It was designed partly as a joke, but partly to demonstrate ridiculousness of communism. The goal of the game was to become a secretary general of the communist party and emigrate abroad.
>It was designed partly as a joke, but partly to demonstrate ridiculousness of communism. The goal of the game was to become a secretary general of the communist party and emigrate abroad.
I can't read the Czech link (do you know if there's a translated link or something in English?) but that seems more like from your one sentence description (and my reading of the wikipedia link) a game satirizing the ridiculousness of playing politics rather than communism?
I didn't bother with translate link, because I thought it's actually quite hard to understand the jokes anyway, but someone else did, and I have to say, it turned out better than I expected.
Just to explain the most unclear things, "mina" means mine (explosive device), and "veksl" means illegal money exchange (with western currency).
Yes, it was more about ridiculousness of the real socialism, not the idea of communism.
Capitalism benefits a few at the cost of many and it's designed too. Can any supporter articulate a scenario where capitalism enables prosperity for the majority without immediately resorting to bottom barrel comparisons to feudalism? The reality is we need to imagine a more evolved society without pandering to the greed and self interest of a few. This of course appears to be our eternal struggle.
The bigger problem with capitalism is it is designed to perpetuate entrenched interests and status quo. It origins from a time when few had capital or property, only the nobility did, convenient, and was obviously designed to perpetuate feudalism by proxy as they could direct economies and systems with their resources, and continue to.
A few examples of those who sacrifice their entire life to gain more capital offers eternal hope to the masses to hop on to the gravy train some already are on by birth, and those who sacrifice their life to accomplish this are obviously going to be overzealous supporters of 'the system', their entire identity and self worth riding on this achievement.
We need to find a way to detach progress from capitalism. Human progress cannot depend on greed which is basically what capitalism boils down to, rewarding and perpetuating the base traits of humanity and leaving a soulless society unable to rise above basic greed in its wake.
> We need to find a way to detach progress from capitalism
What, you mean this[0] isn't progress? /s
The surge in irregular jobs doesn’t just create problems for the people working those jobs. It’s also led companies to feel that they can treat their regular workers poorly, because those workers feel so lucky to have a job, Konno told me. Knowing that people in their 20s and 30s are desperate to get regular jobs, companies hire lots of young people and force them to work long hours for little to no overtime pay, assuming that most won’t be able to survive the harsh conditions, Konno said. Japan has long had a culture of overwork—there’s even a Japanese word, karoshi, for death by overwork—but Konno says that it has worsened since the Great Recession, as companies have realized that good jobs are hard to find in Japan, and so push their employees harder.
...
Though company employees left work at 7 p.m. on paper, Matsubara said he was required to work until late at night almost every day. Employees were required to sign off at 7 p.m., even if they were still working, and were given iPads so that they could do so even if they were out of the office at meetings. If they didn’t sign off, they’d get a call on their cellphones brusquely asking them to sign off immediately but keep working, he said. “The amount of time you're actually working and the amount of time that is recorded you're working have absolutely no relation to each other,”
[0] The Mystery of Why Japanese People Are Having So Few Babieshttps://goo.gl/zoHH6L (theatlantic.com)
"Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way."
> We need to find a way to detach progress from capitalism. Human progress cannot depend on greed which is basically what capitalism boils down to, rewarding and perpetuating the base traits of humanity and leaving a soulless society unable to rise above basic greed in its wake.
That's exactly why capitalism works. You're exemplifying the standard flaw in leftist, utopian thinking: that you can overcome or change human nature.
Utopia would come at an enormous cost, and everyone who's tried has gone bankrupt--morally, ethically, and financially. But we'll get it right This Time.
Please read a history book. Maybe start with The Gulag Archipelago.
Played this game a couple of weeks ago with my family (my wife, an 11 year-old, and a 14 year-old.)
We quickly remembered why we hadn't played it in a year: you must be greedy to win, hopes & dreams get dashed, and someone always ends up angry and/or in tears.
If a simple board game played with family leaves someone angry or in tears then that's a problem. Games like monopoly are actually great opportunities for children to learn self control and perspective.
Agreed my little brother and I played a game of monopoly that payed almost a whole summer when we were kids. Any time somebody ran out of money, we begged for "alms for the poor" and the other guy would give money to keep the game going. I suppose increased capacity for generosity is a good side of capitalism. Think about it now - many of the richest Americans have decided to give all their money away. I can guarantee that bill gates will do a better job with it than the government would.
I recall similar dynamic rules being added by me and my friends. Sometimes there would be a Robin Hood raid on the banks. Sometimes the bank would run out of money. Sometimes the Jail would be over full. Sometimes when others were not looking hotels would vanish mysteriously or via "gas explosion". Or we would pass around cash between ourselves to give the losing players more of a chance. It made it more fun.
I guess scrabble is a bad idea because it causes fights when someone doesn't understand the concept of proper nouns? Oh my gosh, conflict, let's just throw the game away to spare everyone's feelings.
If you get angry rather than use it as a chance to learn, sure. I'd avoid playing scrabble with that adult, among other games if this spread there too. Children get stopped for the day due to the outburst, but generally get more chances since they are learning.
Monopoly is especially bad for this. It's the game you introduce people to if you want to put them off board games. So many people have stories about games of monopoly disintegrating into arguments.
Why? Probably due to the extremely zero-sum randomly-driven parts of it, combined with the last-man-standing nature. People who have to drop out early end up disaffected. Someone who gets an early advantage will usually stay ahead, which isn't fun either.
There are games with more backstabbing in e.g. Diplomacy, but they're rightly seen as not for everyone. Whereas Monopoly has this odd status as "default board game" while not being very fun.
Yes it can be a frustrating game if you lose, but it can also be very fun if you win. If you're unfortunate and end up losing early, you can still hang out and watch, or go do something else. The point is that we have to learn to tolerate and adapt to that failure. Our first instinct may be to get angry and complain but that's not constructive or helpful.
Are you sure the 'we' and 'someone' shouldn't be read as 'I' and you just aren't so good at playing monopoly? :) (just kidding; almost weekend)
Though to be on topic again, are there many board games where the goal isn't to beat the other player by whatever means the rules of the board game allow? From tic-tac-toe to monopoly to card games, there will always be a loser, and if he or she can't handle that, they will cry/tirade.
Yes, there are! Hanabi, Pandemic, Sentinels of the Multiverse are three of the biggest games of the last decade. All are cooperative. You all win or lose together.
Last time I played Monopoly it ended up two people who were too big to fail constantly running around the board passing money back and forth. A subtle jab by the universe at two party politics within capitalist societies?
There was a thread about boardgames here on HN two days ago and someone commented that Monopoly wasn't just a bad game, but a game created with that purpose (so that being "bad" was an intended feature).
The comment sparked a lot of discussion and most people didn't know about that original goal of Monopoly.
Now this article appear on a major magazine. It's very suspicious. Unless this is a huge coincidence, these writers must think again about their intellectual honesty.
> So next time someone invites you to join a game of Monopoly, here’s a thought. As you set out piles for the Chance and Community Chest cards, establish a third pile for Land-Value Tax, to which every property owner must contribute each time they charge rent to a fellow player. How high should that land tax be? And how should the resulting tax receipts be distributed? Such questions will no doubt lead to fiery debate around the Monopoly board – but then that is exactly what Magie had always hoped for.
Could a computer program (e.g. genetic programming) come up with a fair set of rules?
I'm not sure if it makes it fairer, but it makes the game different.
Theoretically, the game starts as fair. All start with the same money, on the same place on the board. But since you move by rolling dice, some folks get luckier than others, with more chances to buy things or gain income.... or simply avoiding landing on a built up property. The free parking money basically puts lottery money into action. Sometimes, free parking is funded by fees (jail fees, cards, etc) and some folks just take moeny from the bank and put it in the middle.
At times, it means the rich get richer. Sometimes, the poor pull themselves up. Many times, it just makes everyone richer at different times and it takes a lot longer to make folks go bankrupt. It does give a little chance of winning something with each go around the board, and I think this is why the rule is popular.
no, it just prolongs the inevitable. The first player to gain an edge on the others still eventually wins, it's just that it takes hours instead of minutes.
One way to approach it, retaining the free market dynamics, is to have players bid on land with rent. Instead of paying the bank a big pile up front, agree on a rent to pay every turn to keep the land, highest bidder wins.
Well it certainly is evil, taking several hours, provoking family arguments, the slow grinding down of anyone that didn't get ahead quickly at the start.
That's too kind an assessment. Monopoly sucks. It sucks as an educational tool and it sucks as a board game.
First, if it was meant to teach the evils of capitalism it has failed in many levels, as the article illustrates. Even if you were to play with the amended rules, it'd be moot; nobody cares about Georgist socialism anymore.
As a board game: there are literally hundreds of games better than Monopoly. Even we restrict ourselves to so-called "family" games. If there's something you like about Monopoly, I can assure you can find a better game that has that something but it's better designed:
Many will be simpler and shorter too. Of course, you might like or dislike a particular game in that set, but consider that Monopoly is ranked at 1583 in the family category. There's no excuse to play Monopoly unless one somehow has managed to stay unaware of the existence of all these other games.
Capitalism is the most productive system that humanity has produced because it leads to individual entrepreneurship. Exhibit one: Grumpy Cat is a millionaire.
I don't understand why everyone hates capitalism now. Its like "what the cool kids do".
You know whats really cool? Inventing stuff. Using the power of your mind to form matter into a new thing that the universe has never seen before. Whats really cool is starting a business that adds enough value to the world to hire people. Feeding them with the power of your mind and a little bit of shared elbow grease.
The "cool kids" seem to be bashing capitalism today. Thats not cool.
What's really cool is the majority of people having a pleasant and comfortable life and a bright future for their kids. Maximizing the prosperity of the majority is the purpose of a democratic society.
People are ragging on capitalism because they're looking over the pond to countries that see capitalism as a tool to serve democratic interests rather than as moral worldview, and they kind of like that idea. Interestingly, those countries aren't really less capitalistic (the Heritage Foundation puts the U.S. in the same bucket on their Economic Freedom index as Sweden and Germany), but their culture is less centered around glorifying the capitalist.
> People are ragging on capitalism because they're looking over the pond to countries that see capitalism as a tool to serve democratic interests rather than a moral worldview, and they kind of like that idea. Interestingly, those countries aren't really less capitalistic (the Heritage Foundation puts the U.S. in the same bucket on their Economic Freedom index as Sweden and Germany), but their culture is less centered around glorifying the capitalist.
I think you've made a great point here - but I've seen people explicitly saying they want communism. Look at how often /r/LateStageCapitalism, an explicitly communist subreddit is on the frontpage of reddit.
If people were just pushing for a few more socialized services, I think they've got a good argument to make there. There are good tweaks that can be made. But if they're pushing for a complete change to the system I think they're off their rockers.
Quite a lot of those people are "into" actual communism out of a mixture of ignorance and edginess. Revolutions sound great when you're naive. And it's not actually a great number of people as a proportion of the electorate!
The key is what happens to suggestions for "good tweaks". Do they get considered reasonably and implemented fairly? Or are people denounced for even seeking tweaks?
Flexible mixed-economy capitalism seems to be pretty stable. Capitalism that's blind to inequality produces an increasing long tail of disaffected victims with nothing to lose. Hence the rise of kick-over-the-table politics, epitomised by Trump.
I think it's an understatement to categorize the changes as "tweaks." In the U.S., the prevailing view seems to be that social services are a concession capitalists make because they're forced to. We glorify and fetishize capitalists and achievers and optimize the system to benefit them. Even our left does that (e.g. HN). You can have free markets without that mentality, and that might be a good thing because I think people are chafing at that.
At the end of the day, the actual change in the mix of social services might just be tweaks, but you're also talking about a very significant change in worldview.
> I don't understand why everyone hates capitalism now
People have been hating capitalism since the invention of capitalism, it's not new. Americans might just be starting to hate it but thats due to the fact that they really haven't been able to ever have a fair and honest discussion about the various economic systems of the world because of 80 years of capitalist propaganda and suppression of socialists and communists
Because corrupt corporatism and crony capitalism has been effectively conflated with free market capitalism.
Most politicians who claim to support capitalism actually are supporting nothing of the sort. It then becomes convenient for the media to label capitalism as a corrupt system. It is true that our economic system has become quite corrupt and has abandoned free markets. So when politicians defend that system as a capitalism, then naturally that is where the association has been built.
I don't believe that there can really be a meaningful distinction between "free market capitalism" and "crony capitalism." Capitalism creates powerful private actors in whose interest it is to pursue regulatory capture.
I think you're hitting the nail on the head in some ways, although I'd disagree with you in other ways.
The problem is the "regulatory capture" part, not the "capitalism" part, in my view. What we have now is capitalism + rules that serve a small percent.
To me capitalism versus socialism are kind of red herrings. The real issue is creating and nurturing competition, which is kind of orthogonal to those issues.
It's completely predictable to end up with "crony socialism" just as much as "crony capitalism".
The way I see it, the appropriate goal is increasing and maintaining competition. Sometimes this means government protection of human capital pools through welfare and social programs, sometimes this means actually regulating a market to increase competition (net neutrality), sometimes this means introducing government services to compete with private services, sometimes this means privatizing things, sometimes it means deregulating...
I also think fairness is another big problem; nominal value and actual value (of labor, goods, etc.) are often different. So in either system you will end up with individuals (you can call them free-riders or psychopaths or whatever) who will take advantage of loopholes, errors, biases, and misspecifications in the system for their own gain. E.g., to me the fundamental problem with income inequality isn't that there's variation in income, it's my sense that that income variation is unfair, in the sense that some people's contributions are being undervalued, or others' are being overvalued, or that there are unrecognized benefits from public services (e.g., net neutrality vis-a-vis ISP's right-of-way grants, government bailouts of financial firms), etc. that aren't being fairly compensated or recognized in regulation.
I worry a bit that framing the debate as capitalism versus socialism only perpetuates problems. The problem is really corruption and fairness.
If an industry is benefiting unfairly from regulatory capture (e.g., in the form of patents, or physician groups, or whatever), focusing on capitalism versus socialism per se only allows the beneficiaries of that capture to come back with accusations of "liberal communism", and then no one is talking about the capture or the corruption, which is the actual problem, and then it continues.
Regulatory agencies or any centralized governance becomes a target. This is why constitutionally no such authority was ever given to the federal government to institute such agencies.
Saying there is no meaningful distinction is truly disingenuous. Like saying there is no difference between a fresh apple and a rotten apple. Obviously there is and there are reasons as to why the different states exist. One state is extremely beneficial and the other state is not.
>This is why constitutionally no such authority was ever given to the federal government to institute such agencies.
"[The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes." Article 1, also allows for them to make laws ensuring they can execute that directive.
> Congress can pass laws, but not delegate that power to another entity.
Congress can, however, make laws whose explicit terms make their effect contingent on external facts, including the actions of officers in particular executive-branch agencies.
> Regulatory agencies or any centralized governance becomes a target. This is why constitutionally no such authority was ever given to the federal government to institute such agencies.
“Regulatory agencies” are simply a label for a subset of executive agencies defined by certain traits; I think it would be very hard to argue that the Necessary and Proper Clause does not authorize creating agencies with these traits as a means of exercise of Congress other enumerated powers.
> You know whats really cool? Inventing stuff. Using the power of your mind to form matter into a new thing that the universe has never seen before. Whats really cool is starting a business that adds enough value to the world to hire people. Feeding them with the power of your mind and a little bit of shared elbow grease.
You seem to believe that these things are exclusive to capitalism. But none of those things are capitalism, nor would they automatically be excluded in a non-capitalist system.
y4mi didn't say that capitalism was the system that had created the greatest scale, merely that capitalism was the system that had worked best at scale. So China's system can create a bigger economy than the USA? Fine. (And the new, non-Maoist system has lifted something like a quarter of a billion people out of poverty, which is an amazing achievement.) But can it create a per-capita income similar to the USA's? So far, no, not even close. So China is not actually a refutation of y4mi's point, and won't be for quite some time.
Why can't China's system produce a better per-person outcome than the USA's? Well, China was starting from a much lower point after western domination, then Japanese invasion, then civil war, and then Mao's blundering and oppression. But apart from that, China's government has too much power. This gives too many opportunities for corruption, and corruption drains the life out of the economy. (And yes, the USA's government has too much power, too. The USA (I think) less corrupt than China, but the corruption is there, at least in the form of people using the government's power to hinder competitors. More direct forms are starting to show up, too, or at least we're starting to hear about them more than we used to.
What system really works? A government strong enough that it can prevent people abusing the market (collusion, fraud, unsafe products), but not so strong that it's easy or useful to use the government as a mechanism of abuse, and not so cumbersome that it gets much in the way of normal (non-fraudulent, non-collusion, safe products) business.
You could say that of any bunch of decades in any part of history for the last three hundred years. I think it's a natural side effect of being human and living and perceiving in the present day. Every people in their own time think that they are living in the most crucial and important time ever, if one remembers that, and the perspective that history gives, we can temper our reactions.
I never said this was "the most crucial and important time ever" (how do you even quantify that?). What I wanted to imply is that since the 70s wages have stagnated and now many people are going backwards and experiencing worse standards of living, with occasional crises like the 2008 housing crisis along the way. It's not really surprising that people are looking for something different.
Indeed. Capitalism built the Pyramids and the Parthenon; capitalism took us to the Moon; capitalism made Homer write the Iliad for the license fees and produced the most widely printed book of all time, the Bible.
/s
More seriously, the lesson we should apply from Monopoly is that once the money is in few enough hands the "game" of capitalism is over.
Maybe we shouldn't consider Monopoly a game of 'capitalism'.
Although, it probably in some respects does represent the popular idea of capitalism and the reality of our current regulated economic system.
The game monopoly better represents a non free market economy. The players are constrained within the limited confines of the game. As players accrue money and resources they can't invest that into new businesses. The is no representation in the game of other economic pressures of supply and demand of human resources. All these limits are more analogous to a heavily regulated economy. And of course, part of the game is based simply on chance. Players aren't complete free to engage in free trade as they would see fit.
There are no limits in a real world economy on agreements, contracts etc between actors. Monopoly is a very closed system and in no way represents a real free economy.
I think you're confused about the definition of a monopoly. Most monopolies or cartels rise organically but then achieve such a dominant position that it becomes impossible for upstarts to challenge them.
They're bashing two things: crony capitalism where companies put up barriers to entry and try to weaken government anti-competition and consumer protection laws so they can f* people over, which makes people angry; and the "religious" idea that pure capitalism (sometimes also conflated with pure free market, no regulations) solves every single problem, the idea that all things are products, and if you can't afford a product, go f* yourself.
I think people understand the world is more complex than either planned economies, or pure free market ones, and hybrids are necessary. The question is how to make regulating them proactive rather than reactive which is how political based moderation of capitalism's excess are managed today.
And I think that's because people are becoming suspicious of absolute ideological positions that think they have everything figured out. And that's because things are more complex. Just because you can't explain that complexity doesn't mean it's intellectually honest to fall back on a hand waive of propaganda "we need less regulation and more free market solutions" which is binary logic.
Upon discovery that binary logic isn't how humans works, and maybe isn't how future computers will work, people are becoming more comfortable with nuance, layers, and dynamic approaches to problems, rather than tribal grunts of capitalism being perfection as if there's no such thing as market failure.
> You know whats really cool? Inventing stuff. Using the power of your mind to form matter into a new thing that the universe has never seen before. Whats really cool is starting a business that adds enough value to the world to hire people. Feeding them with the power of your mind and a little bit of shared elbow grease.
Not one of these points is limited to capitalism. Markets are a necessary but not a sufficient condition of capitalism. People's urge to create wonderful things did exist in the millenia before 1750, they did exist in the eastern bloc, and every day today multiple great things people do in their free time, making no economic sense at all, pop up on HN.
Even in capitalist societies many if not most of the groundbreaking inventions and discoveries were and are state-funded.
> Not one of these points is limited to capitalism.
The USSR beat us in almost every space milestone and would have beaten us to the moon if not for the untimely death of the guy running their space program.
Yes, USSR did that, but for the cost of exhausting their economy, bringing poverty to their people and dissolving eventually.
It's like comparing North Korea with Germany - NK can send rockets to space, while Germany can't. But can you say that NK is ahead of Germany in terms of inventions?
The space race was hardly a factor is the demise of USSR. Even the arms race wasn't that big of a factor by itself. Soviet Union's economy being incredibly wasteful was what done them in. They produced a tremendous amount of basically garbage goods to satisfy quotas in numbers, so it required a huge increase in base/heavy industries production to drive a tiny increase in consumer goods production. That's why USSR could build great rockets but not a decent car. The central issue is that Soviet economy was perpetually stuck between capitalism and socialism. The workers were expected to have their labour alienated, as in capitalism, but were safe in employment and the wage didn't mean all that much because of all the socialized services (which meant little for non-basic needs in life without a strong consumer goods economy, the issue for ordinary people wasn't that they had no money to buy stuff, they had, but there was usually nothing to buy). So they naturally sabotaged the system by not giving a shit about the quality of "their" products.
Down votes aren't disagreement votes. If you have an issue with their comment then reply, but don't put them into the negative because you don't like the facts they point out.
You're explicitly wrong about downvoting being a mark of disagreement. That's been black-letter HN culture since forever. I don't entirely like it either (though I'll admit that I do it, too), but 'pg repeatedly went on record, saying he meant for it to be that way.
That said, I can't stand it when people downvote comments pointing out objective, verifiable facts that they don't like. It happens all the time, and I despair a bit for the quality of discourse even possible in a community where that's a thing that people do.
(Disclaimer: UK perspective) I think it's partly because the "cool kids" today have had to pay out hugely for their education, to find a non-existent job market on the other side, tremendous pressure on the housing market meaning it's completely unaffordable to live anywhere half-decent even if you do have a job. The generations above us benefitted hugely from a great wave of socialism following World War II - with the creation of the NHS, completely free university education, the ability to buy a house right out of university etc. There's a feeling (accurate or not) that this older generation, having benefitted hugely from socialist measures, are now 'pulling the ladder up behind them', entrenching their position of privilege while denying the same opportunities to younger people. It's not that capitalism is bad - it's probably one of the least bad economic systems - but that the swing away from socialism towards capitalism (it's not black and white - it's a smoothish gradient from one to the other) is exacerbating this situation. There is some evidence behind this - a report published recently showed that since tuition fees were introduced for universities, more children of wealthy people are attending and fewer from poorer backgrounds.
I previously was a staunch pro-Capitalist person, but it really seems like we're approaching a point where it's not so much that it's a bad system, but that once we're in a post-scarcity economy, that it will no longer be required. We already have multiple products in the market that are so incredibly low-margin and so incredibly cheap to make that they barely retain value at all, and the market forces that put those products in that position are the same ones making everything from TV's to homes cheaper. At what point is the actual transaction of taking whatever token amount of money from me, so I can have the thing that cost you a haypenny to make, actually costing more than just giving me the thing?
Logically, everything will eventually be driven to that point. I'm not saying when it will happen, I'm not even saying it's a good or bad thing. I simply accept that at some point Capitalism is no longer going to be needed.
If you're only going to look at the positives and pretend the negatives don't exist then it's no wonder you're confused by people bashing unrestrained capitalism.
Most people aren't very good at nuanced appraisals of things.
While capitalism does have its weaknesses, it also seems to be one of the driving forces behind modernity, which I think most of us can agree is a supremely good thing.
We've tried tearing down the system before. Communism failed, not because of failed implementation, but because the concept itself is a bad one. This is not to say that we should close ourselves off from thinking of new ways to organize our societies, but it seems that capitalism and all that it encourages is responsible for the 'rising tide' of global human civilization we've witnessed over the course of the industrial revolution to now. Sure there is inequality, but as they say, a rising tide lifts all boats. Would you want to be the average middle class or poor person 300 years ago, or today?
As innovation continues to change the material conditions of the world, our economic systems will evolve in response, probably for the better. Capitalism will not look the same in 100 years or 1000 years as it does today. But over time gradual development will improve the system, not some grand scheme that calls for tearing down capitalism and replacing it with something else.
>Communism failed, not because of failed implementation, but because the concept itself is a bad one.
This is a frustrating and arrogant thing to say. If you can honestly go through and thoroughly criticize the core collective works of great socialist thinkers like Engels, Marx, Lenin, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman and the uncountable thousands who have poured thousands of hours into tomes which are freely available online to study and understand, then you should do so. I would love to read this! You'd probably become a very famous person! But coming out gung ho and so arrogantly conclude that all these people, and all the hard work they have done in both theory and praxis is kaput without a very strong argument behind you is pointless and childish. It stifles conversation and is the reason discussing economic systems with people who don't understand them is an exercise in futility.
Your comment contains a germ of why communism is a failed concept: "Hard work." Hard work does not imply valuable work. You've conflated the two, as have all the thinkers you cite.
If you want proof that "hard work" isn't necessarily "valuable work," simply start digging holes in your backyard. It is hard work. At the end of the day, though, you'll have constructed nothing of value (unless you appreciate the value of holes).
But, as you see, value is a subjective concept. Communism believes it to be objective. But what's valued in communism is simply the biases of its architects. Resources, then, aren't allocated through an objective pricing system weighing conflicting values, but through waits, favors, loyalties, and fiat. Eventually, the system becomes so corrupted it fails.
We've objectively seen the failure of the communist system across cultures over the last 100 years. By now, there should be no doubt about its inherent ills.
> "Hard work." Hard work does not imply valuable work. You've conflated the two, as have all the thinkers you cite.
Now you've misunderstood me, I'm not saying that because they've done a lot of hard work that what they say is immediately relevant. I'm saying what they've said is relevant, and they've put in a lot of hard work to get their points across. You can't just handwave because in your ignorance you believe you're right and everyone else is wrong, you have to actually confront what they've said
At one point those contracts were subjectively valuable to the parties involved. The assumptions under which they were made turned out to be false, and now they're valueless. The point is that the labor expended to put them into existence does not make them inherently valuable.
I refer you to the critiques provided by Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, and Kim Il Sung (and descendants). They have provided strong enough critiques to say, at least, that there is room to be deeply suspicious of the works of the "great socialist thinkers", and to wonder how well their fine-sounding ideas align with reality.
I actually respect a great deal of Marxist and socialist thought about our societies and economic systems. Capitalism has flaws, surely, and pointing them out is important so we can fix them.
But on the whole, much of communist ideology and theorizing is far removed from reality and suffers from a lack of understanding about human nature. Socialist description and perspective on society is interesting and can be enlightening, but its prescriptions are bad.
Many scientists and thinkers over the course of history have dedicated their entire lives to theories that are ultimately shown to be fairy-tails. It happens all the time.
I think it's funny how this little trivia about Monopoly gets brought up constantly, I think just to spark a debate about economics. Is this really not common knowledge already?
> You know whats really cool? Inventing stuff. Using the power of your mind to form matter into a new thing that the universe has never seen before. Whats really cool is starting a business that adds enough value to the world to hire people. Feeding them with the power of your mind and a little bit of shared elbow grease.
You know what's really really cool? A lot of people inventing stuff. Not only the ones that have parents that can help them live until their late twenties without have to work for a living. Socialism/communism aims to fix this. What I see is that China is having a tremendous creative boom right now.
> You know whats really cool? Inventing stuff. Using the power of your mind to form matter into a new thing that the universe has never seen before. Whats really cool is starting a business that adds enough value to the world to hire people.
1000x yes. It's incredibly frustrating to see folks whining about capitalism all the while doing so using an iPhone and MacBook Pro, not understanding the irony.
Ah yes, that holy grail of humanity: starting a business.
Thank heavens that the czars of capitalism have given us such a generous outlet for all that latent human potential—unlike say, starting a family, starting a full-time art project, starting a humanities Ph.D without crippling debt, starting a round of chemo while unemployed, or starting our dinners at 6pm like our ancestors managed to do for ~200,000 years.
I'm one of those hatin' cool kids, I guess. Coincidentally I'm also a millennial, one of those ignorant kinds who simply does not get what a Good Life™ we have, at this point in time, compared to the last decades and centuries. Yes, we have it better nowadays (but only some parts of the world), but it could also easily have been way, way better by now (or worse, of course).
Let me also say that I don't hate capitalism per se, it's more or less just a tool with no moral obligations. The problem with capitalism are the humans, like always, and Monopoly is perfect to experience the bad side of human nature: greed and the me vs. them attitude.
Do you think it would be possible to come up with rules for Monopoly, where everyone would be a winner, living in abundance? Absolutely, but that would be boring. If I can't be the best of all, then why bother. It's Me vs. Them, and totally screw Them...
Those people, whose families played Monopoly for long enough until now, and who were able to amass a lot of wealth and keep it within their small circle, they won't allow to change the rules. Because then they wouldn't be the Winner anymore. It's always Me First, and everyone else can die trying.
Edit: I've been really depressive the past 15 years, it started once I was old enough to realize how our world is run. The lack of empathy and social justice is really sickening. I tried to play the game, but I'm not good at it because I lack the attributes that are required to become good at it. I don't care about money, I just want to stay alive, take care of my family and code cool and useful things.
But I started to get a tiny little bit of hope that eventually things may drastically change in the future. Like I do think that we may be able to develop an AGI within this century. One that is rational and smarter than humans. I can totally understand Musks fear of an AGI that would try to destroy humanity (personally I hope it'd go only after the bad leadership :)), and while I think Musk has generally good intentions, he's still a hardcore capitalist, and I'm not sure if I want him and his buddies have too much say in this.
Another shorter term solution to some of the problems we have with capitalism is to setup systems based on Blockchain technologies. I'm really no expert in this area, but I believe it would be possible to set up a financial system that allows for transparency, privacy, but no anonymity and no speculations like we experience nowadays with cryptocurrencies. Something that prevents corruption, black money, etc.
Such blockchain technology could be also adapted for a voting system, where voter fraud then becomes impossible. One promising project I've recently discovered is Cardano SL [1], and the team behind it looks like they really want to make a change. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
I don't understand why everyone hates capitalism now. Its like "what the cool kids do".
A persistent campaign of propaganda aimed at capitalism. Because there are always either misguided "true believers" or corrupt glad-handers looking to exploit others for their own benefit, who are out there proselytizing for some socialist ideology and trying to tear down capitalism.
People hate capitalism until they see what happens when you put the state in charge of everything. The grass is always greener. Always has been, always will be. If only we could get over to the other side, I could prove it to you...
"[T]he record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system."
A pretty quote, but—unless one defines “the free enterprise system” so that it encompasses democratic socialism, social democracy, other versions of the modern mixed economy rather than just classical capitalism as targeted by Monopoly (which, unlike Friedman's statement, predates the widespread emergence of the various forms of the modern mixed economy and the Communist-originated-but-eagerly-adopted-in-the-West conflation of it with “capitalism”), it is rather obviously false, and that was clear even at the time he said it, since the whole reason various forms of the modern mixed economy displaced classical capitalism everywhere in the developed world is that they are generally superior on the point in question.
People being better off now than earlier times in history is a straw man argument. That would be true regardless of the system we were under.
That's a natural result of human intellectual progress and knowledge being passed down through generations.
So people now get to live a little longer, travel farther and faster, and absorb more banal entertainment than ever before. Who gives a fuck? None of that matters in this context.
The point you should focus on is how much of a share in the overall wealth and prosperity of their nation does a person have today? How much power and personal freedom?
Is it growing or shrinking?
It's shrinking and has been for decades. It's the increasing consolidation of wealth and the power and influence that naturally comes with that is why people are raging against a system that they can see has become totally unrestrained and rigged against them from birth.
GDP is held up as the gold standard metric of measuring how well a nation is doing, but all it really tells you is how prosperous it ther 'country' is as on the macro level.
It doesn't tell you that most of that wealth is concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people that are becoming obscenely wealthy while the lowest classes in society are becoming objectively poorer and less empowered to act.
You rephrase the argument and a working class stiff what he wants more, a shinier, faster car and a higher-resolution TV , or a greater stake in the economy and the resulting benefits that naturally occur as part of that and he will tell you the latter every damn time.
The problem is thinking like yours, where the proles should be happy that they get to be more consumerist and materialistic than ever before while the ones filling the world with shit nobody needs steal away the actual benefits of our system and entrench themselves for generations.
Ideological flamewars are definitely not wanted here, and incivility (which you both cross into) doubly not wanted here. Would you please not do these things on Hacker News again?
> That's a natural result of human intellectual progress and knowledge being passed down through generations.
We have direct evidence that that is incorrect and any high school student knows it. Many, many times have we failed to progress due to being in systems that don't allow for it.
> Is it growing or shrinking?
Why would that matter to me as an individual? So long as my overall wealth is increasing, I don't care. I don't need to be making more than my neighbor to be happy with my life. As long as I still get the goods, I'm quite happy with this deal.
This is just plain wrong in terms of a way to think about the economy or my life.
> Why would that matter to me as an individual? So long as my overall wealth is increasing
That's my point. It isn't, it just appears that way because you haven't looked past the shin y surface.
> This is just plain wrong in terms of a way to think about the economy or my life.
Subjective.
There are a lot of ordinary people who would say your way of thinking is wrong. Some actually want a stake in society, not an extra handful of rice per generation while a few at the top get an extra plantation.
It's a beautiful idea that can never work in practice because it depends on humans being a purely virtuous ideal of themselves, which they never will be. You'll always end up with some arsehole at the top trying to create a dynasty for himself.
Personally I'd prefer a more utopian vision of human society like the one in Star Trek. No money, just personal, spritual and intellectual pursuit. It won't happen though, people are too self-serving.
Anyway, progress did not grind to a halt under feudalism. There were lots of inventions and discoveries being made during the middle ages, the rate was just slower than today and while part of that was due to the inferior social system with limited personal freedoms it was also due to the far smaller human populations and resulting productive power, as well as the prevalence of religion and it's aggressively anti-science stance (the dark ages were one example of progress slowing down to nearly a halt).
You're right, I had incorrectly said halted earlier, but attempted to correct for that, not quite enough perhaps. In terms of progress per-capita, how does it really compare though? To my knowledge at least, it was still very low for a long time. I could be wrong about that though.
I hear the "stand on the shoulders of giants" argument and everything though - but I think there's definitely at least some effect from the system that should be acknowledged.
> but I think there's definitely at least some effect from the system that should be acknowledged.
Oh I agree. I just don't think it is the sole reason for us being where we are.
The thing with technological progress (and by extension economic progress) is that it snowballs and grows exponentially.
If you took an early middle-age society and taught it the concepts of capitalism and they managed a seismic shift in their society to accommodate it, it would still take an incredibly long time for them to advance.
They might do it a bit quicker because people would be more free to spend and invest in what they wanted, and money would flow more freely, but they would still be limited by population and production power.
Population snowballs too, as does the sharing of knowledge that occurs alongside it and has probably been the number one driver of human progress.
Thank you, eugh, it's incredibly annoying, like people miss a hundred year history lesson and want to repeat the mistakes of the past here.
Even the bottom 20% that everyone is so concerned about in the western world are better off than any time in history - heck, I have no qualms saying I'd rather be bottom 20% today than top 1% just 200 years ago. That is the level of productivity we've had, and primarily thanks to our economic system.
Could it use some tweaks? Sure, if you want to advocate free healthcare or college, go for it, but the main concepts are still quite good.
This thread was full of generic ideological comments but you and another user took it into ideological flamewar, which is something we definitely don't want on HN. Please don't do this again, and especially please don't cross into being uncivil, as you both did.
Better is not necessarily good enough. Why would people not want a system which furthers their quality of life even more? It's not at all convincing to suggest that you shouldn't complain since things have improved somewhat under capitalism.
Things have improved immensely, more than any other time in history under capitalism. And we've watched other systems crash and burn. We don't need to experience it for ourselves, thanks.
We've also witnessed capitalist systems fail drastically, and other systems succeed impressively.
There is little historical comparison for what you quote as capitalism's success - nobody performed a double-blind trial to see if the industrial revolution and colonialism improved quality of life in non-capitalist systems.
Cuba. Despite a continuing embargo from one of the largest economies on the planet, and the collapse of its greatest allies over two decades ago, socialism in Cuba has eradicated homelessness and illiteracy, produced one of the best internationally-recognised healthcare systems on the planet.
If we lift the restrictions of "a few decades", you'd find that the USSR transformed a feudalist, barely-electrified nation into America's greatest opponent on the world stage, with a stake in the space race, in less than half a century.
Cuba is comparatively an incredibly poor nation that has missed many advancements of modern society in recent decades. Wages are dirt low, access to the internet is low, and from what I gather, access to modern anything in general is challenging. There are no great advancements coming out of Cuba. I don't consider that a success, I consider that a failure. I don't want to stop progressing or move backwards into a deep maintenance mode as Cuba has.
Are great advancements the measurement of good? Is progress for the sake of progress so great? To me, it's a question of the proverbial slaves building the pyramids: it's easy to insist that society should work for the improvement of technology if your quality of life is already secured by the people below you on the ladder.
You may not want to stop progressing, but ask Americans without healthcare coverage whether they would prefer government money going to research or to providing for their needs, and many of them will disagree with you.
I have been to Cuba. In my experience, that's not an accurate description of their homes. And "deep poverty" is a meaningless statement in a country as different as that - despite a lack of wages, Cubans are well-provided for by the government, which is more than can be said of a good part of population in many Western nations.
>USSR never managed to turn to US greatest opponent
This is a very interesting take on world history. What do you consider the USSR's role in the world to be during the Cold War? What makes you reject most modern historical thought?
And there are those in the West who starve. Who better provides for the poor?
>And USSR's role was the same as North Korea today
The US is not currently producing a huge amount of propaganda in a culture war against North Korea. There is no scare of North-Korean-sympathisers infiltrating American society, or its government. The West is not fighting any proxy wars with the Koreans, nor are they engaging in international competitions equivalent to the space race. There is no "North Korean sphere" - North Korea has no cultural or political influence over a broad group of nations around the world. North Korea does not constitute some kind of "fourth world".
Quite a bit. I can live a much better life with some basic things in our modern society - modern medicine, a vehicle, a computer, easy access to good food for only a small part of my salary.
"Feeling powerless and forgotten" is something that just doesn't matter compared to those in my opinion.
> Got some news for you. You are not representative of the people that the system failing. These things are luxuries to that demographic.
I don't believe that's true, no one is starving to death of their own choice in the US. No one is dying due to lack of emergency medical attention. Maybe you have an old crusty vehicle, but it does the job, maybe you have a 5+ year old computer, but again, it does the job. I know fresh out of college students with minimum wage jobs that have these things. I was one for quite some time.
These things are not true in all societies in the world. This is a comparatively high amount of luxury and one which I am damn appreciative of.
> Neither does a shitty, elitist attitude born of ignorance of the people you are attacking without even attempting to understand them.
Stop with the personal attacks. They're utter nonsense and completely irrelevant.
It was designed partly as a joke, but partly to demonstrate ridiculousness of communism. The goal of the game was to become a secretary general of the communist party and emigrate abroad.