cloudfifty

That's caricature level gaslighting, even when accounting for your terribly low standards.

You alone can't do anything about the demographics and their biases here. Buy if you honestly believe that HN is somehow politically neutral you're deluded.

It does't require a sociologist to realise that when certain topics degenerates into 500-1000 comments of bullshit and others doesn't even register that this user base has a certain bias.

Finally, what is seen as ideological warfare naturally follows the overton window. I could directly translate liberal/conservative folks posts here into a equivalent socialist narrative instead and it would be seen as ideological warfare because it's simply out of the ordinary.

You can just look through my comment history and the users I've replied to if you're genuinely interested.

What a sad state of affairs when pushing back against the bullshit spread by the very prolific reactionaries, albeit polite (which is all that matters here), of this site sooner or later gets one banned. To add insult to injury most of them have been posting on HN for many years.

It's consistent across time and the globe for the overwhelming majority of nations transitioning to and from capitalism to any other system. It's not just some singular event that happened once in the 18th century, it's observable right now. I provided examples in another comment.

Not really, Capitalism have also been observed to do its thing without democracy as well. And just moving forward is a pretty low bar, the USSR had lots of progress as well, but it doesn't make Stalinism a good system. It's also fundamentally a correlation, not causation. Would another historical path had a better outcome for the average citizen? Maybe, maybe not.

Prove it. What is this 80%?

Slavery? Racism? Colonialism? Property requirements to vote? Women suffrage? Supporting brutal regimes in the name of corporate profit? Famine while still exporting? Exploitation fueled by Capitalism's profit and growth motive? Climate and ecological disaster? People dying in the US due to lack of healthcare access? etc...

Name them and describe how and why.

Come on, you're the one preaching, it's your duty to prove your extraordinary claim against history. Capitalism is like 400 years old. A mere blip. Native American's societies for example thought of people being forced to wage labour their entire life for someones else's enrichment to be not much better than being a slave. Certainly not "freedom" in any case. Not to even mention their thoughts about the concept of private ownership of the commons, as in private property.

I provided explicit examples and illustrated consistency across time and geography. Hand wavy dismissals aren't doing your argument any favors.

What explicit examples?

considering Marx was a literal man child

I must ask. Why, according to you, was he a "literal man child"?

The overwhelming majority of ethical and moral progression in human history coincided with the extension of private property rights to more and more of the general population, and retracted when those rights were rescinded.

Why is it always the "objective facts" brand of capitalist activists that can immediately after do an extraordinary subjective - and biased - interpretation of a weak historical correlation?

That's just blatant historical revisionism, with clearly no attempt made whatsoever to try to disprove your own claim. You'll have to surgically remove at least 80% of Capitalism's history for it to be even close to true. Even then, you have many societies in "human history" that certainly would argue that their "ethical and moral" progression was significantly better than today's.

It's funny how reactionaries have gone from "it's not really happening", "it's not man made" to "it's too late anyways" in no time. The same goal remains; to keep doing nothing.

The difference is that it's cheaper by Uber pushing down labour costs, a.k.a the driver's compensation. But since that reason isn't as pleasant, vague rationalizations are used instead.

I think it would be good if tens of thousands of US health insurance folks lost their jobs too.

I'm sure you have something more intelligent to say despite being HN's most prolific shoeshine connoisseur.

The Netherlands have done just fine before Bezos's new yatch. Bowing down to contemporary kingship is not required.

Free-market advocates really need to decide whether trickle-down economics is slander or something to hold dear. I'm getting mixed signals.

Given the specific word use makes a particular claim, that is the basis for your other claims, it's extremely important.

No, but it's always nice to focus on semantics if you got little else to say.

No, this is just your projection. You're engaging in historical revisionism. The standard use of the term 'capitalism' is synomous with free markets.

Are you really suggesting that a system of private property rights is not a fundamental part of 'Capitalism'? And that it's historical revisionism to claim that?

formed as juries

What jury? Do you think this issue would be treated by a jury if reported? Even if it would be in-front of a jury, a jury is supposed to follow the law, it's not acting in an objective vacuum. That's ridiculous.

Courts deem children to not have the ability to provide consent, which is unlike adults, so your example shows nothing.

Yeah, and that's obviously a subjective interpretation? The same can easily be said about adults forced to work by the conditions put in place by the system they live in. Currently under capitalism it isn't seen as non-consensual, since that clearly wouldn't work, but maybe it will be seen as obviously so in 100 years?

That's a totally absurd claim: there were no societies that didn't have free markets / capitalism / work-for-wages and did "just fine wrt food".

What's absurd about historical societies not having capitalist wage-labor and did fine without it? No societies? Haha, that's so ridiculously obvious historical revisionism it's entertaining.

That you see no need to get emotional about socialist tyranny shows the lack of conscience behind your crude ideologically motivated position.

I'm not sure what socialist tyranny I have promoted in this thread?

oh yes, Bastiat addressed that too:

What part of that quote more specifically do you feel addresses some point? It's mostly low signal-to-noise gibberish.

You were earlier implying any one employing someone is an oppressor

Yes, and that was regarding trivial semantics that doesn't remove the core of this discussion namely the non-free nature of capitalism.

Yeah, the US needs an anti-capitalist opposition that can see through the PR. Like most European countries have.

Coopted is surely hyperbole though, as it suggests control, more like riding the wave.

Like checking to see if the word 'authoritarian' applies to employers

Have you never heard someone calling their boss "authoritarian"? I used it as a description of an unfree, undemocratic, top-down system that's used in our economic sphere under capitalism, if you don't like that one, pick something else that describes that. The specific word used is not what's important here.

Capitalism is synonymous with a free market economy in most contexts that these terms are used. No, capitalism is synomous with free markets, and concentration of wealth is totally orthogonal to a free market economy.

No, it's not. That's just historical revisionism. It's a system based on exclusive ownership of property etc. Societies have traded stuff throughout history without Capitalism and its institution of private-property rights etc.

People being forced by nature to work in order to feed themselves is not 'non-consensual' in any legal or social sense

Well, it is already illegal for children and legality is still not a guide for morality. It's definitely in a social sense, which I have already explained.

Also, I've already explained - you even quoted it - that it's not "forced by nature" like some natural law. It's man made. Proven by the fact that societies through history didn't have capitalist wage labour and did just fine wrt food.

This propaganda is intended to depict human liberty as unnatural, and socialist repression as the natural order of things.

It's extreme deception motivated by a delusional utopianist fantasy.

to enforce the incoherent moral principles of socialist ideology.

Objective reality deems socialism a crude ideological narrative.

like socialism, that rationalize tyranny,

As for your mental gymnastics to try to discredit a free society

More of your non-emotional objectiveness I see.

You have provided no evidence that someone offering a job

Well, of course it's not the the act itself of offering a job, it's supporting and perpetuating the system - Capitalism - that sets up those conditions in the first place. Why do you have such a hard time of keeping this on a systemic level?

You're accusing employers of being oppressors based on the flimsiest of logic

I'm discussing this as a systemic issue, not an individual. That should be obvious by now. And some employers certainly are oppressors, but the edge is towards the capitalist-class, not the local shopkeeper or whatever.

You're incorrectly putting a person's right to their property, i.e. their right to make exclusive use of what they produce, into a different category from a person's right to make exclusive use of their body.

Yes of course I do? Because I just explained why they are different things, which you haven't responded to.

is the external circumstances that involve no violence or threats of it

No, it's common sense. Do you honestly believe asking 100 people on the street that most would deem that voluntary? No, they would just say something like "yeah, it's sad, they had no other choice the poor fellas". That's not voluntary by any reasonable definition that's not self-serving.

And in fact, it does involve the threat of violence, albeit indirect, in the form of starvation. Just because your notion of violence only conveniently recognizes direct violence doesn't mean that that's the objective truth.

The law here is that voluntary contracts are valid

Once again, you're using the law to support a moral common sense question, "court of peers" are bound to judge according to what the current law says, not what they think is obviously true.

Employers did not create conditions that limited the options of job applicants.

Well, of course not all, but certainly the largest one and the owners behind them. This is a system issue, not an individual one.

that seeks to demonize the successful to rationalize robbing them

Sigh, more suggestions to envy as motivation.

It's a blatant lie that makes the logical leap that not assenting to mass-socialist expropriation is tantamount to depriving others of their legitimate rights.

That's not really explaining to me what the lie is, just a temper tantrum.

It's a degenerate claim based on perverse ideological premises.

What makes my claims "degenerate based on perverse ideological premises" but not yours?

You believe what others earned belongs to you

Earned is subjective, and in many cases not even remotely true under Capitalism due obvious things like inheritance.

, and that you have a right to threaten them with violence to coerce them to forfeit it.

It's actually the exact opposite. Abolishing private-property rights removes the owners right to violence. No need to do any violence from the side that are abolishing them. For example: land that one was forbidden to enter under the threat of violence from the property-owner is now free to pass through. Only the property owner's threat of violence has been removed.

you are the only one here advocating blatant violence and imposition

Uhm, what's the blatant violence I'm advocating?

as to "who" is the authoritarian left, hmm lets start with this definition. Blue Checkmarks on Twitters, and.or has Pronouns in the bio of any social media platform, and.or rides alone in a car with mask on.

Wow. That's even a worse reply than I imagined.

You haven't supplied any context into "any position of the authoritarian left". Who are they and what are their positions that you can't disagree with?

instead anyone that disagrees with any position of the authoritarian left is now "alt right"

Reading that over-the-top hyperbole I firmly believe that you're the one that's been moving around.

You're not fact-checking and trying to be objective

What fact-checking have I missed? In what way do you even begin to imagine that this discussion can be objective?

or a free market economy to operate

I wrote Capitalism, not a "free-market economy" which is a entirely theoretical concept that can never exist in practice. Only Capitalism and its concentration and wealth and power can actually exists.

Like I said, people having bad options doesn't make the situation "authoritarian"

The CEO of the company is the authoritarian ruler of that company, that's pretty obvious? Yes, if you're privileged, you may be able to switch to another authoritarian instead. If you want to use another word for that relationship, I'm fine with it, the word isn't the important point here. But it's lack of freedom and democracy in the economic sphere and thus under Capitalism.

according to your crude socialist narrative is ANY ONE who has been successful

That doesn't sound very objective.

Like I said, people needing to pick one of the several difficult options available to them, in order to earn enough to eat is, as Frédéric Bastiat wrote 170 years, the nature of reality, that exists with or without authoritarianism:

No, it's not "the nature of reality". Other societies throughout human history didn't require selling your freedom most of your life. So that's objectively false. These are systematic conditions intentionally created by humans to the primary benefit of a subset of them.

It's that the person providing the "less worse option" is not doing anything to worsen the other options available to the person they are making their offer to.

But they are? If they support the concentration of wealth and capital into the few, making it exclusive use to them, forces others to accept their offer.

and it's irresponsible for you to not consider the harm to an innocent party that is done when you make a wrongful accusation, and critically analyze the validity of the accusation, before you make it.

What? What are the harm, innocent party, wrongful accusation supposed to be here?

You can't compare an individuals rights with systemic rights and try to draw moral equivalency between those. That's just dishonest.

An individuals right starts and ends with that individual. Private property rights however encompasses the entire system, and all the people within that system, and must therefore be evaluated completely differently, including wrt morals.

then it's voluntary

No, it's forced upon them by external circumstances. That's also in many cases setup and supported by the very persons exploiting them. Put people in a cage of poverty because you've decided and support that is should be like that then call is voluntary when they are force to give up their freedom is perverse.

No one in their right mind would ever call that a voluntary choice. Sending your children to do life-threatening work in the factory is not a voluntary choice. It's a forced concession. That it wasn't illegal doesn't make it voluntary.

No court of law

Laws is no objective guide to neither morality nor justice. That's proven by history.

I'm explaining that the fact that people are forced to do difficult things to survive does not make the situation authoritarian

If course it is. You can't first create and support the conditions then absolve yourself from what you've created when from people are forced to sell their freedom to you to survive.

This is a blatant lie

What's the lie? Not forced by violence, but forced by the system the propertied support and have a disproportional influence over.

Well if you're incredibly narcissistic, then you justify robbing people.

Not really? Withholding necessities to gain power over peoples labour and make a profit is pretty pathologically sociopathic and abolishing that state of affairs is righteous, not robbery.

It's a voluntarily assumed dependency.

No, there's nothing voluntary about it. Why would anyone accept a coal mining job in the 19th century voluntary?

People being forced by nature to work in order to feed themselves

So what? If that required Capitalist property relations we wouldn't exist now. Indirectly forcing someone give up their freedom to work instead of other social structures is a political choice, to the benefit of the propertied, not some commandment by god or whatever.

That doesn't give you a right to rob others of their property.

It might? It's not up to the propertied class alone to decide what's a right and what's not. They're obviously looking to protect their privileged position like any nobility or monarch of old times.

They are not in any way exploiting the labor and time of others, at least not in any meaningful sense of the word 'exploit',

I think some very clearly are. Obviously there's level degrees here. But on the systematic level it's clearly that Capitalism depends on other people being a means to an end of other, wealthier, people. That due to their property, and others lack thereof, can indirectly force people to labour for their benefit. Thus exploiting them due to the unequal distribution of property/capital in a society that require it to survive.

They are trading resources for that labor and time, by making an offer that the worker is happy to take over all others

That's not a "happy trade". It's a concession due to worse alternatives because the system people find themselves in offer no other alternatives for millions upon millions of people. That's not freedom.

Your moral framework is totally incoherent, as it would imply that an offer that a worker is happy to receive, is an act of authoritarianism toward that worker.

No, it's not. People pick the less worse option all the time under authoritarian structures.

You're consistently shallow in your thinking and not bothering to dive a few steps deeper and ask simple questions like why people would accept a 19th century mining job or their modern equivalents? Were those mining jobs "happy trades"?

You're misdefining "authoritarian"

No, the economic sphere is strictly top-down authoritarian where workers is in a dependency situation wrt to their boss. The pandemic has made that abundantly clear.

You're free to manage your own property however you wish.

Only if you actually have property to begin with, which most don't by no fault of their own. And what a few do have, by no merit of their own.

The pursuit of captial accumulation is always dependent on the exploitation of someone's labour / time somewhere.

So what's wrong here? Are not capitalists exploiting the labour and time of others to accumulate capital? It's self-evident that they do.

Maybe you think that you can send just send the top 50 capitalists to the planet Mars and out comes a terraformed planet? Simply by their immense power of innovation?

You're making a lot of unsubstantiated assertions that are in the realm of conspiracy theory.

Care to say what?

Someone wealthier offering a higher wage than the other options available to a person, and a person consequently choosing to work for them, is not authoritarianism.

No, that's literally choosing between the least bad authoritarian entity available for oneself.

What your argument is based on is inflammatory appeals to emotion

It is? So let's push democracy into the economic sphere as well since according to you there would be no difference. One worker, one vote.

Because there is no basis provided for this absurd characterization.

Why not?

And Marxist dogma calling profit exploitation isn't?

Well, I guess some might be, but not all. Furthermore all critic of exploitation driven on by the profit incentive is not Marxist.

Absolute poverty means extreme toil. As the economy develops, wages rise and jobs become less strenuous

No. They are still not synonymous. That's just a textbook example of goalpost shifting.

Characterizing all profit as exploitation is completely baseless, extremely inflammatory, and totally irresponsible.

Why?

It's totally irresponsible, and it's unsurprising that every society which has accepted this pseudoscientific doctrine has turned into a Hellish dystopia full of repression.

More emotional stuff.

Economists who have studied development say it is:

That's regarding absolute poverty (which is a contested topic as well), not that people spend their lives in toil.

This attribution of a value system, e.g. consumerism or profit-seeking, to capitalism, is misguided

It's not. Capitalism is not exempt from the common sense notion of "You reap what you sow", and the history of Capitalism proves this indisputably.

and a way for certain ideological camps to pathologize and stigmatize human freedom.

The economic sphere of capitalism isn't free at all. It's firmly authoritarian. Most people today have no other choice than to sell their labour and thus their freedom for most of their lives to someone lucky enough to be wealthier than them. That's a very poor standard of "freedom". Sure, it can certainly get worse, but this wasn't the freedom that people dreamt of 100 years ago and beyond.