Quoting: DesumMarx made certain hypotheses about human history and from there, human nature, which turned out to be wrong. That is why communism doesn't work.
And It has never been "tried" because it runs counter to basic human evolutionary psychology.

The basis of, perhaps not upper level academic capitalist economics, but the capitalist economics that people get taught in ECON 101 and is echoed in editorials and political parties, is the efficient market hypothesis more or less as seen in neoclassical Walrasian economics.
It assumes all human beings are completely selfish maximizers who can efficiently calculate the most effective way to maximize their wealth, have perfect information, and value gains and losses as equal. This "Homo Economicus" is the basis of most capitalist economics. It obviously has nothing whatsoever to do with actual human nature or evolutionary psychology. So if false ideas about human nature make a system not work, I guess capitalism must really not work, and if they cause it not to be tried, I guess capitalism has never been tried.

Is the current system in the west perfect? No. But at least capitalism is somewhat self-aware that it's playing on human foibles. Communism is basically a secular religion. You have a fallen state, a state of perfection and a means to get from A to B. The problem is that it's based on a fauls idea about what people need to be happy.

Ah yes, of course, while capitalism is based on the truth, that what people need to be happy is as many crappy clothes from malls as possible.

As for socialism, it ironically has the same problem as what many people like to throw at capitalism: Every generation needs to chip in more resources into the system than the one before it. Elsewise, it cannot sustain itself. Or at the very least, it can't cover everyone of retirement age. Hence many of the problems socialist countries are facing now with their aging populations.

Huh?
First, socialist countries aren't facing any problems now because there aren't any socialist countries. There are some economies that are more mixed, but I don't see any signs that they're having bigger problems with taking care of their elderly than the more pure capitalist ones, unless you define "not letting them die in squalor" as a "problem".
I have seen a lot of articles talking about demographic time bombs and how supposedly we aren't going to have enough young people to take care of all the older ones. I've seen a whole lot of others about how the sky is falling because automation is going to take everyone's jobs and we'll all be unemployed. Well. It can't be both.
The fact is that productivity has grown faster than the proportion of dependent elderly in the population, so we can in fact spare more people to take care of them than we once could, and in the long term it's a temporary demographic bulge anyway.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Desum

Quoting: NagezahnA system that's built upon eternal growth in an environment that only has limited resources doesn't sound very future proof to me.

That is not what capitalism is. When you boil it down, all capitalism means is you can own your own business and invest your money however you want. Even Richard Stallman had to make it clear he wasn't against capitalism as such on several occasions when capitalism was blamed for the problem of proprietary software.

That might not be what capitalism is, but it is how capitalism works. It's kind of like the distinction between life and evolution--evolution isn't what life is, but it is what will happen if there is life.
The basis of capitalism is investment and profit. Private individuals with money invest it in hopes of making a profit. If they do make a profit, they have more money ("capital", hence capitalism) and can invest more. Now at this point we can see a sort of evolution working within capitalism: Say you have various private individuals. Some of them invest money and make profit for a while, decide they have enough, and start just living on the surplus and continuing to reinvest the same amount, entering a steady state where their capital, and the bit of the economy they own, does not grow. Others continue to reinvest, growing their capital continually. Which group dominates the capitalist economy? Which group ends up buying the other group out? Yes, that's right, it's the ones who kept growing their investment.

Thus, growth is inevitable in a capitalist system. This is true no matter what Richard Stallman might believe on the topic.

Now up to a point, growth is not a bad thing. It is capitalism's spurring of dynamic growth that caused it to overtake various previous systems, to rapidly develop technology, and to generate a great deal of wealth. Right now, though, it's kind of a problem.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Solitary

Quoting: Samsai

Quoting: Solitary...but it always boils down to one weak point and that is people itself.

... unless you believe that democracy doesn't work, which I very much don't agree with.

I am not sure you or I understand each other. I think democracy works wonders... because it basically limits the aspect of "people problem" that I mentioned, because nobody is allowed to have too much power. The system is designed to limit, slowdown and prevent any radical changes.

Meanwhile with socialism, where you have strong government you get that problem, because you are governed by people that inherently have more power thanks to stronger standing of the state. People with too much power = abuse of power.

Hang on a minute. Two problems with this.
First, democracy is not defined as a system that doesn't allow anybody to have too much power, nor as a system designed to limit, slow down or prevent radical changes. The United States defines its particular system as being based around "checks and balances", but this is in no way inherent to democracy. So for instance, in parliamentary systems, in a majority government situation the prime minister has powers which are very strong indeed, and could very well be capable of making sweeping changes quite quickly.
Democracy is defined as a system that allows the people to rule, directly or indirectly through representatives. If the majority of them agree about something, a system is democratic to the extent that it allows that to happen, not to the extent that it frustrates their will if their will happens to represent a change.

Second, you appear to be using a setup where "democracy" and "socialism" are these two separate and opposed things in the same broader category, like "hot" and "cold". This is very much a category error.
True, we have no currently existing examples of societies in which the ballot box brought socialism. But the ballot box has brought socialist parties to power which then began to implement their programme in a number of different countries. Spain in the 1930s, Chile in the 1970s, Nicaragua in the 1980s . . . so far, every time it has happened the government in question has been toppled by violence, but that does not make socialism something distinct from democracy. Socialism is not a form of government. Depending on your perspective, socialism is either a purely economic concept or it is an extension of democracy to the economic realm. In either case, as noted above if the majority of people happened to want to create socialism, democracy would involve delivering the will of the people, not frustrating it.

I'll try for a little clarity on what "socialism" actually is. Classically, what socialism is, is public, and specifically worker, ownership and control of all the firms which are currently for profit and owned by private individuals. Within that there has always been a centralization/decentralization split, with a continuum from Soviet-style communists at the very centralized end, thinking the state should own all the stuff on behalf of the workers and plan and organize it all for them, to social anarchists, thinking that everything should be owned directly by the people who work in firms (or work the land), and they should make all the decisions themselves at the grassroots level. We don't think about Anarchists much these days, but the Spanish Republic that was overthrown by Franco included Anarchists as perhaps the largest and, ironically, best organized group.
The question of how it gets decided (democratically, by a dictator, by an oligarchy, by a theocracy etc) whether an economy is run by and for private profit, government paternalism, or popular empowerment is theoretically orthogonal to which decision gets made.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Cyba.CowboyJust like John Cena the person, Bill Gates the person is one of the best things in this world...

Really? How so? Because if it's about all the charity, IMO if you look a bit under the surface of that charity it, too, is somewhat disturbing.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: detroutAt least at my workplace Microsoft is restricting volume licensed versions of windows in favor of subscription based licenses as of March 31, 2020

Whoa, for real? They've been trying for many years now to move to a subscription model. Wonder if they'll manage to finally commit suicide make that transition this time.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Dammit, I don't have time for this! But I know I'm going to dip back in anyway . . .
Some of that stuff looks pretty sweet.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I'm impressed. I remember back a year or three having the impression they were doomed. Good on them for apparently making it a desirable experience.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: GuestDOSBox SVN is definitely not dead. But as a member of the DOSBox Beta Testing team, I can tell you that a new release isn't coming anytime soon. Almost a year ago now they put out a 0.75 beta build and those efforts seem to have fizzled out. I'm still using it as my go to DOSBox version however. Sadly it contains a lot of private non-published patches, so we have been asked not to share it.

Oh good lord. So they have some useful patches, and they don't feel like making an actual release, but in the mean time they want to avoid distributing what they've got for fear that if they did they'd have to abide by the GPL and let other people use the useful things. Every detail I hear about the old DOSBox types seems to confirm the impression that they're dysfunctional and self-absorbed.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I dunno . . . I spend large parts of my life doing things I'd rather not be doing just so I won't have to experience what it's like to actually be homeless.
I do applaud the game's objectives though.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: KuJo

What would be the cause of such a bump? Well, entirely possible it's due to more people using Linux personally at home where they would perhaps be using Windows workstations in their job.

That's the situation with me. In the office I have to use Windows. At home I use Linux Mint. :)
(And sometimes a Commodore Amiga ... :D )

Exactly my situation, too. Well, minus the Amiga.

View this comment - View article - View full comments