Comment by hylaride

Comment by hylaride 2 days ago

This question is a false equivalency. Amazon is not an economy. Comparing the two, morally or otherwise, is a fools errand. It's like comparing the morality of a TV network versus an actor.

Amazon is an organization/corporation that participates in a market economy (mostly - I won't get into a details rabbit hole over regulation, monopoly, etc) that ultimately responds to price signals in chase of a profit motive and cannot use violence to force people to live within it. Maybe Bezos would like to be able to, maybe he wouldn't, but he can't either way. You can only realistically (morally) compare it to other companies.

Communism (as practised on earth so far) is a centrally planned economy backed by a coercive, centralized state that has a monopoly on violence to competitors, mostly ignores price signals, and usually uses violence against those that try to leave or access alternatives. You can only realistically compare it to other economic and/or government models.

freejazz 2 days ago

It's not literal and I have a hard time believing you couldn't figure that out when I used 'amazon-economy' and not just 'amazon'. No less so in the context of a thread comparing capitalism (which was represented by Amazon's existence, in the thread) and communism, which is of course, the question you didn't answer in your response to the previous poster.

Frankly, explaining communism in your response is just rude, even disregarding how pointed it is. But maybe there is a trend in your responses seeing as how you refuse to actually compare the results of capitalism against the results of communism, as was asked in the post you responded to yet didn't answer the central question thereof, so I put it to you again. I guess you could not answer the question a third time, but I would not expect a response from me if you continue with this obtuse path.

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throw10920 2 days ago

> Frankly, explaining communism in your response is just rude
Because you clearly don't understand communism and you need it explained to you.
If you understood communism, then you'd never ask to "compare the results of capitalism against the results of communism", because then you'd have to admit that the death toll from communism is over 100 million and the quality of life significantly lower, while for capitalism the death tool is multiple orders of magnitude lower and the quality of life higher.

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- hylaride a day ago
  
  He's essentially asking to explain the moral difference between a rock and a book, but then got offended when I explained that even if there were moral cases for either (rocks can be used to build or thrown for violence - books can teach good things and terrible things), comparing the two is impossible.
  I remember once debating an environmentalist, who was insisting that capitalism was terrible for the earth and we therefor needed more socialism. I pointed out that the environments in most communist countries were absolutely terrible compared to the west, but the main difference is that "the west" had democratic movements that pushed for less pollution.
  Arguing the morality of environmentalism in capitalism vs communism is a complete red herring. It was the fact that enough people had control and desire over their governments to do something that made any difference.
  
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  voidhorse 21 hours ago
  
  You make bad faith arguments. When someone wants to talk about "capitalism" v. "communism" they typically want to discuss the idea of capitalism and the idea of communism as political enterprises.
  When you respond to this argument with historical examples, you are being disingenuous by shifting the modality of discourse to a different logical type. The first few computers are nothing like what we have today, many airplanes, trains, and automobiles crash, no one turns around and argues that the very conception of a train is bad because of these historical instances. It is like taking a discussion about an interface design and then moving it to the level of implementation detail.
  It also isn't a binary distinction. When people criticize negative outcomes of capitalism it does not automatically mean they espouse "communism" (more specifically some private definition of communism you have). They may simply want to critique the problems of the current system and propose some other alternative (maybe one that's more anarchic, for example).
  These labels are such a curse on political-economic discourse. They have no stable, objective referents, and they do nothing but allow people to bring the conversation to an abysmally stupid place with rapidity (I include my own tendencies in this reflection).
  
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- freejazz a day ago
  
  >Because you clearly don't understand communism and you need it explained to you.
  I literally never said a single thing about communism. I'm not sure if you have me mixed up with another poster or what but this is just even more rude.
  
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