[insaider]

Hi Eric, thoughts on capitalism? Call it 'financial gravity' but I think capitalism is the underlying insidious force. Obviously there's nuance but a world ran by companies with shareholders and profit margins isn't going to be a good one, is it?

[eries]

I do make critiques of capitalism in the book, but I try to be very careful when using that word, since at this point most people can't even agree on what the word means.

Here are some things that seem to me unequivocally true if we look at the historical record and the data available to us: 1. These kind of value-destroying actions in the name of profit have been going on for a very long time, at least 200 years. 2. The problem seems to be getting worse in recent decades. 3. The problem seems to be highly correlated with the increased financialization of our economies and the advent of a relatively recent set of so-called best practices about how companies should be built, run, and governed. 4. Companies seem to vary widely in the degree to which they are vulnerable to these forces. 5. I think to be learned by studying the companies that have been able to resist-- as a collective set

[_doctor_love]

Hey Eric, I have a degree in economics and to me it’s very simple. Look up “creative destruction” and Joseph Schumpeter. Whether someone likes it or not, this pattern is the defining feature of capitalism.

The market is very good at solving certain types of problems and not so good at others.

[insaider]

I think the focus should be more on creating governments that are resistant to those forces. Contrary to popular belief, governments are the greatest force for good in the world, the best ones are the ones that are best at keeping capitalism in check, companies will always be vulnerable.

Unpopular opinion but I'm very much pro-china and anti-us because of this.

[keeda]

> 3. The problem seems to be highly correlated with the increased financialization of our economies and the advent of a relatively recent set of so-called best practices about how companies should be built, run, and governed.

I have the seeds of a theory that might explain this: this is the inevitable outcome of technological progress.

Like the American democratic system, Capitalism works best when all major parties involved in the system have comparable power and can keep the other in check. The major parties here are the capital class and the labor class, because Capitalism was conceptualized in an era when value creation could not happen without human labor. As such there was some measure of power available to workers, the logical extreme of which were such distasteful words like "unions" and "strikes". Nevertheless, earlier there was some balance and everyone benefitted (after that messy little Gilded Age affair was sorted out.)

However, technology, in the form of automation, has essentially been a force of labor displacement. Yes, we got amazing improvements in quality of life, but every advance also chipped away at the influence and power held by workers.

On the other side, the capital class have not been idle. Money attracts money... and power and influence. Capitalists have been using those levers to ensure most of the gains of technology accrue to themselves. Lobbying is of course the most obvious example, influence campaigns is another. But relevant to your post, another way this surfaces is the "so-called best practices" you mentioned. There is no "collusion" to suppress wages, just "best practices" of amorphous origins. Which somehow always benefit the shareholders. Funny that.

As you said this has been going on for a long time. But technology is amongst other things, an accelerant, and these trends have simply been amplified to become more noticeable.

And now there's GenAI, which is the ultimate accelerant.

Contrary to most media and HN, however, I think GenAI is not just the ultimate win for capitalists. If you think about it, by the same token(s) that GenAI disintermediates labor, it also disintermediates capital! (Who needs VCs when 1 - 2 motivated folks can launch ambititious projects with GenAI and public clouds?

GenAI is a unique opportunity to restore balance, and could actually be the thing that ushers in the post-Capitalism age... whatever that looks like.