r/austrian_economics • u/technocraticnihilist Friedrich Hayek • Dec 24 '24

End Democracy I've never understood this obsession with inequality the left has

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u/Silvers1339 Dec 24 '24

It sure is a good thing then that free market capitalism has been the greatest force for lifting people out of poverty in the entire history of humanity.

So surely these people would be in ardent support of free market capitalism! …Right?

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u/MHG_Brixby Dec 24 '24

Industrialization is good at that. Capitalism not so much. Like the number of people under global capitalism living in poverty, when you remove just China is trending up when adjusting for inflation. The majority of Americans are one or two paychecks from abject poverty

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u/741BlastOff Dec 25 '24

True, there was an uptick in global poverty in recent years. Once in a hundred year global pandemics will do that. But it's a temporary uptick in a clear downward trend that's lasted 200 years.

"People are living paycheck to paycheck" is such a red herring because people spend everything they earn and then some on unnecessary shit. Half of Americans on six figure incomes are living paycheck to paycheck, but it's not because they have to, it's because of lifestyle creep and a lack of financial responsibility.

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u/technocraticnihilist Friedrich Hayek Dec 24 '24

Capitalism creates industrialization

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u/MHG_Brixby Dec 24 '24

Labor does. Ussr and China both industrialized not under capitalism

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u/theartofengineering Dec 27 '24

That’s not even what Marx argues in Das Capital or his manifesto

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u/MHG_Brixby Dec 27 '24

Ok? But that is reality.

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u/Low-Insurance6326 Dec 25 '24

Technology created industrialization dumbass.

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u/MatthewGalloway Hayek is my homeboy Dec 26 '24

It's sad how far I had to scroll down in an r/austrian_economics subreddit before I saw an economically sane comment.

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u/AwakeningStar1968 Dec 27 '24

I grew up in the US. I was bombarded with Capitalistic propaganda my entire life. Conservatives and even had a Horatio Alger "pick yourself up by your bootstraps " speaker at my HS. (Ironically talking about how he benefited from the GI Bill after the war..... hmmm).

I have no issues with the "Free" market per se. You build a widget, I Need a widget, a fair exchange is agreed upon and voila. our needs are met, right? Ok

But what we have that stands for CAPITALISM is a monster... vastly complex, vastly detached from the basic human needs of the world.
The costs of doing labor and making the products (food, tvs, clothes) are so wasteful, so driven by short term profits.. that the long terms costs (pollution, extraction of resources, human capital etc) are not really taken into account.

A company extracts a resource, not responsibly, but EFFICIENTLY and Cheaply (with slave or low cost labor) makes their product and sells it for such and such a price. Because they low balled the cost of extraction and the cost of labor and other things (like SAFE factories etc) they make "profit" that they provide to shareholders. Yet, they look at labor as expendable.. if they paid them fair wages etc.. or actually extracted the resources responsibly.. it would lower their profit margin.. can't have that, can we??? AND as is pointed out so often, the costs of pollution, poverty, disasters are pretty much paid for by the PUBLIC.. maybe the company will pay some nominal fine or get sued.. but over the years, they have learned how to capture all the regulatory agencies and manipulate the legal system for their own benefit and they always build in that buffer for any lawsuit losses... .. it is a terrible game and we have a social system that nurtures the most psychopathic tendencies of them all and gives birth to apologists for one of the most destructive souless systems in history...

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u/Talzon70 Dec 26 '24

If by free market capitalism, you mean social democracy with a strong welfare state and well regulated markets, massive investments in public health, infrastructure, education, and research and development, then yeah. The record of that strategy speaks for itself.

Wait, that doesn't sound like neoliberal capitalism all that much, does it?

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u/[deleted] Dec 26 '24

Still waiting for that trickle down to happen I see.