As opposed to capitalism, which as we all know works flawlessly. The free hand of the market keeps everything running smoothly. There’s always competition for the benefit of the customer, never collusion. There aren’t just a few bit players controlling everything, everyone has equal opportunity. And of course who can forget trickle down economics, where giving more money to the richest people made every one of us richer.
Capitalism’s most outstanding feature is that no matter how hard it tears one’s asshole, it keeps people begging for more with the false promise that they too one day will have their turn as the selfish oppressors doing the pounding, and that’s a good thing for everyone actually, for some reason.
Is there any ideology applied societally at the scale of those two which hasn’t failed to deliver?
Capitalism doesn’t preach to be a solution for monopolistic behavior of actors that accumulate too much power. It’s a known downside of capitalism that has to be actively managed by the state.
Capitalism has still delivered with massive success in China, the US, India, Europe, etc etc. It hasn’t “failed to deliver” in any of those places.
So in other words, communism pretends to solve the problem of power accumulation but doesn't, while capitalism doesn't even claim to do so (and only occasionally even sees it as a problem at all)
> Capitalism has still delivered with massive success in China, the US, India, Europe, etc etc.
Ah yes, the “massive success” where people can’t afford a place to live, struggle to cover basic necessities, are increasingly lonely, radicalised, unhappy, depressed… But hey, at least you can look at cat videos all day while enriching a small number of individuals who don’t even allow you the dignity of not having to piss in bottles as you’re making them more money they will ever be able to spend.
This was precisely my point. No matter how much mistreatment there is, we can always count on someone coming out to ask for more.
>Ah yes, the “massive success” where people can’t afford a place to live, struggle to cover basic necessities
Nobody is struggling to find enough to eat in Europe or America; even the poor unemployed are overweight to the point of obesity. Tens of millions of people from all over the world are costly flocking to those countries for a better life; they wouldn't be doing that if their systems delivered better outcomes.
If you like communism so much why not move to somewhere like North Korea or Cuba, the most communist countries in the world?
> Nobody is struggling to find enough to eat in Europe or America
Respectfully, you need to get out more. I recommend you go volunteer at your local food bank.
Or at the very least go into Wikipedia and search “poverty”. There are pages for individual countries. And yes, they very much include the US and Europe.
> If you like communism so much
I’m not defending communism, I’m arguing capitalism isn’t a panacea. The world isn’t black and white.
You just moved the goal posts, OP didn't say there weren't people struggling with homelessness, I think he was saying that famine or dying of lack of food is basically 0% in Europe or America. "Enough to eat" is poorly phrased, as we eat too much already.
Food is not the only basic necessity people struggle with. By the way 14% of US households suffered from food insecurity in 2024 https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details?pubid=1136.... On top of that the poor are overweight and obese because cheap food is ultraprocessed, unhealthy and designed to make you addicted to it.
>Tens of millions of people from all over the world are costly flocking to those countries for a better life;
Of course the west and specifically the US have absolutely nothing to do with the material conditions of those countries.../S
> If you like communism so much why not move to somewhere like North Korea or Cuba, the most communist countries in the world?
And if you love capitalism so much why don't you move to the US? Oh wait, they just halted VISA applications for 80 countries and don't want to let in any immigrants...
Unfortunately, we’ve reached the era where pics and shorts are very much no longer proof. In a few minutes you could generate video of that exact scenario.
Based on this tall tale being the top comment, and the replies to you, I hereby request dang remove the “HN is becoming Reddit” nono from the guidelines.
I agree. I don't understand the argument that just because people have incorrectly claimed HN is turning into reddit before, it automatically means it can never happen. I think HN has become a lot more like reddit and in some ways even worse.
> I don't understand the argument that just because people have incorrectly claimed HN is turning into reddit before, it automatically means it can never happen.
I don’t think the argument is it can never happen, but rather that at the time of writing of the guidelines it hadn’t. And that it is an argument that doesn’t advance the discussion. Complaining that HN is becoming like Reddit is one of the things which makes HN more like Reddit.
Most users won’t ever use any AI outside of the big players, and those couldn’t give a flying fuck about user empowerment. They’ll just advertise at you and recommend whatever is popular. It’s unrealistic to believe AI will bring any kind of democratisation or software service independence to regular users.
I see a lot of complaints outside of HN. For starters, not every nerd, and not even every Apple nerd, is on HN. Outside of that, even my non-tech-savvy acquaintances have been complaining as of late.
Is it enough of a damaged brand to hurt their profits as of now? Clearly not. But cracks are forming. Apple’s brand isn’t damaged when they’re seen as bad, but when they’re seen as the same as everyone else.
> Outside of that, even my non-tech-savvy acquaintances have been complaining as of late.
What do they say? I'm genuinely curious.
Because e.g. I don't have the slightest idea what percentage Microsoft takes on Xbox games, nor would it ever occur to me to complain about it. I know there's a business model there, but it's not something I think about. And I feel like that's the way people outside of tech feel about whatever percentage Apple takes out of its App Store. But what am I missing?
The important bit is “trading net profits for user happiness”. Non-tech-savvy users aren’t complaining about Apple’s margins for apps, but about the things Apple is doing to degrade their experience in the name of profit. Namely excessive ads on the App Store, on System Settings, and on Apple Apps themselves such as Music and Wallet (F1).
No, it’s not. I have just told you it’s not. Which is anecdotal, but also true. Do you not frequent other websites with nerds other than HN?
> I have plenty of friends who are not on HN and I haven’t heard anyone ever complain about these things.
Is your personal experience the only valid one? Are your friends the epitome of diversity of opinions? I don’t have any friends who are white supremacists, does that mean white supremacists don’t exist? Because I’m pretty sure they do, even in my country. All of us live in bubbles to an extent, you have simply bumped into another boundary of yours.
Do a web search for Apple Wallet F1. Do you think all those people are on HN? They’re certainly complaining outside of it.
Religions may outsource opinions on morality, but no one went to their spiritual leader to ask about the Pythagorean theorem or the population of Zimbabwe.
Obviously I was using the Pythagorean theorem as a random not literal example. But I’m also curious about what you mean. Mind linking to the specific relevant parts? Linking to humongous articles doesn’t help much.
I was linking it partially tongue in cheek, but oracles and the auspices in antiquity were specifically not about morality. They were about predicting the future. If you wanted to know if you should invade Carthage on a certain day, you'd check the chickens. Literally. And plenty of medical practices were steeped in religious fare, too. If you go back further, a lot of shamanistic practices divine the facts about the present reality. In the words of Terrence McKenna, "[Shamans] cure disease (and another way of putting that is: they have a remarkable facility for choosing patients who will recover), they predict weather (very important), they tell where game has gone, the movement of game, and they seem to have a paranormal ability to look into questions, as I mentioned, who’s sleeping with who, who stole the chicken, who—you know, social transgressions are an open book to them." All very much dealing with facts, not morality.
> The cosmos of the acusmata, however, clearly shows a belief in a world structured according to mathematics, and some of the evidence for this belief may have been drawn from genuine mathematical truths such as those embodied in the “Pythagorean” theorem and the relation of whole number ratios to musical concords.
There are numerous sections throughout both of these entries that discuss Pythagoras, mathematics, and religion. Plato too is another fruitful avenue, if you wanted to explore that further.
GP did not say that just because you work at a massive company you are brilliant. Nor did they say just working at Google makes you brilliant.
The irony of your comment of accusing them of using fallacious rhetoric, is that your reply uses one of the most common fallacies of all: strawman fallacy
GP assumed “the most brilliant engineers” are working on these problems. There’s zero reason to believe that is true and the one thing we know about those people is that they work for Google.
Their argument isn’t new, it’s just a rehash of “the most brilliant minds of our generation are working on trying to get you to click on ads”. My criticism was directed at the general argument, which is simply wrong. That comment is based on nothing except those people working at those corporations.
It is not a strawman because I am disagreeing with the conclusion as quoted, the reasoning being immaterial.
Capitalism’s most outstanding feature is that no matter how hard it tears one’s asshole, it keeps people begging for more with the false promise that they too one day will have their turn as the selfish oppressors doing the pounding, and that’s a good thing for everyone actually, for some reason.
Is there any ideology applied societally at the scale of those two which hasn’t failed to deliver?
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