[ue_]

I think it's possible to critique both systems; the American (capitalist) system in which you need to pay huge amounts for education in order to have the mere chance to get a job that's above sustenace wage, the system screwing over especially those who can't afford to pay back debt; the Cuban system in which your training is free of charge but you cannot apply your skills such that you receive above sustenance wage. Considering the doctors who are able to get into well-paying jobs alone, the American system seems to work better.

Another commenter remarked that the Cuban system is set up to keep the people at the top in power, the American capitalist system less obviously so. I wonder what other methods of Socialist organisation may be explored other than the capitalist wage-labour system we see in both Cuba and the US. The idea of labour vouchers has always been interesting to me.

[adventured]

> the American (capitalist) system in which you need to pay huge amounts for education in order to have the mere chance to get a job that's above sustenace wage

You do realize that wasn't true until about 15 years ago, right? You should be asking what happened (hint: it wasn't Capitalism, it was the US Government's inflationary student loan program). Until the mid 1970s when the US Government nearly destroyed the dollar, you could pay for a Harvard education with a part time job. As recently as the late 1990s, the US had very little in the way outstanding student loans compared to the size of its median income (thus the epic student loans increase that everybody can't stop talking about, ie that's why it's a headline now, because it wasn't expensive before).

It should take you about 15 minutes to do some research and compare the price of a college education prior to the year 2000, versus incomes at the time. Pick any decade prior to 2000 and do the comparison. What happened after 2000? The Bush years wars & spending hammered the dollar, which also sparked the big commodity bubble.

College tuition & fees costs climbed 500% from ~1990 to ~2010. I wonder if that was spontaneously caused by Capitalism; you know, just out of the blue prices suddenly skyrocketed because of Capitalism; or if it was something the US Government did to cause it.

Another hint: how were college costs able to completely disregard income growth and all other restraints for two decades?

[frgtpsswrdlame]

The costs of university increase on a purely free-market basis because of incredibly expanding demand for a university education, now poor students can't afford to go to school. The government steps in and assures their loans so poor students can attend. Now since these loans are guaranteed capitalist institutions begin seeing just how much they can bilk students for and thus our dilemma. Our problem is the free market. Government intervention to this point has transformed one free-market problem (school only for well-to-do) into another (school for anyone but loaded with debt) because we haven't had enough government intervention. Just make it free and our problem is solved.

[adventured]

That's not what happened at all. The US Government didn't step in to assure the student loans of poor people. The US Government backed student loans for everyone, on a perpetually increasing basis.

You fail to address the most obvious problem with your claims:

How college costs were able to skyrocket in complete disregard to the ability to repay those loans. The lack of the ability to pay back a loan is a normal check against irresponsible lending, unless you have a printing press backing said loans and can afford to disregard defaults. The lack of responsible lending, courtesy of the US Government, is what enabled the universities to perpetually raise their costs against the lack of any economic restraints. You fail to recognize the broken core to the system: there were no cost inflation restraints, because the US Government made it possible for there to be none.

The fundamental you aren't dealing with, is what enabled the cost inflation to be so extreme, radically beyond any reasonable standards of lending or potential to repay.

The lack of a free market in education is precisely what caused the hyper cost inflation. The US Government created a system of lending backed by its ability to print dollars, which stands completely apart from normal economic reality.

Another hint: guess who is making nearly all the money off the student loans? Yep, the US Government. They're yielding tens of billions per year in interest profit, courtesy of their ability to magically make dollars appear and to put an entire generation into vast debt. The US Govt is earning about 20 times what the private sector is making off of student loans.

[frgtpsswrdlame]

No, I think you're not really grasping what I'm saying. Here:

(1) College is cheap, only the few and the wealthy go.

(2) More people start to attend college.

(3) Supply and demand kick in, increasing costs, ensuring that still only the few and the wealthy go to college.

(4) The government doesn't like that poor people aren't able to afford college so they guarantee student loans.

(5) Poor people can go to school now, but price spirals out of control.

This is my timeline.

>The lack of the ability to pay back a loan is a normal check against irresponsible lending, unless you have a printing press backing said loans and can afford to disregard defaults.

You're totally right. The problem here is that it's "irresponsible lending" to give a student loan to a poor student, a black student, and especially say a poor, black student who wants to study history. We as a society though want poor students to get more education and we as a society don't want certain fields limited to just those who are already rich. So we guarantee student loans. Then a bunch of capitalists see that we've broken the loan system, pull out their Gordon Gekko hats and start robbing us blind.

>The lack of a free market in education is precisely what caused the hyper cost inflation. The US Government created a system of lending backed by its ability to print dollars, which stands completely apart from normal economic reality.

The lack of a free market in education is precisely what gave lots of kids who would never have otherwise had the opportunity to attend college that chance.

>Another hint: guess who is making nearly all the money off the student loans? Yep, the US Government. They're yielding tens of billions per year in interest profit, courtesy of their ability to magically make dollars appear and to put an entire generation into vast debt. The US Govt is earning about 20 times what the private sector is making off of student loans.

Sure, I don't like this either. College should be free.

[ue_]

The very fact that we are talking about student loans, inflation, destroying the dollar and income (wage-labour) means that we are talking about capitalism; though other actors within a capitalist economy by virtue of having more military or property power may influence a capitalist economy, it does not change the fact that it is a capitalist system nevertheless.

Nowhere did I claim that "free market" policies led up to this point, nor did I claim that government intervention didn't lead up to this point. However I did claim it was due to the capitalist mode of production and so far I haven't been refuted on that point.

[adventured]

> The very fact that we are talking about student loans, inflation, destroying the dollar and income (wage-labour) means that we are talking about capitalism

We're talking about government abuse of and intervention into a former Capitalist economy (which is now a heavily regulated, heavily taxed mixed economy). The US isn't even remotely close to being a free market system and hasn't been for decades. One quick check at the regulation count, the taxation system, the government involvement in every industry and segment, easily makes that point (further, take a look at the expansion of those things over the last 50 years). Where's the free market part?

[etplayer]

>The US isn't even remotely close to being a free market system and hasn't been for decades.

Where exactly did GP claim that it is? And why is regulation incompatible with a capitalist system? You are making the confusion that capitalism means "free market", when it doesn't.

[adventured]

Capitalism is inseparable from a free market system. They are in fact the same thing and have been regarded as such for a century across all the writings of every modern proponent of free market economics. From Hayek to Mises to Friedman.

To the extent you have regulation, is the extent to which you lack a Capitalist economy. All systems opposite to Capitalism make use of extreme State control of the economy through various regulatory means. Whether we're talking rudimentary Socialism or its derivatives, including Fascism and Communism. It's an inversion. You can either have market-based economic levers or you can have State levers, or you can mix them and get a mixed economy to the extent you do so. Regulation is antithesis to Capitalism because it imposes State control over the economy. The more regulation you add, the less market freedom you must inherently have; the regulation removes possible action and decision making by free actors in the economy, it places those decisions into the hands of the State (ie out of the bounds of Capitalism to dictate).

[etplayer]

>Capitalism is inseparable from a free market system.

No, it's not; there exists market Socialism, for example. There also exists mutualism. I don't know where you're getting this from other than the idea that authors in favour of capitalism also tend to prefer free market economics.

>Whether we're talking rudimentary Socialism or its derivatives, including Fascism and Communism.

Communism is actually the complete lack of state control but also the lack of commodity production and therefore the market.

>Regulation is antithesis to Capitalism because it imposes State control over the economy.

You have still failed to explain why lack of regulation is central to capitalism other than to name Hayek, Mises and Friedman who were in favour of free-market capitalism. Other authors who sought to describe capitalism prior to them didn't include "free market" as a core principle of capitalism.

There is no denying that the epitome of capitalist production is completely unencumbered by a State, but there is also no denying that the state must intervene in a capitalist economy to protect property rights on a large scale. There is also the idea that the the State itself cannot be a capitalist actor which is totally false; we see the State engaging in the employment of wage-labour and selling on the national and international market. This makes the state as capitalist as Microsoft or Google.

[pdpgxpgxydx]

If the Cuban government is making those decisions it's not communism, it's state capitalism. In socialism, workers own the means of production collectively, and have voting power and representation in their workplace.

[ue_]

I agree, this is what I was trying to get at.

[wooter]

state capitalism is an oxymoron. NO capitalist leader/think thank/literature advocates it and they are explicitly anti socialism - which is what it is.

[duckingtest]

American medical system is not capitalist but mercantilist. It's illegal to offer services without explicit permission of the medical guild. It has the exact same effect all historical guild systems had: price gouging and reduced supply. Taxi licenses are another good example.

Capitalist medical system would mean the value of a particular medical certification would be set by the market, ie. everyone would be able to sell medical services. Historically free market has always resulted in a much better quality in addition to lower prices.

[etplayer]

>American medical system is not capitalist but mercantilist.

This distinction is made on the fallacious idea that "capitalism" is equal to a totally free market. This is a common confusion but false nevertheless. There is no reason I see why a capitalist system cannot include intervention by the government, and indeed it must deal with this to uphold property rights as even libertarian authors tell us.

Capitalism is the predominant employment of wage-labour, the private ownership of social means of production and the goal of accumulation of capital.

>Historically free market has always resulted in a much better quality in addition to lower prices.

It has also resulted in much higher rates of exploitation, as the workers of countries with more lax or unenforced labour laws suffer greatly for it.

[duckingtest]

>There is no reason I see why a capitalist system cannot include intervention by the government

You're attempting to redefine the meaning of words to create a strawman where 'capitalism' can have any property you want, which then allows you to misrepresent an attack on a $random_negative_thing as an attack on 'capitalism'.

A system with state intervening in the market is called a mixed economy.

>It has also resulted in much higher rates of exploitation, as the workers of countries with more lax or unenforced labour laws suffer greatly for it.

The more protected against 'exploitation' people in a particular country are, the more likely they are to risk their lives trying to escape their socialist utopias.

If you weren't a hypocrite you would renounce your citizenship and relocate to a 'better' place, like Cuba or Venezuela.

[dang]

> If you weren't a hypocrite you would renounce your citizenship and relocate to a 'better' place, like Cuba or Venezuela.

This trope is doubly lame on Hacker News: both a personal swipe and a heat-dead cliché. Please don't comment like this here.

Civil and substantive comments are the kind we want on Hacker News. This was neither. Please read and follow https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

[etplayer]

>You're attempting to redefine the meaning of words to create a strawman

Isn't this exactly what post-Marxian authors did? By the time Marx was writing, it was clear what capitalism was - the predominant employment of wage labour, private ownership of social means of production, and accumulation of capital. The idea that a state which owns all or most of the productive capacity of society cannot be "capitalist" for some reason is outstandingly silly.

>The more protected against 'exploitation' people in a particular country are, the more likely they are to risk their lives trying to escape their socialist utopias.

This is a very ignorant statement; there exist heavy protections against high exploitation in the EU, but the EU is not a Socialist organisation nor are many people trying to escape it for its labour laws. There has not existed a Socialist society as of yet aside from the Paris Commune and Catalonia (which I must note, very few people tried to escape); before you reply that this is an NTS fallacy, I must say that the Socialist mode of production rests upon the abolition of the law of value (i.e commodities are not produced) and the working class as a whole hold ownership of the social means of production, and the functions of private property have been done away with. This was not observed in the regimes of the USSR, Soviet satellite states, Cuba or Venezuela.

>If you weren't a hypocrite you would renounce your citizenship and relocate to a 'better' place, like Cuba or Venezuela.

No. Cuba and Venezuela both operate the capitalist mode of production, and in fact Cuba is in very direct violation of the principles of non-alienated labour. How can a Socialist country be opposed to fair working conditions? This suggests to me that it is not Socialist at all. You must also note that I have not shown any appreciation for the economic models of either Cuba or Venezuela. The idea that I must support any country which calls itself "Socialist" is as absurd as saying that as a democrat I must support any country which calls itself "democratic", including the DPRK.

[briandear]

Plumbers and electricians make great money and they aren’t incurring debt to do so. Plumbers, especially self employed ones, make more than your average “marketing assistant” or some other job that requires a degree.

Plenty of people go to school and don’t rack up tens of thousands in debt.

The question we should be asking is why does education cost keep expanding so quickly: cost inflation is much higher than even healthcare. It isn’t “capitalism” it’s actually the he fact that student loan availability distorts the market. Eliminate student loans and costs will drop like a rock to a level the actual market supports. Don’t blame capitalism because capitalism would never support the artificial cost inflation caused by government intervention.

If Big Macs were subsidized as much as universities, they’d cost $100 because McDonald’s knows that if you can’t afford it, the government will be there to help.

[throwawayknecht]

The number of plumbers - more precisely the amount of plumbing work - is essentially constrained by the number of sinks.

There's no limit to how much marketing can be done.

Thus, late capitalism.

(Also the "genius" of software development, where we seem to have invented a way to make infinite broken sinks.)

[ue_]

>Don’t blame capitalism because capitalism would never support the artificial cost inflation caused by government intervention.

What is capitalism other than the system of predominant wage-labour, private ownership of socially productive property (supported by the state), capital accumulation and class society? The idea that capitalism cannot be blamed for the fact that people are required to obey the whims of speculators in the market, to tailor their ambitions such as to maximise wage rather than to pursue enjoyment and the replacement of relations between people with relations between commodities is absurd.

Capitalism "supports" whatever will make a profit; in this case, student loans turn profits. Why would this system of student loans not occur under government intervention? There clearly exist private loan agencies.

To be clear I'm not speaking in favour of the Cuban system, so please don't assume that I am.

[AutomationTool]

You don't have to pay large amounts of money for education and you don't have to pay large amounts of money to get a decent job.

You need to get out of your echo chamber.

[dang]

Personal swipes like this will get your account banned on HN, so please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow them when commenting here.

[ue_]

I'm posting right now on what is by and large a forum hostile to anti-capitalist thinking; this is the very opposite of me being in an echo chamber.

Many "decent" jobs require at least a university degree, which almost always entails taking out a loan. So while you don't have to "pay" large amounts of money, you may need to loan it and then pay it back later.

[dang]

> I'm posting right now on what is by and large a forum hostile to anti-capitalist thinking

A hit! In the same thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15366755. More: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=13110004&sort=byDate&prefix&pa...

Edit: since we asked you to stop using HN primarily for ideological battle and you've been battling up a storm since then, I've banned this account. Because we're serving our capitalist masters, you say? The mask slips, you say? (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13571118) Nope. It's just lame and off-topic.

There's no intellectual curiosity in ideological battle—they are two different games. In one the goal is to learn, in the other to smite enemies. Football and chess don't mix, either, and tackling your opponent's bishop is off topic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[zaroth]

Gosh if we can't even agree on what kind of echo chamber we're in, how will we ever manage to make convincing fallacious arguments?

I think the echo chamber AT spoke of was not HN. The point is that in the US there are a plethora of options for low cost high quality educations/degrees which absolutely can help you earn a very decent living. They may not be famous name-brand cliques which guarantee a plush job right after graduating, but it is a fundamental pillar of Americanism that opportunity is there for those willing to put in the time.

[oh_sigh]

The echo chamber you're in is your understanding of 'decent jobs'. No, you don't need to go to university to have a decent job. There are tons of self-made people with no university education, working in the trades or by starting a small business.