undefined | Better HN

0 pointseternalban8y ago0 comments

That's a bit too clever.

The issue is whether a society that has mutated to a system funneling meaningful wealth gains to 0.01% of its members is on the path to long term health or on the certain path to some sort of catastrophic system failure with a generous dolling out of collatoral damage to the 99.99% that were on the receiving end of "value added" goods and services [only].

0 comments

baron8168y ago

True. I don't know if this system is really any better than the system of the 90s. We do know that that one led to a market crash and the current one hasn't (yet). But we very well could have more innovation if companies still IPOed early. I really don't know.

My comment was intended to establish a yardstick to judge them by. Society doesn't value free market enterprise because it's great at enriching a small number of people. We don't like that Dropbox exists because it turned its founders and investors into millionaires and billionaires. We value capitalism because it encourages people to bring new products to market. If society's goal was to enrich a small number of people, then we should've stuck with feudalism. But society wants to enrich society.

eternalbanOP8y ago

Market crashes of 80s and 90s is not even remotely what I am talking about. Who cares about that.

If a tiny tiny subset of a society has established a system where they are the analog of "judge, jury, and executioner" of what sort of mind products are developed, supported, and made de facto 'necessity of modern life' (such as Google's) then let's stop pretending and call it what is it: an authoritarian system that (ab)uses market mechanisms

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse