[heavyarms]

> Remember, Stephenson’s target audience consisted of “scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and entrepreneurs.” Given his choice to court private wealth, it’s no surprise that Project Hieroglyph was doomed from the start. After all, you can’t very well expect to succeed as a hero if you stop to ask the villains for their permission.

It's really, really hard to take somebody serious when their political frame of reference makes them see the world in such crisp black and white contrast they just assume, without any further explanation needed, that clearly everybody already agrees that entrepreneurs (or maybe private wealth? As in, non-government wealth?) are the real villains.

[hbarka]

What are the prevailing political systems in science fiction literature?

[ta2022012501]

Yeah, I feel like there’s this absurd amount of commentary floating on the Internet that basically boils down to “the authors aren’t concerned with what really matters, which is to bring the socialist utopia to life”.

Any kind of societal, economic, human and environmental ill is caused by capitalism, so anything that tries to solve actual problems instead of eliminating or weakening capitalism isn’t doing enough

[long_time_gone]

> Any kind of societal, economic, human and environmental ill is caused by capitalism, so anything that tries to solve actual problems instead of eliminating or weakening capitalism isn’t doing enough

My entire life (40 years) has been feeding me the exact opposite propaganda. In the world I've lived in, capitalism is the answer to all of our ills. Things are only broken (like healthcare or education in the US) because they aren't capitalist enough. It's not really a surprise when the winners of capitalism own the news.

I'm personally glad to see another angle. I thought that was one of the things we liked about the internet.

[EricE]

I'm at 50 years and I remember seeing live television pictures of East Berlin and wondering if what I was watching was black and white or color (black and white TV's were still pretty common) and it was always a shock when there was an unexpected splash of color in an otherwise gray and dystopian hellscape on the TV. Turns out the cameras and everything were color, there just wasn't much color from the environment for them to relay.

For those so quick to shit on capitalism how about proposing something better? Yup, it's flawed, but that doesn't mean it's still not better than anything else we have tried.

And the current flavor of the moment, socialism/communism, sure as hell isn't the answer. Want a good synopsis of how well such systems work in the real world? Grab a copy of the book of "The Hunt for Red October". Skip to the middle where they describe why Ramius's wife died and in particular why it was such a senseless death. Clancy does an awesome job of summarizing the biggest problem with any system that doesn't franchise every participant or provide them with natural incentives to execute their own enlightened self interest.

Yup, there are aspects to capitalism that suck - but the answer isn't to chuck it wholesale for some pie in the sky replacement, but instead work on the aspects that suck. Many of them are well understood - most people can't be bothered to get off their ass and actually do something about it; preferring to bitch online and wait for someone else to fix it for them.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

If you want to talk about extreme capitalism (US healthcare) vs. GDR Stazi communism, only, then sure the conclusion that you are lead to is obvious.

And yet there better models than both, once you get past the emotional appeal to this false dichotomy. Any well-off European country with universal healthcare (usually socialised), well-regulated free markets in most other sectors, and relatively low income inequality will do.

That's leaving aside the models that are currently "science fiction".

[toolcombinator]

Nope.

First of all, healthcare in many European countries is often insurance based.

Yes, in some cases it’s socialized. And in those places the healthcare system is rapidly falling apart/getting worse, and everyone who can afford it goes private.

Just look at the boom in private doctors/insurance in countries like the UK and Denmark.

And of course you also ignore the price paid in the form of taxes, VAT, etc. (Nope, not corporate taxes, which in Europe tend to be lower than in the US.)

If you wanted to nationalize healthcare in the US, you’re basically talking about adding trillions to an already bloated Federal budget.

For some reason, I’ve yet to see a solution to that problem that wasn’t some kind of immature, unproductive slogan throwing like “tax the rich!”

[SideburnsOfDoom]

Nope.

The only reason why the UK NHS is "rapidly falling apart" is the ideology of the Conservative party that's been in power for a decade now. They don't want to have it, but can't say that outright as it would be electoral suicide. So it's the good old Chomskyan Privatisation technique: "defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital." i.e. "everyone who can afford it goes private" is not the market triumph that you might think.

Those people who have gone private, _still_ maintain a NHS GP with access to affordable drugs, etc. It's quite unlike private US healthcare.

> If you wanted to nationalize healthcare in the US, you’re basically talking about adding trillions to an already bloated Federal budget.

Nope.

Where did I say that I wanted to do exactly that to the US? Funny thing to exclude "European insurance-based" systems explicitly now, when explicitly including them earlier. I observed that there are better models, which there is empirical evidence for (1), nothing beyond that.

Any change to USA healthcare would be about _moving_ money not _adding_, would impact an "already bloated" and grossly poor value-for-money private extractive healthcare system: The USA currently spends more and gets less (1). So "adding" is deceptive, and "bloated" is a emotional-noise word in this context.

1) Spot the outlier in Figure 1 https://www.oecd.org/economy/growth/46508904.pdf

[DanBC]

> And of course you also ignore the price paid in the form of taxes, VAT, etc. (Nope, not corporate taxes, which in Europe tend to be lower than in the US.)

The US government pays more for healthcare than the UK government does, and the UK gets universal coverage.

This is fundamentally dishonest of US campaigners against universal coverage: they imply it's going to increase costs and decrease quality, when all the evidence is that it would decrease cost and increase both length and quality of life.

[toolcombinator]

Funny how the people always banging on about the evils of capitalism have never actually lived under a communist system.

And also seem to believe there’s some sort of socialist Utopia in Europe/Scandinavia, despite the fact that social democracy has been dead there for decades.

Then again, in general anti capitalists are a fairly ignorant bunch, who’ve never let reality get in the way of their dogmatic politics.

[long_time_gone]

> Funny how the people always banging on about the evils of capitalism have never actually lived under a communist system.

Almost as funny as seeing any criticism of capitalism turned into strawman about supporting communism.