less fortunate.

However I can see that there may be more workplace democracy, as a result of internal practices being opened to the free market.

[pdonis]

> from a utilitarian perspective, I think still it would be fairer for the working class to own the means of production.

However attractive this might seem theoretically (it doesn't to me, but I understand it does to many people), we have run this experiment in practice and it doesn't work, at least not in the obvious sense of "workers own the means of production". The problem is that "own the means of production" doesn't help unless ownership means control; and in practice, if you have large industrial factories organized with centralized top-down control, it's impossible for all the workers to "own" it in any useful sense. So it just ends up being another vehicle for centralized power.

OTOH, if "own the means of production" really means that each worker owns and controls all the tools he needs to produce, and simply trades what he produces for what other workers produce, then what you have is a free market. In other words, for "workers own the means of production" to be true in any useful sense, every worker needs to be an entrepreneur, basically owning himself and his skills and tools as a small business. I would love to see this happen, but unfortunately I don't think it's likely to on any large scale any time soon. (In some fields, though--programming as a free-lance craft is an example--it can already be true for a significant number of people.)

> you still have the product of labour sold for more value than it was bought at

I don't understand what you mean by this. The value of any product of labor is not determined by the laborer; it's determined by whoever is going to use that product. That's not because of an evil plot by large corporations; it's an unavoidable fact of life. Anyone who cannot produce everything they need by themselves has to trade with others; and that means being able to produce something that someone else will trade for at a price that is enough to compensate you for the labor involved, plus whatever surplus you need to obtain other things you need. There is no reason for the someone else to pay you more just because you used more labor, if the value to them is the same either way.

Everybody understands this when they are the user; if you hire someone to paint your house, you're not going to pay them more if they use a toothbrush to do it. (IIRC pg used this example in one of his essays.)

> there is nobody to defend property or even establish the validity of the concept of property

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. The need to defend property and property rights is inherent in the idea of trade; if we all need to trade with others, then we all need to have property and property rights, and have them defended if they are threatened. That will be true whether the average corporation is large or small, or even if corporations did not exist at all.

[dragonwriter]

> However attractive this might seem theoretically (it doesn't to me, but I understand it does to many people), we have run this experiment in practice and it doesn't work, at least not in the obvious sense of "workers own the means of production".

The main large scale experiment I am aware of that meets the "obvious sense" of workers owning the means of production is the Mondragon system and similar labor cooperative ventures, which seem at least modestly successful, even when operating in a legal and political environment in which that structure is not the norm around which most rules are optimized.

There are certainly failed experiments where precapitalist states have been overthrown by regimes in which the state, run by a vanguard party acting nominally in the name of the workers, collectively, owned the means of production, which have failed spectacularly for reasons which may be related to the ownership structure (though other explanations are available), but those don't seem to be operating in anything like the "obvious sense" of workers owning the means of production.

[justinmk]

> Serving your customers well is entirely out of self interest,

Right, just like "altruism" is also rooted in self-interest. It turns out that people are motivated by all kinds of things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxeology

[ue_]

I don't mean to say that everyone acts entirely for themselves, with no action motivated by kindness. I mean to say that in a sytem with multiple people trying to do the same thing you are doing (selling for a profit), you'll have to compete with people with various moral standards and ways of getting their profit. This kind of system, I believe, eventually forces out those who are not "aggressive" enough with their methods, and if not eventually, it will happen over time due to the fact that capitalism requires ever higher and higher returns.

While admirable in itself to act kindly in a capitalist system, it is ultimately detrimental to the success (and thus survival) of the company. There are of course examples of ethical practices (free range eggs for example), but they only continue once they become sufficiently practical.

[vidarh]

Capitalism does not require ever higher returns. It requires ever higher efficiency in extracting surplus. Barring monopolies etc., this should be expected to continue dropping as competition gets more fierce.

Other than that, your argument above is basically Marx thesis for the cause of the eventual collapse of capitalism: He praised capitalism for providing that efficiency necessary to provide sufficient wealth to eventually be able to erase poverty, but at the same point argued that this efficiency ultimately means that to stay competitive, salary costs will eventually need to be systmatically pushed down (whether by actually lowering salaries or through e.g. automation) until capitalism keeps hitting crises where the production capacity outstrip demand as the competitive forces throw more and more people into unemployment, eventually pushing people to revolution.

This is also the basis for why Marx unlike many others of the time was cautious in his criticism of capitalists for being capitalists: He points out that the same mechanism will keep throwing capitalists into the working class through failure, and hence capitalists are according to Marx just as much unable to change the system from within as workers.

[ue_]

Thank you for the insight. I'm reading Marx at the moment.

[greggyb]

> ...the fact that capitalism requires ever higher and higher returns.

Capitalism requires private ownership of the means of production.

Ever higher and higher returns are a result, so far, of capitalism.

[danharaj]

I guess all those colonial wars and government interventions to build and prop up industries never resulted in higher returns. Capitalism is most certainly not just private ownership of the means of production. That is too reductionist. That is like saying biology is chemistry. Technically true, but misses the point.

Because the means of production are held privately there is a class distinction between owners and workers. Owners derive their profit from the labor of their workers. Workers want to work less for higher wages, owners want the opposite. This becomes the locus of class struggle. Because all society now responds to the needs of capital, the superstructure and the state come to serve primarily bourgeois(owners) class interests.

Considering how many wars and coups have been fought to forcibly introduce capitalism into other countries and forcibly extract their resources and labor, to say that private ownership results in higher returns is almost offensive in how it elides the emergent dynamics of capitalism.

[logfromblammo]

Capitalism and nationalist mercantilism are historically related, but one does not necessarily follow from the other.

Anarcho-capitalists usually define "capitalism" as "societal convention allows an individual to own property for that person's sole benefit". In that school of thought, your ability to own things is limited by your ability to defend what you have claimed. You can't just take your money, use it to buy state power, and then use that to get more money.

The an-cap factory owner does not fear that the workers will seize ownership of the factory. They fear that and that one of the employees will quit and become a leaner, faster competitor. A state-capitalist owner can generally prevent that with zoning and regulation, but the an-cap owner has to create an entirely different worker dynamic.

[danharaj]

I am talking about capitalism in material terms as it happens because that's what the post I replied to was doing, not an ideal, hypothetical form of capitalism. likewise if we were having a discussion about the real life consequences about Marxism-Leninsim (like a productive discussion on that topic can actually happen on HN) I would be criticizing the USSR as it actually developed and not, say, as it was described by Stalin's theoretical ramblings.

An-capitalism has never happened and probably never will because it presumes there is an ideal form of capitalism that can outcompete the actual capitalism that exists which is inextricably tied with state power. In every development of capitalism in every country starting with the very first ones in Europe, the state's power was used to disrupt the old order and establish a new one. It was not the only necessary ingredient, but it was essential.

[stale2002]

I don't think you understand.

Yes, they are serving their customers, and they are doing it because it is the selfish, self-optimizing solution.

That's the whole point! You have this awesome outcome, where purely selfish people are still doing the "right" thing.

You don't need nice people in order for people to do nice things.

[ue_]

> You have this awesome outcome, where purely selfish people are still doing the "right" thing.

I don't think it's awesome. Sure, it may not be bad just because of the fact that it is selfish, but I do not think that capitalism produces "awesome", at least compared to theorised alternatives, solutions. In contrast to feudalism, I would agree.

I think that motivation not only sets the tone for the current transaction, but it also influences the sort of relationship that builds over time. While not immediately apparent, it has a great effect on the power dynamic of the relationship. This is readily visible in human to human relationships, and I thnk it can be carried over to the relationship between bosses and employees, the bourgeois and proletariat, etc.

[omegaworks]

>Serving your customers well is entirely out of self interest

This general tenet starts to break down the fewer competitors operate in the market. Monopolization allows corps to capture supernormal profit and externalize as much cost as possible. When there's only one person that's got what you need, they can treat you how they want.

tl;dr: Comcast.

[nickik]

A common argument against AnCapism is the idea that monopoly will form and eventually there is a sort of superstate.

This is of course a old marxist argument, capital is inherently centralising.

There are however good reason to believe this is not true. In fact, most economist don't follow this line of thinking anymore.

No AnCap would deny that there would be some larger then healthy cooperations but its an acceptable problem that is pretty hard to solve for any system and is often made worse by state based systems.

[snrplfth]

Well, Comcast's oligopoly is largely established by the fact that rights-of-way and pole-attachment rights are monopolized by municipalities, which tend to approve only a single, or few providers. It's not a natural monopoly.

[pdonis]

> Comcast's oligopoly is largely established by the fact that rights-of-way and pole-attachment rights are monopolized by municipalities, which tend to approve only a single, or few providers.

Only because, when municipalities do try to treat bandwidth as a public utility, which they can sell to all providers equally, Comcast and other large ISPs sue them.

> It's not a natural monopoly.

I agree, but I don't think it is primarily local municipalities that are propping it up.

[snrplfth]

I think it's the structure of rights-of-way, pole-attachments and so forth as monopolies that props it up. The fact that municipalities get sued for trying to sell bandwidth is a problem, but it emerges, I think, because of the fact it's centralized in a government institution.

[pdonis]

To some extent, provisioning for bandwidth is a natural monopoly, for the same reason that provisioning for electrical service, water, sewer, and other utilities are natural monopolies. It doesn't make sense to run multiple different electrical, water, and sewer services to the same neighborhood just so multiple different providers can compete; the costs of all that extra infrastructure are too high. The costs aren't as high for bandwidth, but they aren't zero either.

As the size of the "municipality" goes up, though, I agree with you that centralization creates monopolies that are not natural.