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comment by ike
ike  ·  4348 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Experiment: What's YOUR most controversial opinion, Hubski?

Capitalism is not a fundamentally good idea.





akkartik  ·  4338 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Socialism envisioned an economy Steve Jobs would be proud of -- centralized, coherent, running like clockwork.

Capitalism envisioned an economy like an ant hill, optimal behavior emerging out of individual incentives. (Libertarianism even more so.)

It's time for a synthesis. Socialism takes away all incentive, and capitalism puts incentives outside man's control. Perhaps the best of both worlds would be to design -- and continually tweak -- an economy's incentives in open, transparent, centralized, coherent fashion, and let economic activity emerge from it?

[My book of the year 2012: Red Plenty. http://akkartik.name/blog/red-plenty; https://plus.google.com/110440139189906861022/posts/V1N3toqm...]

vlehto  ·  4344 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Me either. I dare you to throw int a better one?

bintshaqra  ·  4346 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think capitalism was entirely appropriate, and a great idea in it's historical, socio-political environment. With changing ideas about divine right to rule, etc, etc, I think capitalism was a great way for humanity to push itself into its next age. However, I don't think capitalism is the end-all-be-all and ends up disenfranchising lots of people. I'm interested to see what next economic and political ideologies emerge in the next 100 years or so (or as many as I get to see).

BLOB_CASTLE  ·  4346 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I hope the next one is this

vlehto  ·  4344 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I read it like they are just a capitalist nation who tries to value more happiness.

It's still a place with money and taxes and jobs and you can go to shop and buy stuff. So its capitalist.

BLOB_CASTLE  ·  4343 days ago  ·  link  ·  

But their society as a whole has less of a consumer mindset.

rezzeJ  ·  4347 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's good for quick growth of a society but once it gets it to a certain point it can become self-destructive.

BLOB_CASTLE  ·  4348 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Amen, amen, and again, amen.