I see a similar phenomenon in Vietnam where I am. If you ban market capitalism but the country still needs housing, jobs and the like then the contracts to build that tend to go to the politicians and their friends.
Indeed. I get more and more tired of the lazy stream of anti-capitalist sentiment leaking into HN as though all the worlds problems stem from capitalism.
I've spent a fair chunk of my career working in the Middle east or with Middle eastern companies and my wife is Chinese so we have strong connections over there as well. Both have highly centralised, statist systems with heavily restrictions on their economic markets. If you haven't actually been there and lived under non-capitalist systems you have absolutely no idea just how utterly corrupting and venal they can get. It's suffocating, and it's insidious tentacles work their way into every facet of life.
It's true that there is corruption in the west. Big corporations do have too much influence on politics. There are problems with the way wealth is becoming concentrated. But the issues we face pale into comparison to the problem in countries that don't have free markets. In the west we have the 1%, but in non-capitalist states it's more like the 0.1%. It's the difference between systems run according to the rule of law which have some corruption, versus systems run by corruption which have some laws. Capitalism is built on the principles of property rights and economic freedom. It turns out taking those away from people isn't a good thing after all.
It's the difference between systems
run according to the rule of law which
have some corruption, versus systems run
by corruption which have some laws.
This is so well articulated. If you don't already, you should write essays.
If I'm not mistaken, you my friend have been seduced by the rhetorical device of antimetabole[1]. Ask not what language can do for you, ask what you can do for language! Er...
That's interesting. For me the lawlessness of china stroke me as very capitalist. In some regards it's the capitalists paradise because you can do stuff that's forbidden in western societies. Worker's rights are not as important for instance.
China is certainly an interesting exception to so many rules, but fundamentally capitalism is about the freedom of individuals to employ their capital as they see fit and reap the rewards from profits gained thereby. China does now have a burgeoning private sector, but it exists and thrives only at the discretion of a totalitarian state that runs a parallel statist economy in which political power is the route to wealth. All those billionaire members of the Chinese government didn't gain their wealth by investing capital. They gained it by leveraging political power. Of course now that they have wealth, they want ways to be able to invest it and become capitalists themselves but that side of the economy is more like an oligarchy at this point.
The terrible house of Saud is propped up by the most capitalist state in the world... yay capitalism?
You claim to be tired of anti-capitalists yet seem to complain about lawlessness. I can't make any assessment of middle eastern political systems separate from their geopolitical instability and use as proxy states for the last 100 years.
Corruption is mostly tied to poverty, not economic systems.
I currently live in the Middle East, and I don't see the connection you are claiming. I see poor Indians being brought in to build skyscrapers in Dubai (one of the most capitalist areas of the world) and Qatar, living in shipping containers, having their passports taken by their employers (trapping them in the country); religious laws that protect rapists over their victims. The major sources of corruption here are not linked to the economic systems, but to greed and religion.
It's greed. Capitalism only works if you have a strong set of checks and balances. You need everyone watching everyone else.
The United States kinda works. It only kinda works because crooks, blatant they be, in the end, get caught. The corrupt politican will eventually get caught. The corrupt building inspector will eventually get caught. The Doctor who performs unnessary surgeries eventually gets caught.
I don't believe we have the best system, but I do believe we are the best at squashing corruption.
All the wanna be capitalistic countries need to cure corruption before being capitalists. You can't have both. I have always found corruption despicipable. Even thinking about it now infuriates me. I live among very rich individuals. So many of them stepped on others in order to get their wad. All are in denial. And they wonder why their kids look at them with such contempt.
Yes--America has its share of wormy, corrupt, in denial, weasels. We just seem to have less than other countries?
I don't know what the future will bring. I have seen some people do some despicipable things in order to get ahead. I didn't find The Social Network cool. I saw a vile, little man, do anything in order to get ahead. Yes--my generation had Wallstreet. Most of us didn't find it cool. I'm not saying my generation were saints, but we didn't do it all for the paper.
(I got off track with that last paragraph, and expect a lashing from Millenials.)
I agree poverty is a big factor, but to what extent is Qatar truly capitalist? What proportion of it's businesses, by value, are owned privately by people not members of the ruling family? What proportion of it's residents are employed by private businesses? The country's economy only has a private sector at all at the discretion and whim of it's rulers. It is ever thus. Even North Korea has small private businesses and a black market, but does that make it's economic system capitalist?
If capitalism is to mean anything, I think it must be that the primary method of gaining wealth is through investing private capital and that there is equal access to opportunities to invest. Otherwise I'm not sure what it means.
I agree that problems exist in 'highly centralised, statist systems', but we shouldn't limit ourself to only two working models; the capitalist model of Western democracies, and the centrally controlled statist systems that exist elsewhere. There are plenty of other ways to organise an economy. If we can be open to new ideas I'm sure we'd be able to design a system that worked better than even the least worst system we have today (better in the sense of more fairness, less corruption). I can go into specifics if you want. I'm assuming you also have ideas about how we could improve the economy, would be interested to hear those also.
I think the heavy questioning of capitalism is healthy and there is no denying that as a system it tends to bring out the bad qualities in us humans; primarily greed.
I quite like the idea that "The next industrial revolution is toward decentralized, autonomous, and resilient systems where individuals and communities control their own destinies. This requires a transformation of our economic model from privatized control to co-operative models of ownership, which the social technologies of the Internet can facilitate."
> I think the heavy questioning of capitalism is healthy and there is no denying that as a system it tends to bring out the bad qualities in us humans; primarily greed
The greed is there in a socialist society too, it may just seem less extreme but just as damaging on the whole.
24 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 35.4 ms ] threadI've spent a fair chunk of my career working in the Middle east or with Middle eastern companies and my wife is Chinese so we have strong connections over there as well. Both have highly centralised, statist systems with heavily restrictions on their economic markets. If you haven't actually been there and lived under non-capitalist systems you have absolutely no idea just how utterly corrupting and venal they can get. It's suffocating, and it's insidious tentacles work their way into every facet of life.
It's true that there is corruption in the west. Big corporations do have too much influence on politics. There are problems with the way wealth is becoming concentrated. But the issues we face pale into comparison to the problem in countries that don't have free markets. In the west we have the 1%, but in non-capitalist states it's more like the 0.1%. It's the difference between systems run according to the rule of law which have some corruption, versus systems run by corruption which have some laws. Capitalism is built on the principles of property rights and economic freedom. It turns out taking those away from people isn't a good thing after all.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimetabole
You claim to be tired of anti-capitalists yet seem to complain about lawlessness. I can't make any assessment of middle eastern political systems separate from their geopolitical instability and use as proxy states for the last 100 years.
I currently live in the Middle East, and I don't see the connection you are claiming. I see poor Indians being brought in to build skyscrapers in Dubai (one of the most capitalist areas of the world) and Qatar, living in shipping containers, having their passports taken by their employers (trapping them in the country); religious laws that protect rapists over their victims. The major sources of corruption here are not linked to the economic systems, but to greed and religion.
The United States kinda works. It only kinda works because crooks, blatant they be, in the end, get caught. The corrupt politican will eventually get caught. The corrupt building inspector will eventually get caught. The Doctor who performs unnessary surgeries eventually gets caught.
I don't believe we have the best system, but I do believe we are the best at squashing corruption.
All the wanna be capitalistic countries need to cure corruption before being capitalists. You can't have both. I have always found corruption despicipable. Even thinking about it now infuriates me. I live among very rich individuals. So many of them stepped on others in order to get their wad. All are in denial. And they wonder why their kids look at them with such contempt.
Yes--America has its share of wormy, corrupt, in denial, weasels. We just seem to have less than other countries?
I don't know what the future will bring. I have seen some people do some despicipable things in order to get ahead. I didn't find The Social Network cool. I saw a vile, little man, do anything in order to get ahead. Yes--my generation had Wallstreet. Most of us didn't find it cool. I'm not saying my generation were saints, but we didn't do it all for the paper.
(I got off track with that last paragraph, and expect a lashing from Millenials.)
If capitalism is to mean anything, I think it must be that the primary method of gaining wealth is through investing private capital and that there is equal access to opportunities to invest. Otherwise I'm not sure what it means.
The greed is there in a socialist society too, it may just seem less extreme but just as damaging on the whole.