The entire world was communist from the time cave paintings were drawn in France tens of thousands of years ago, to about 10000 years ago.
Whereas capitalism has only existed as the predominant economic system anywhere for a few centuries. In the US, with two economic crises in the past decade, Covid at a peak, global warming, racial strife, riots on streets etc., I am not sure what is working in the real world with the economic system here.
Hey, could you please not use HN primarily for ideological battle? It's not what this site is for, and I had to go back to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24212372 to find a post (a fine one!) that wasn't like that. That's a 20:1 ratio, which is definitely not the balance we're looking for here; the other way around would be more like it.
> The entire world was communist from the time cave paintings were drawn in France tens of thousands of years ago, to about 10000 years ago.
No, it wasn't.
Some of it was vaguely communitarian in non-communist ways.
> Whereas capitalism has only existed as the predominant economic system anywhere for a few centuries
Capitalism has been displaced by modern mixed economies as the dominant economic system of the developed world for close to a century. How long it was dominant is debatable because it's not really clear where to draw the line between pre-capitalist systems and emergent capitalist systems. I tend to say early capitalist systems were around 16th C,
How do you understand that the entire world was communist until 10,000 years ago?
The natural order of the world appears to more closely resemble capitalism via the "eat what you kill" philosophy.
I imagine you are imagining close-knit tribes that would share resources freely internally. If so, would you agree that tribe members that leech off of the tribe and don't contribute were likely expelled from the group?
We certainly all do seem to have this innate fear of being abandoned by our group, so I think it's fair to say that we're adapted to avoid this outcome.
No, private property, which is a capitalist institution, has existed since prehistoric times, probably from even since before Homo Sapiens arose. Proto-property-rights are also observed in the Animal Kingdom, with principles like "first possession", where the first animal to the kill is less likely to give up the kill, and the second animal more likely to give it up, often governing animal interactions. In fact, game theory experiments demonstrate that observance of this proto-property principle reduces conflict among agents, so it's unsurprising that it's common among animal species.
Returning to humans, extant hunter gatherer groups observe property rights, both at a personal level, with their ownership of tools and clothes:
>>Moveable material property, such as tools, clothing, and valuables, is generally treated as individual property
And on the inter-tribal level, with tribes asserting exclusive control over the territory that they exploit.
Food sharing is common in hunterer gatherer societies, but almost all of it is intra-tribal, meaning to relatively close kin. Even within the tribe, such sharing is heavily biased by kin selection.
Food sharing is often very reciprocal as well, with an expectation of a return in exchange for the 'gift'. This is also demonstrated to some extent experimentally:
> No, private property, which is a capitalist institution
No, it hasn't. “Private property”, in the sense in which it is a defining institution of capitalism (ownership of the means of production by an individual as marketable property distinct from. ownership of or personal jurisdiction over land), requires the conceptual separation of individual property and public authority that is one of the characteristic features of the transition from pre-capitalist (specifically feudal in most of the West) to capitalist property relations. It is not something that universally existed from prehistoric times. You seem to be confusing the particular sense of “private property” associated with capitalism with the more generic concept of individual property, which is necessary to capitalism but not distinctly capitalist.
>>No, it hasn't. “Private property”, in the sense in which it is a defining institution of capitalism (ownership of the means of production by an individual as marketable property distinct from. ownership of or personal jurisdiction over land)
Modern capitalism's private property is based on exactly the same principle of exclusive control over a mass of matter as pre-modern society's private property. It is a more sophisticated version of it, that incorporates the advances of modern civilization to its enforcement and utilization, but that is to be expected with any institution as it evolves with the times.
>>requires the conceptual separation of individual property and public authority that is one of the characteristic features of the transition from pre-capitalist (specifically feudal in most of the West) to capitalist property relations.
Just a smaller scale version of private property, that is exactly what you would expect with smaller-scale society, and the form you would expect modern private property's pre-historic progenitor to take, before codes of law, and the scaling up of production with agricultural and then industrial-scale capital.
That is not correct, the term is used by all kinds of socialists. You may not care about the difference in general, but denying it is not helpful when discussing socialism. You're trying to refute the claim that private property (in the socialist sense) is problematic by defending private property (in the liberal sense), which doesn't make sense because these are two different concepts.
Before I address your point, I'll clarify that I want to use correct/standard definitions, not definitions only understood by small subsets of the population.
Now to your point: private property intended for personal use, which socialist ideology claims is not problematic, is the direct progenitor of private property used for other purposes, like earning an income for the owner from being rented out, or from being utilized in an enterprise that employs other people to operate the private property.
The differences between private property intended for personal use, and private property intended for business or commercial use, are completely superficial with respect to the basic principles that society operates on.
People have been saying the CCP is on its last legs for over 70 years.
In those seventy years it has led a country which grew to have the second largest GDP in the world.
-- writing this from the USA, where Covid is spiking, where there are armed right wing Covid open for business riots at statehouses, as well as against police kneeling on black men's throats killing them leading to nationwide blm antifa riots, where the president won't concede the election, where U3 unemployment is currently 6.9% etc.
(I heard about the Hong Kong riots in the US News until the open-business/blm/antifa riots happened with a much higher body count)
> While of course we should try to prevent it, we should also try to mitigate the consequences in the even a war does occur!
I used to have an old Stanford Research Institute report from the 1980s where the author tried to project that if the US and USSR had a full scale nuclear war, US GNP would be back to normal within five years.
Who knows what government bureaucrat had a program requiring an Orwellian report like to justify whatever policy.
Who is this we? If you want to store up MREs and tin foil hats and build a bomb shelter, be my guest. Most of our efforts will be to prevent a large-scale nuclear war from happening or needing to happen.
999 times out of 1000 if I ask a working class American to explain Marx's concept of surplus labor time, they would have no idea of what I was talking about. That is false consciousness.
You're talking as if they rejected the idea. They don't even know what the idea is.
A sizable amount of working class Americans have no idea that people die. They have no idea that their grandparents died. They have been to wakes and have seen the corpse of their grandparents or whomever, but when I talk to them they say their grandparents are elsewhere and enjoying themselves. They do not mean this metaphorically, or that they live on via children or their works or memories. They have no concept that these people are not around any more, permanently. They go to churches where a man stands in front and says this, I guess they believe him. This would be part of false consciousness, although not a needed component of them. They are as ignorant of death as they are of their economic exploitation. They are ignorant and uneducated. If you want to call them stupid as you do, that's your right.
> inflation protection and avoiding capital controls are arguably the most impactful innovation since the internet
Inflation protection? Bitcoin lost one third of its value in the past three years. How is that inflation protection? You would have done better to hold most commodities or most currencies in that time period to protect from inflation, other than Bitcoin.
That's only for the People who bought at the top and sold. For the vast majority of people BTC has outperformed any other investment for majority of trading days.
I don't blame Bitcoin for being volatile. I just don't see how its volatility is consistent with the claim that it represents an innovation in protection against inflation.
Again, we are bootstrapping a financial system. Volatility is to be expected. Volatility will decrease with time (lindy effect, adoption, etc.) as it has from the beginning. In the asymptotic target state, btc is the only true scarce asset in the world, uncensorable and with instant global transfers.
Respectfully, this seems like less of an argument and more of a slogan. It's hard to see why the Lindy effect, adoption, "only true scarcity", uncensorability, or instant global transfers would imply a large eventual decrease in volatility.
> There was a whole probably 4 years (at least) to register to vote up to this day. For the prepared...
I moved from one state to another in June. I did not have four years to prepare. I was also not allowed to register immediately, you must reside for some months to register. Also this state has voter suppression to make registration more difficult. They certainly do not have online registration, but they piled on extra Covid difficulties lately. I did manage to register however. What you are saying is ridiculous.
The southern states had laws, somewhat compliant to federal law, that you could vote if your grandfather could vote. A way to keep those of African descent out.
Yale has policies to give slots to legacies, effectively the same thing.
Only this time the federal government and Justice department is what fights to keep the handful of those of African descent going to Yale.
It's what America means. It's what the flag stands for.
Might wanna read the article "The complaint alleges that Yale discriminated against applicants to Yale College on the grounds of race and national origin, and that Yale’s discrimination imposes undue and unlawful penalties on racially-disfavored applicants, including in particular most Asian and White applicants."
"For the great majority of applicants, Asian Americans and Whites have only one-eighth to one-fourth of the likelihood of admission as African American applicants with comparable academic credentials. Yale rejects scores of Asian American and White applicants each year based on their race, whom it otherwise would admit. "
I don't know if you read the article, but the main focus of the lawsuit is that Asians and whites have a much smaller chance of getting accepted than black people.
> Africans in Africa share little of the fervent anti-colonial attitude prominent in the American Black community here.
Like who, Umkhonto we Sizwe?
Patrice Lumumba? The MPLA?
> African writers in Britain and Africa, respectively, write to disparage the export of the Black American anti-colonial perspective
Is this new? The South Africans had Buthelezi to go around the world criticizing the anti-apartheid movement, and there were ones before that.
Benedict Arnold ended up not sharing the anti-colonial attitude of his fellow Americans. Nor did Vidkun Quisling of his fellow Norwegians share anti-colonial attitudes. We are not unaware these people exist.
>Like who, Umkhonto we Sizwe? Patrice Lumumba? The MPLA?
We're talking ground-floor interactions from what I've seen that obviously do not speak to any kind of unanimity but a surprising extent nonetheless. One such video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkKi1vC_IEA
> Is this new? The South Africans had Buthelezi to go around the world criticizing the anti-apartheid movement, and there were ones before that.
The writers in question weren't criticizing the modern anti-racism movement in America, however, but the form of its response and its presumptions. Perhaps a minute difference but one nonetheless.
Also, if anti-colonial feelings in Africa are a black American export, I guess that means the 1879 victory of the Zulus over two British columns in the battle of Isandlwana were a black American export.
There is strong anti-colonialist sentiment still in Africa today. Again, I believe ignoring it and putting our heads in the sand is not the right way to go. You have to face down ethno-nationalists, or you end up in a very bad place. Just as you have to challenge ethno-nationalists in the US, you need to challenge them in Africa. In the end, they are bad for societies they operate in.
> A sane response would challenge the claim that lockdowns are the answer with a simple question: where is the proof that the last one worked?
New Zealand has two large islands, and some smaller ones. Lockdown worked there. 5 million people, 3 Covid deaths since June. From yesterday to two weeks before yesterday there were 28 new cases.
Those sprung on from a mysterious outbreak that started August 11th near a facility that receives refrigerated and frozen foods. New Zealand went into lockdown and tracing and it has been contained so far.
Great Britain is also an island, but it prioritized differently. In New Zealand, social life is open right now, but also the economy is less constricted, because the disease has been contained.
> Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, and writer who tried to uphold republican principles in the final civil wars that destroyed the Roman Republic.
Cicero was a man who fought against the tribunes representing the vast majority of Roman citizens, and for the power of the idle class aristocracy which did not work.
He also was like an ancient embodiment of QAnon (which sees the US Democratic Party leadership as involved in a child sex conspiracy) - he accused populare aligned senators like Catiline of defiling the sacred Vestal virgins in Senate hearings.
Whereas capitalism has only existed as the predominant economic system anywhere for a few centuries. In the US, with two economic crises in the past decade, Covid at a peak, global warming, racial strife, riots on streets etc., I am not sure what is working in the real world with the economic system here.