Courtesy of TFA and capitalism:

"In 1985, if you were a reasonably affluent American, the best computer that you could afford was the IBM PC AT. The PC AT would cost you about $6,000—$19,400 in 2026 dollars—and thus represented about a quarter of the median American’s annual income; and it ran on an Intel 80286 processor, capable of something like 900,000 instructions per second. Today, if you find yourself in a market stall in Nairobi or Lagos, you’ll be able to find a cheap smartphone—like the Tecno Spark Go, manufactured by China’s Transsion—for somewhere between $30 and $120. That phone will run on a processor capable of billions of calculations per second."

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richforrester 32 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

That has little to do with what I said.

A third of the world lives in poverty. That's the fault of capitalism.

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rationalist 26 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> A third of the world lives in poverty. That's the fault of capitalism.

So what you're saying is that capitalism lifted about two thirds of the world out of poverty.

Thanks to capitalism, I don't have to toil in the fields.

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hackyhacky 20 minutes ago | parent [-]

> Thanks to capitalism, I don't have to toil in the fields.

No, that's thanks to commerce not to capitalism. Capitalism benefits those those who hold capital, which is not me.

The fact that there are more than enough resources for no one to live in poverty should suggest to you that something is wrong with the distribution system.

"It's true, Mr/Ms Rationalist, that our patented Miracle Medical Snakeoil caused a third of your leg to become necrotic and fall off, but be glad for the two thirds that did not fall off!"

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rationalist 14 minutes ago | parent [-]

> > Thanks to capitalism, I don't have to toil in the fields.

> No, that's thanks to commerce not to capitalism. Capitalism benefits those those who hold capital, which is not me.

Are you toiling in the fields? It seems to me like your attitude is that "If I can't be rich, then no one should be rich."

> The fact that there are more than enough resources for no one to live in poverty should suggest to you that something is wrong with the distribution system.

So instead of two thirds of the world not living in poverty, everyone should live in poverty equally?

	▲	hackyhacky 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> It seems to me like your attitude is that "If I can't be rich, then no one should be rich." The problem with capitalism is not that some people get rich and some people don't. The problem is that of an unfair playing field. Everyone has a body and a mind, and commerce allows us to rent out those features in exchange for pay. People who are smarter or stronger or work harder or work more will be able to benefit more. That's how I got rich. But there's a limit to how rich I can get, because I have only one body and one mind and there are a finite number of hours in the day. The other way to get rich is to own things. If you own a factory or real estate or bonds you get to charge other people and make a profit even though you are expending no effort. And in this case there is no limit on your profit, because you can use your profit to buy more capital and make more profit from that. The result is eventually a winner-take-all economy, where the winners own an increasing amount of society and everyone else pays them to use it. If that sounds familiar, it should, because it's feudelism, and is the eventual end state of capitalism. You should really read a bit about the philosophy that you're arguing so vehemently for, apparently without knowing anything about it. > So instead of two thirds of the world not living in poverty, everyone should live in poverty equally? No, that's ridiculous.

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CamperBob2 29 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Really? What other systems are better at lifting people out of poverty (without killing a few tens of millions in the process?)

There are so many other places where this sort of low-effort high-school edgelording fits in better than here.

	▲	hackyhacky 19 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> There are so many other places where this sort of low-effort high-school edgelording fits in better than here. A good sign of low-effort edgelording is championing an obviously broken system by using a straw man to disparage the alternatives.

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hackyhacky 34 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

This quote has nothing to do with capitalism.

Please note that "commerce" and "capitalism" are not synonymous, and that the former does not imply the latter. Capitalism is in no way a prerequisite for technological development.

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CamperBob2 30 minutes ago | parent [-]

Capitalism is in no way a prerequisite for technological development.

Really? Who else builds stuff?

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torben-friis 23 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

>Who else builds stuff?

The Chinese, famously?

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lkey 7 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You don't have to demonstrate this kind of ignorance of human history on main. Aren't you embarrassed? Do you value knowledge even a little bit?

When did capitalism begin? How was 'stuff' created and distributed prior to that? How do other, distinct and contemporaneous modes of production create 'stuff'?

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hackyhacky 28 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> Really? Who else builds stuff?

Said the Christian in pre-Englightenment Europe: "Well, of course Christianity is the one true religion. After all, the whole civilized world is Christian."

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CamperBob2 27 minutes ago | parent [-]

That doesn't answer my question.

	▲	hackyhacky 23 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That's because your question is silly. I'll spell it out for you: Just because all modern states are capitalist does not mean that all states must be capitalist, as evidenced by the many erstwhile states that were not capitalist. Your failure to see beyond your immediate surroundings and ignoring the first sentence of my previous comment is perhaps the reason for your silly question.