[mmaunder]

Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilization has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits, in the classic formulation.

Now, it has long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist, with whatever suffering and injustice that it entails, as long as it is possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited, that the world is an infinite resource, and that the world is an infinite garbage can.

At this stage of history either one of two things is possible. Either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community interests, guided by values of solidarity, sympathy and concern for others, or alternatively there will be no destiny for anyone to control. As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves.

But the conditions of survival, let alone justice, require rational social planning in the interests of the community as a whole, and by now that means the global community. The question is whether privileged elite should dominate mass communication and should use this power as they tell us they must -- namely to impose necessary illusions, to manipulate and deceive the stupid majority and remove them from the public arena.

The question in brief, is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured; they may well be essential to survival.

~Noam Chomsky, from "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media" 1992

[jacoblyles]

>"Now, it has long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time.

Bullshit. A society based on the principles of the free market will create unprecedented human health and prosperity[1].

Anti-capitalists are anti-human. I wonder if the billion or so people that climbed out of poverty over the last decade thanks to global capitalism would change Chomsky's mind at all. But I doubt it, considering how invested the man is in being a spokesman for a flawed worldview. It seems to me that anti-capitalism is a symptom of simple ignorance of basic facts about world economic development.

[1]http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/01/best-decade-ever.html

[lisper]

> "Now, it has long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time.

> Bullshit. A society based on the principles of the free market will create unprecedented human health and prosperity[1].

Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

[jacoblyles]

Sure. And nobody has proven that Jesus or Vishnu won't come back and destroy the world for its sins, either. Positing a future apocalypse that will envelope the world unless everyone adopts your pet religion has a long pedigree.

[anthonycerra]

Now I think you're going too far. The point above says that you can use capitalism to benefit the world around you. Instead of spending $3 million on a car, you can spend $3 million on businesses in a 3rd world country. In the end everyone wins instead of you alone.

[anthonyb]

There was a society based on the principles of the free market - Victorian England. It wasn't so great for most of the population there - pitiful wages, child labour, pollution, poor houses, squalour and misery.

Free market? Sure, it's a great idea, but minimum wage laws, workplace safety, pollution control and so forth have all done just as much for our health and prosperity.

[zeteo]

Are you kidding me? Victorian Britain was the most prosperous country on Earth, at the time. Sure, the average Brit had it much rougher than they do today, but that's not a valid comparison. Give me one country that had it better during the 19th century than Victorian Britain!

[anthonyb]

Sure, they were more prosperous on average, but the poor were much more worse off than the poor in rural areas.

It's also impossible to say whether the prosperity was due to the free market and lack of regulations, the industrial revolution and development of steam power or the rise of the middle class and their increased free time/income.

I suspect that mostly it was technology, similar to what's happening in developing nations right now, rather than any free markets.

[zeteo]

"the poor were much more worse off than the poor in rural areas."

Do you have any support for that assertion? The poor themselves decided en masse to move from village to city at the time, which seems to indicate the contrary. Yes, in the city they were also much more visible to literate observers who would write about their misery, but who knows what those same observers might have exposed if they had lived in a village instead. The people who knew both sides of the situation, certainly seemed to vote with their feet for the industrialized cities. We see the same phenomenon at work in China nowadays.

[_delirium]

> The poor themselves decided en masse to move from village to city at the time

In many cases they hardly "decided"; they were en masse kicked off the land, so had no real choice. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_Acts

[anthonyb]

> The poor themselves decided en masse to move from village to city at the time, which seems to indicate the contrary.

You have the same mechanism at work today, in slums in India, South America and so on. The draw is the possibility of being better off and having more opportunity than you would in a rural area, but it doesn't always end up that way.

But we're getting off the point, which is that a free market doesn't give you "unprecedented human health and prosperity" - the best that you can argue is that it's one of the preconditions (but not the only one).

[anthonyb]

> Do you have any support for that assertion?

How about an eyewitness account, from 1902:

http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/PeopleOfTheAbyss/

[dstorrs]

Victorian England is definitely a good candidate, yes. But for an example of a "free market" society that is nearer in time and space to modern Americans, read Upton Sinclair's _The Jungle_ : http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Jungle/Upton-Sinclair/e...

[jacoblyles]

You couldn't pass a minimum wage law in Victorian Britain that would raise the Victorians' living standards to that of today. Labor simply wasn't productive enough to sustain living standards like ours. People were poor because society as a whole was poor.

All a minimum wage law does is allow a society to shift its chosen point on an unemployment/wage tradeoff curve. However, increases in labor productivity shift that curve outward (this is usually because of technological progress and capital investment). It is because capitalism has shifted the curve outwards over time that we are so much more wealthy, not because minimum wage laws have slightly shifted our position along the curve.

If labor productivity weren't near as high as it is, then you could pass all the laws and regulations in the world and it wouldn't make us as rich as we are now. Anti-capitalists fundamentally misunderstand the process of wealth creation.

I suggest you also look up my comments on the ill-argued anti-libertarian "Victorian England" blogpost that I am assuming you are referencing from when it was submitted here.

[anthonyb]

Nobody said anything about raising living standards to that of today. I'm not sure exactly how you got there, and I'm also not sure how you or the overcoming bias article you linked got to free markets causing the reduction in poverty. The free market's been around for a bit longer than six years, so I'd say it's more likely to be a rise in technology (particularly mobile phones and solar power) rather than global capitalism.

And never mind a minimum wage law - Victorian England would've been a much more pleasant place with some sort of health and safety law, restrictions on child labour or a functioning welfare system other than slave labour in the poor house. Did you read the People of the Abyss link that I posted earlier? There's some scary stuff in there:

I worked at Sullivan's place in Widnes, better known as the British Alkali Chemical Works. I was working in a shed, and I had to cross the yard. It was ten o'clock at night, and there was no light about. While crossing the yard I felt something take hold of my leg and screw it off. I became unconscious; I didn't know what became of me for a day or two. On the following Sunday night I came to my senses, and found myself in the hospital. I asked the nurse what was to do with my legs, and she told me both legs were off.

There was a stationary crank in the yard, let into the ground; the hole was 18 inches long, 15 inches deep, and 15 inches wide. The crank revolved in the hole three revolutions a minute. There was no fence or covering over the hole. Since my accident they have stopped it altogether, and have covered the hole up with a piece of sheet iron . . . . They gave me £25. They didn't reckon that as compensation; they said it was only for charity's sake. Out of that I paid £9 for a machine by which to wheel myself about.

(from http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/PeopleOfTheAbyss/chapter17...)

25 pounds is about 6 months wages for the loss of both legs, and he has to buy his own wheelchair! How much productivity was lost to society because that factory and others like it didn't take enough care of its workforce? And yet you and the rest of the HN libertarian echo chamber are trying to convince us that the only thing necessary for happiness is a free market?

Give me a break.

[Tycho]

From what I understand, there were child labour laws, and when they passed the result was that children were no longer able to work in the respectable factories, so instead they ended up in dangerous, illegal establishments. Of course, child labour in general was nothing new.

[_delirium]

All a minimum wage law does is allow a society to shift its chosen point on an unemployment/wage tradeoff curve.

That's not the only thing it does, depending on the elasticity of various prices and wages. Another thing it does in some situations is increase the total share of money going to laborers while decreasing profit margins of their employers. This may or may not lead to the employer laying them off, depending on what the profit margins were to begin with; if they were very high, such that the post-increase margins are still nice (just not as nice), it's still rational to continue to employ the newly more expensive labor.

Consensus among economists these days on minimum wages is a lot more nuanced than it might've been 50 years ago, anyway. A majority of economists still think that they're on the whole a bad idea, but most would want to know what kind of economy you're talking about before giving specific predictions about their effects. The fundamental shift driving the "well, generally X, but it depends" view is a realization that economies can be quite far from classical equilibria, for quite long periods of time, in which case policies don't necessarily have the effects classical economics would predict.

[fgbadiu]

>A society based on the principles of the free market will create unprecedented human health and prosperity

The living standards of black slaves in the Americas increased over time as well.

I wonder if the millions whose standard of living increased under slavery would change your mind that slavery is bad? It seems to me that anti-slavery is a symptom of simple ignorance of basic facts about world economic development.

[ynniv]

It's much better to work 16 hours for a $1 in your pocket than to do whatever you've been doing for the last 100,000 years. Those unfortunate poor people, someone should tell them how unhappy they are!

[hxa7241]

Chomsky is not anti-capitalist in the sense of proposing some particular complete replacement of it (as one might infer from your comment). He carefully avoids what is not well understood. Would you say capitalism is perfect? No, of course not. Then surely you will allow people to criticise it.

[numeromancer]

"Either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community interests..."

So, he understood this very well? I must conclude so since he didn't avoid it. So he could tell me with precision when a "general population" has taken control of "its own destiny"? Whether "it" has "concern[ed] itself with community interests"? Generally, you can provide some measure with which I can find out if Chomsky is right or wrong in these statements?

I think not. Chomsky "carefully avoids" nothing; he treads heavily, makes a lot of noise, and kicks up a dusty fog.

[acqq]

> A society based on the principles of the free market will create unprecedented human health and prosperity

Only for a limited time as the natural resources are also limited. We don't have another Earth. The total standard of living existing now for humanity is not sustainable.

[steveklabnik]

I've often found it funny how two sides often use the exact same argument against each other, almost down to the wording: most anti-capitalists specifically charge capitalism with taking the human element out of the equation.

[thret]

Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo

Concisely sums up everything good about free-market capitalism.

[drstrangevibes]

>A society based on the principles of the free market will >create unprecedented human health and prosperity agreed , but only for 0.005% of the population

[protomyth]

I've seen the effects of "rational social planning" by the enlightened and would rather go with the flawed individual freedom crowd.

[steveklabnik]

You do understand that he's not speaking of a centrally planned government, right? Chomsky specifically advocates as close to direct democracy as possible.

[protomyth]

I didn't get that from the above quote, but I haven't read Chomsky. I just have quite a bit of problems with people believing that the group is always right compared to the individual, and I got the group vibe from the above. I admit my interpretation could be in error.

[steveklabnik]

No worries, I haven't read as much Chomsky as I should either.

His views are obviously nuanced, but he's most often described as an anarcho-syndiclist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho_syndicalism

The main problem with your interpretation is not that the group is better than the individual, but that then the group _imposes_ that view upon the individual. There's a big difference between cooperative decision making and a dictatorship by an 'enlightened few.'

[waqf]

> I haven't read as much Chomsky as I should either. [emphasis added]

See?! Now they've convinced you that to be fulfilled you have to read Chomsky!

[steveklabnik]

I should. I should read lots of things. Reading more is good for you.

However, in this case, what I meant was, "I really should read more Chomsky before attempting to claim that I am fully and accurately representing his viewpoint in an argument."

[borism]

but have you seen the effects of "rational social planning" by the unenlightened?

[protomyth]

They said they were enlightened, but I admit to having my doubts.

[hessenwolf]

I grew up in a socially-planned town. The problem is in the practicalities of the execution of a large project, by people who just consider it a day job, competing against the corrupting influence of local personal interest. The product of the planning wasn't exactly a macbook pro.

[jacquesm]

The question is, taking all that in to account and conceding that it is (1) true, and (2) a real problem how will we do better?

[genieyclo]

Some would argue there is no point in doing better. Some would argue the "we" is populated by stupidity that knows almost no bounds, and the only solution is to join the ranks of the Man on the quest to the mythical (in a probably hyperinflationary environment) trillion dollars. Cash in while the shit house goes down.

[jacquesm]

> Cash in while the shit house goes down.

Now that is depressing.

Surely there must be a way out. If there is one thing that I've noticed as a pattern over the years then it is that mankind will only get off their collective asses when it is proverbially speaking 1 minute to twelve (or even 1 past).

That gives me some hope that our considerable intelligence will be brought to bear in time of need and that we will actually deal with these problems, but first we need to be forcibly kicked out of our comfort zone.

Historically the house going down was the prelude to building a bigger and better house. The problem is that it sometimes took as much as several centuries to recover from the house going down.

[Yzupnick]

True, the basic problem I have seen with people that present views such as Chomsky's is that I have yet to see an alternative to free market capitalism that doesn't have worse problems (in my opinion) than any problem pointed to by those such as Chomsky.

[loewenskind]

And we never will so long as we never try.

[klbarry]

The above is a very concise version of my thoughts, thank you. There are a lot of problems with democracy, stemming from the dangers of mob rule. For instance, there are some strong arguments that a senate operating behind closed doors would be more effective at ignoring special interests and working together than otherwise. The writers of the constitution did just this (they swore secrecy of anything they talked about in the convention to avoid voter backlash) [1]

This is why they initially wanted health care debates behind closed doors - the lobbyists can make much more use of transparency than the uninterested voter can. Fareed Zakaria wrote a lot about this in The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad.

[A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution by Carol Berkin]