[SirHackalot]

Does that mean capitalism is not an efficient system to meet the needs of well-informed consumers? Why am I being lumped in with an 8 year old who asks their parents to buy them an online game? There should be a market for physical media and devices with physical buttons if people exist who want them. These companies won’t work on anything that doesn’t bring them a gazillion dollars, so billion/million dollar ventures never get off the ground.

[2000UltraDeluxe]

From the article:

> even sales in the tens of thousands might not recover the development and tooling costs

If you're looking for an argument against capitalism, this wasn't it.

[tonyhart7]

capitalism is the most efficient system ever

the statistic literally says it all, any person that think otherwise its delusional

[psd1]

Is it, though?

Rule of thumb: when a fanboy asserts that any person holding an alternative view is defective, you should immediately abandon the fanboy's position and adopt the alternative view. It's heuristically more likely to be correct, and it gets you out of an odious fan club.

Case in point: China proceeded through stages of development more efficiently than any western nation. Case in point: South Korea incubated its industry in a command economy.

[SirHackalot]

Throw the USSR in there as well. Central planning allowed them to leap from an agrarian society to launching Sputnik and putting the first human in space, which spooked us into kickstarting the space race. It wasn’t market incentives that did that.

[psd1]

The USSR performed _somewhat_ well, but i wouldn't say it clearly outperformed the west given the whole "collapse" thing. I could argue the point, but only weakly.

It's more illuminating to pick the two exemplars, America and China, because they have many parallels

[SirHackalot]

It outperformed the west in some things, notably not computing (which sealed its fate). I agree though. But I think there’s also something to be said about the way in which the experiment ended. Compared to the bloody, violent disintegration of most historical superpowers, the dissolution of the USSR was a remarkably swift, self-inflicted, and low-violence event.

[psd1]

It's hard to layer meaning over social media comment, but what i wanted to express was the nonsensicality of reducing history to "yay capitalism".

There's a common strand of thought that goes "America is emphatically capitalist, America is successful, ergo success is due to capitalism". But America finished WWII with a proportionally-small loss of life and a massive and intact industrial base while all the existing powers were in a heap of wreckage. It then held the mortgage on reconstruction and dictated the terms of the peace.

With advantages like that, it would be remarkable if they didn't end up on top of the pile. Capitalism was merely the vehicle, and other vehicles would have been equally adequate.

People who need answers to be simple will continue to make bold claims about the relative merits of capitalism. It's just identity signaling. I'd like to cull humans who, in adulthood, decline to develop critical thinking skills. These people vote, and they shouldn't.

[tonyhart7]

case in point: bringing 2 best example of why capitalism is the best system

[psd1]

Care to explain?

[SirHackalot]

Take a breath, you’re having a total knee-jerk reaction. What statistic?

So out of thousands of years of human history, we somehow stumbled onto the absolute final, perfect economic system 250 years ago with zero room for upgrade? Makes total sense /s. I’m sure there were those who said feudalism/mercantilism were the most efficient systems ever and we don’t need capitalism. Even Marx was a fan of capitalism, he viewed it as a revolutionary stepping stone towards a more efficient system and praised it for lifting feudal subjects out of poverty, and the massive productivity gains it produced. That’s not what’s being argued here.

> "The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together."

[tonyhart7]

are you want to move goal post further and further ????