[cbozeman]

What I'm about to say I know will sound glib, or... something... but I don't know what else to say, or even how else to say it, but after learning this, why do I want to say something along the lines of, "Communists are too stupid to make money and this kinda proves it."

[rpmisms]

Communism is an ideology that requires/promotes an incredibly naive worldview. In order for it to function properly, everyone must act in good faith, which is obviously impossible. Once the communism is established, the expectation is to believe everyone is acting in good faith, which is even more naive. Hence your observation.

[d0mine]

Even If we ignore the actual achievements of different societies claiming they implement "ism" of one kind or another, any "ism" from XIX century regarding human behavior at scale is naive. If the theory of phlogiston went bust, it doesn't mean physics shouldn't be worked on. Even today, soft sciences are laughable.

[molszanski]

In my observations of the world and history, the only 'ism' that works for the people, is where the real power is concentrated in the hands of as many people as possible.

As long as we create structures that concentrate power in the hands of the few, policies change and resources flow into those circles.

[denton-scratch]

> concentrated in the hands of as many people as possible

Isn't that the opposite of "concentrated"?

[molszanski]

You are correct! The right word would be "distributed"

[randomdata]

While communism is merely a thought experiment, communism imagines a world that has entered into a post-scarcity state (which is the actual unrealistic part). Once scarcity is no longer a concern, it is believed that people acting in bad faith won't be able to exert any control.

The bad faith is recognized in communism. It is why it is suggested that nations must first move to socialism in order to pave the way to post-scarcity. It was believed that private interests will create artificial scarcity even after we are able to technically achieve post-scarcity if the public doesn't first gain control over the means of production.

[supersync]

I’m not sure your 2nd point is that controversial. Many clear examples of companies manufacturing scarcity in order to create profits - light bulbs being an easy example.

[kortilla]

That’s not manufactured scarcity, that’s planned obsolescence. Those are different things.

[RealityVoid]

Yes, sure, but the two kind of go hand in hand. Media copyright, for example, is manufactured scarcity.

[kortilla]

That’s built on the naive assumption that people won’t seek power in a post scarcity world.

[randomdata]

That's like saying that capitalism has the naive assumption that people won't try to achieve post-scarcity. It is not a meaningful statement.

[MichaelZuo]

Why do you believe there is such an assumption? Elon Musk assumes people will try to achieve a post-scarcity society and he’s nonetheless gone from living in a YMCA to being the richest man on Earth.

[future_i_snow]

Do you really think he stayed at the YMCA for any other reason than "he wanted to"?

He comes from money, and would have had no problem living anywhere he liked.

Just read his wikipedia page:

> In 1995, Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Greg Kouri founded web software company Zip2 with funds borrowed from Musk's father.

If the YMCA story is supposed to signify "rags", then it's a carefully constructed image and nothing else.

[randomdata]

Again, the assumptions don't tell us anything meaningful. If, hypothetically, we did achieve post-scarcity and pushed out capitalism in doing so, so be it. If that were to happen and then "bad actors" took back control of the capital, returning us to capitalism, so be. These models don't have to be ever-present, they don't have feelings, they are only descriptions about the state of the world at a given moment in time. Whether or not these forces described are in play is irrelevant.

[colordrops]

Capitalism is only marginally less naive. It assumes that markets behave in a way that optimizes for the public good and that regulatory mechanisms will be independent and without conflict of interest with regards to the corporations themselves. Both extremely naive.

[t0suj4]

Markets optimize for the needs of their participants. Most of the time it aligns with public good.

The regulatory mechanism is what and from whom the participants are willing to purchase.

[colordrops]

> Most of the time it aligns with public good

Fully disagree here. I could list a hundred egregious examples where this isn't true for major aspects of life, but it's late and I'm tired of arguing on the internet. Perhaps tomorrow I'll respond with examples.

[RealityVoid]

The contest is if other people can list _more_ things where it _does_ align. And even if the misalignment is more frequent than alignment, are there any other systems that are better? I agreed with the general sentiment of your post and agree there are a lot of wrongly incentivized bahaviors in capitalism. It's just that finding workable alternatives is a challenge in of itself.

[Akronymus]

Reminds me of the quote that "democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried."

Just replace democracy with capitalism and government with market.

[goosedragons]

No it doesn't. FFS bakers used to adulterate their flour with crap like chalk because it was cheaper. And there's many many examples of things like that. The market optimizes for price and only in scenarios where competition doesnt have a high bar.

[jraph]

> Markets optimize for the needs of their participants

They optimize for what they want, not what they need, which is a big difference. They would probably align with public good if it was the latter. Also, they optimize for what people who have money want.

Participants want comfort (which we can't blame them for) and are not incentivized to solve poverty.

Not saying that capitalism did not bring good stuff (won't state it neither), but part of the current result is global warming, pollution and the existence of people living in bad conditions.

[q-big]

> but part of the current result is global warming

Global warming is rather mostly a consequence of overpopulation. In the past, people often died of starvation or illnesses. "Unluckily" capitalism managed to reduce these problems by a lot.

> and the existence of people living in bad conditions.

In most communist countries, the living conditions were worse, so this is rather again a success story of capitalism.

[skrtskrt]

Speaking of naive

[refurb]

Not sure where you learned this, but capitalism doesn’t assume either of those things.

Capitalism does not assume the market optimize for the public good. It assumes when each party optimizes for their own self-interest, that optimizes resource use.

And in terms of regulatory capture/corruption, I hope you're not assuming that it's somehow unique to capitalism? In fact, as the Soviet Union and China have shown, corruption is rather greater under those systems.

[vkazanov]

Probably the best way to explain would be to say that capitalism as an ideology optimises for the personal good, while communism optimises for the common good.

As we probably know from the history of 19th/20th centuries, taken to their extreme these ideologies can be highly dangerous.

[wwtrv]

> while communism optimises for the common good

Communism mainly optimises for the good of the high ranking party members and other apparatchiks in charge they might occasionally throw some scraps to ordinary people but I don't see how can it be considered inherently superior to capitalism in this regard based on real world example.

While following 'capitalist policies' have generally resulted in a significant overall increase in the 'common good' it is unquestionably that it has also caused many terrible tragedies. However pretty much the only positive thing about communism that I can think of is that the fear of it spreading encouraged many western governments to enact progressive social, political and economical reforms (it's debatable whether this was actually a significant factor, though).

[vkazanov]

> Communism mainly optimises for the good of the high ranking party members

This happens when ideology meets the reality of dealing with people, who are mostly egoistic. Pure capitalism ideology leads into another trap: the one of oligarchic rule, with smaller groups of egoists winning the game of monopoly.

A less radical version of communism, the one implemented in late USSR, where the state owns and plans everything for everyone, while proving some common good benefits (medicine, education, etc) also has a couple of fundamental problems.

One is the economical problem of having to plan everything for everyone. A book called "Red Plenty" covers this really well, as well as some bits of a math behind it (linear programming, etc). In market-based economies these problems sort of go away. Until one has to deal with monopolies, that is.

I don't know if somebody has an explanation for the other problem, political in nature. Communists and modern "communist-socialist" states seem to always insist on political monopoly, which makes it impossible for people to provide fast feedback to policy-makers.

So it seems that an optimal balance achieved by "enlightened democratic capitalism", where the exploitive (and economically more efficient) nature of capitalism is balanced by democratic feedback.

[Akronymus]

I'd argue that under capitalism the bottom 5% still live better than the bottom 50% under communism. Altough, that doesn't correct for the technological/geographical differences.

[vkazanov]

Well, the science of political economy is not really science so hard to tell. :-)

It seems, though, that capitalism does allow for faster wealth generation. Given proper corrections and balances, of course.

I can name quite a lot of countries that never went the socialism way, but are not rich in any sense of the word.

[rpmisms]

Capitalism is less naive in that it does not assume good faith. That's a huge difference.

[sangnoir]

Instead, it naively assumes rationality

[q-big]

It does not assume rationality. Rather, the assumption is that rational behaviour is of your advantage, which is in my opinion a very sensible assumption.

[robertlagrant]

I would say it aligns rationality and responsibility. You want to spend your own money badly? Fine. You just don't get to spend everyone's money badly.

[cbozeman]

This actually explains why it's necessary for Communism as an ideology to kill so many people. You can't have bad faith actors in the system because then the system ceases to function... hence executing all the bad faith actors.

Again, in theory.