If you're familiar with Marx's work beyond capitalism-bad-communism-good, I think they're fairly obvious, but I'll bite since most of the other comments so far are fairly brief quips. Marx predicted that communism would rise from the internal collapse (or revolution, but the two are interchangeable in his context) of late capitalist societies, however this has not happened. Neither China nor Russia were really capitalist societies in any reasonable sense when they turned to communism, if anything, you could call them agrarian.
Similarly, Marx claimed that as capitalist societies develop, workers would face increasing poverty, declining living conditions, etc. While the income gap between the top and low end is ever increasing, in the grand scheme of things, living standards for workers have improved considerably across the board in pretty much every category. Marx also argued that capital accumulation would lead to a decrease in profit margins, which would eventually result in an economic collapse, again ending capitalism. While we've seen numerous economic downturns, practically all affected economies have eventually recovered.
And so forth, there's many other examples we can take turns picking apart, but I doubt there's much value to it — most people arguing over Marx don't actually know much about Marx.
He didn’t lay out a specific timeline though. So who is to say if this might come to pass? Also, perhaps his work and the development of more left leaning politics and policies actually slowed down the future he predicted. Finally I think people in the comments are deluding themselves about being petit bourgeois when they are more comparable to working class. Many of us have small savings but that does not mean we are not working class - having a million in savings means you might be able to retire, hardly being wealthy. I think a delineation that makes sense today is if you trade your time for money you are working class.
That the industrial working class would come to compose the supermajority of society? That history was driven by a Hegelian dialectical structure which would guarantee that something like the attempted German Revolution would succeed?
Are the working class not the majority of society? 1% of the population of most western countries are farmers. 1% are extremely rich and 98% are the rest of us.
Well, as far as industrial workers, they definitely aren't a super-majority, given all the people working in service, creative, and white collar jobs. But I don't know why that would matter.
I'm no scholar of this stuff by any means, but by my understanding the relevant difference was between those that lived by what they owned versus those that lived by selling their labor. I don't know the exact numbers but I would assume those that live by selling their labor are a majority but not super-majority. Those that live entirely off their property are a tiny minority, but there currently exists a solid chunk of people that both sell their time and build wealth from property/interest.
Most of the HN crowd probably falls into that later category
>I don't know the exact numbers but I would assume those that live by selling their labor are a majority but not super-majority.
They are a global supermajority. In some of the wealthiest nations on the planet, they are instead only a majority.
>there currently exists a solid chunk of people that both sell their time and build wealth from property/interest.
Yes, they are called the petite bourgeoisie. Marx wrote about them extensively. In very wealthy nations like the US, Canada, UK, Australia etc my understanding is that they make up roughly 30% of the population. The rest are proletarians & lumpenproletarians, aside from a negligible-in-numbers percentage of the population that compose the haute bourgeoisie or "real bourgeoisie". I believe the percentage of the population who are bourgeois in the US is around 0.3%, much lower in the other wealth nations because so many of global elite choose to live in the US.
The percentage of the population who are petite bourgeoisie in countries other than the wealthy nations is highly variable, class composition varies a lot worldwide (e.g. there are many countries like the Phillipines where there is quite a large peasant population still). In general, outside of the wealthy nations the petite bourgeoisie are something like 5-15% of the population, and the haute bourgeoisie make up significantly less than 0.3% of the population.
I think having some money saved does not make one petite bourgeois as I say in the comment above I think people who trade their time for money are working class. If you’ve saved enough money that you can retire you aren’t not working class, you are working class. The bourgeoisie do not need to work and so don’t retire.
>Well, as far as industrial workers, they definitely aren't a super-majority, given all the people working in service, creative, and white collar jobs. But I don't know why that would matter.
The Marxian theory, as such, concerned specifically industrial workers, because they were, by their own occupation, brought together in organized thousands at single sites of production.
All of which are small groups that rely on a ton of interpersonal trust. Large groups that lack interpersonal trust (like nations) tend to fail under communism.
Catal Huyuk, Mohenjo-
Daro, Harappa, Tripolye-Curcuteni, Norte-Chico, Hopewell, Ain Ghazal.
Populations from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands of people, over the course of millennia, in effectively completely egalitarian, likely communal societies.
And those are just the ones we’ve found.
Indus River Valley civilization may have been as many as 5 million people, no rulers, no social hierarchy, uniform housing, no monumental/elite structures or housing, no evidence of centralized power or government, standard weights and measures, collective infrastructure projects, etc etc.
It lasted roughly 1400 years.
So… no, you don’t actually need a small groups. You actually only really need it to be completely socially unacceptable for some to live in excess while others suffer.
In the entirety of human history, the only mechanism by which the human condition as a whole is improved is by applying a portion of the private surplus towards the public good. How much is a question of the moral character of the civilization in question.
In the 50’s, in the US, if you made over $200k (~$2.2million in 2025 dollars) you paid over 90% of every dollar earned above $200k in taxes. The top corporate tax rate was 52%.
I’d argue that the US is reverting to the average global experience precisely as its domestic market breaks down due to interventions — eg, destroying small businesses via regulation and mass importation of foreign labor.
The people who have won the game in our current system love to point to this statistic, as if "extreme poverty" is the only thing that matters.
Even if people have a roof of their own head and bread in their belly, they don't like living with anxiety about being able to pay off debt, or what would happen if they had an unexpected hospital stay. And above all, they don't like working so hard only for the value they produce to be sucked up and used to buy back stock for the benefit of billionaires.
Knowledge in itself is good. We don’t need everything to have a direct commercial application. In fact most discoveries by their nature do not have directly applicable commercial applications.
Because those who pay for the taxes frequently don't. So some justification needs to happen to spend other peoples money. A better way would be nice, though.
This is a popular argument but there are plenty of things that cost orders of magnitude more taxes that go towards projects that lots of people don’t agree with. Americas trillion dollar war machine for example.
Well put. But, of course many on here don't have time for the concerns of simpleton non-elites, and whether they should have a say about where their money goes; I've noticed lately I look for the greyed out comments first on HN.
It would be nice if the research could be just for the general public good instead of having to have an explicit use for the military to get the money.
Imagine how much better it would’ve been if not for the military involvement. Imagine how many things developed purely to enhance the efficiency of destroying other humans could have been developed instead to enhance and improve lives instead. So many trillions wasted on imaginary borders and in service of imaginary friends over the last… ever.
How do you explain scientific advancement in less armed nations? Some of the most advanced research in the world happens in states with incredibly small forces.
Perhaps you've confused the economic advantage of a militaristic state with a connection between military science and progress.
For example, the space program basically died when the Cold War ended and it took a long time for it to restart and we still have yet to achieve things in the commercial space that the government could do in the 60s like reach our nearest satellite. Same goes for the cancellation of the SSC which could have achieved what the LHC discovered but 10 years earlier. Saying that other states are making discoveries is ignoring the fact that it takes them longer to achieve those goals than with the military or other emergency situation propelling them forward.
Certainly all of the rapid progress of the 20th century was because of military funding. The Cold War made it quite clear how when you drastically changed priorities how quickly various programs started getting canceled and our achievements started falling away (eg beating Soviets to space killed any desire of either party to continue, the Cold War ending killed the SSC, etc). You have WW2 to thank for nuclear technology, lasers, rapid advancements in aircraft, modern cryptography and directly leading to the space race. Even QM takes on military funding to take it from niche curiosity to applied research and real world impact. It’s all indelibly linked.
I’m not sure why you’re having such a reaction to a pretty mundane observation that military funding on technology gets further and faster than the civilians can. Heck go look at how far military is in the math behind cryptography consistently comparing discoveries civilians make and when we learn the military had that tech once it’s declassified decades later.
> I’m not sure why you’re having such a reaction to a pretty mundane observation that military funding on technology gets further and faster than the civilians can
Because it is just plain wrong. And it glorifies military spending and war. Just because the military complex has so much money that their spare change dwarfs many other sources of research funding doesn't mean it is money that couldn't have been used much more efficiently if it was spent wisely from the start.
And about the plain wrong part:
> You have WW2 to thank for nuclear technology,
The fundamental research was done before the war by the international scientific community, and in particular people from Germany and Italy. The hard part done during the Manhattan project was to develop the industrial processes to produce enough fissile material to make the bombs, but making the bombs from that was fairly trivial.
> lasers
Were first created in 1961.
> the space race.
It has been argued that the reason we stopped going to the moon and beyond is that the rush during the Cold War made it too expensive to continue. A more paced development would have been sustainable and would have gone much further.
> Even QM takes on military funding to take it from niche curiosity to applied research and real world impact.
Why do you think so?
In the end, imagine a world where even a fraction of all the money spent on military was spent on research directly instead.
> Because it is just plain wrong. And it glorifies military spending and war. Just because the military complex has so much money that their spare change dwarfs many other sources of research funding doesn't mean it is money that couldn't have been used much more efficiently if it was spent wisely from the start.
And yet time and time again, funding follows the military. I don't disagree it's an economics problem. I'm just highlighting that historically large groups of people generally aren't fans of "lets spend money on science" but are more OK with it being laundered through the military under the guise of defense. I'm passing no moral judgement nor glorifying. I'm simply representing how people as groups have behaved historically. It's irrelevant where/when the fundamental research was done. Applied science is a critical component in the flywheel for research as it enables new instruments, equipment, and more understanding of the problems with theoretical research when models and reality disagree. Modern fundamental research in astrophysics today would not be possible without the applied research that was carried on the backs of military spending (this includes lasers, various secret algorithms that were eventually declassified, etc).
> Were first created in 1961.
Early research into lasers was primarily academic and civilian, but once demonstrated the military poured a lot of money into them during the Cold War which advanced materials sciences that was required for making better & better lasers.
> the rush during the Cold War made it too expensive to continue
It was always too expensive to continue. The only reason the space program was ever funded was for military purposes. It was completely borne out of V2 rocket research the Nazi's started & the US just kept funding the same Nazi scientists to keep working in the US after the war as a counter to the USSR. And even today's space race was made possible due to privately acquired artifacts piggy backing on the corpse of the civilian run / military funded space program. No military investment and I think you more likely end up with NO space program whatsoever.
> Why do you think so?
The Manhattan project had many of the founders of QM on the payroll and QM was completely essential for the atomic bomb to work. Radar development required R&D into QM. QM magnetometers are being funded by the Navy today & there's all sorts of exotic QM applications the military is funding that we're not privy to I'm sure.
> In the end, imagine a world where even a fraction of all the money spent on military was spent on research directly instead.
You're imagining a counterfactual that has no example of it necessarily existing. Indeed, we see a consistent push to cut everything but the military from one US political party while the other side funds the military and tries to fund other things as well. Prior to the 20th century, scientific research was in academia and some private funding of commercial applications. The pace of innovation though is incomparable. So the question is probably closer to "do you want huge amounts of R&D tied to military spending" or "slower rate of progress". Whatever criticisms and failures you level against the US and its military (and there are many), I'm of the opinion that on net it still yielded a positive change to the world order during the 20th century.
Well we're getting into political territory, but recently that "subsidized" seems to have swiftly changed to "threatened", so, I don't know. What you say used to be true in the past, but it's not so clear anymore.
Also: only country that ever invoked article 5 was actually the US. In that sense the opposite is true ("lots of countries have subsidized US defense"). The US "subsidy" came from the strong conviction that "US would act if we needed it", but that conviction is quickly evaporating.
On the other hand the US is running a large deficit and has a large debt - >120% of GDP - so that spend is in part other people's money.
With the foreign countries holding the most US debt being Japan, China, UK, Luxembourg and Canada.
I would also point out that you could view US bases in places like Japan or Chagos Islands as 'subsidising' local defence or it could be viewed as simple occupation.
The United States is certainly providing far more value than they’re receiving back, especially given many partners in NATO aren’t even meeting their relatively paltry obligations to defense spending.
There’s of course some benefit here but it’s largely intangible. It extends the United States’ sphere of influence and diminishes Russia’s.
I’m not saying it’s altruistic because we’re definitely acting in our own self interest and there is perceived benefit to doing these things but the consequence is still that we are spending more money on defense than we need to and other countries get to spend far less than they should be.
Yeah, let's go back to heavily armed European countries at each other's necks every couple decades... The US benefits immensely from having a stable and not terribly militaristic trading bloc.
If I or somebody else was the victim of a crime I would 100% support using every available source of information to solve that crime. I think we need adequate controls sure, but mostly we need to increase trust in government and police forces so we know we can trust the relevant people with our data.
There is epic fear in the US about the government. That is the actual problem. Now the US gov is a shady piece of shit, so a lot of that is well founded, but that is the root of the problem. Solve that problem and actually trust the people who are supposed to be responsible and in charge to do the right thing and this data problem stops becoming as much of an issue. And no, building some kind of philosophical zero trust system is not going to solve anything, it is a prison you'll end up living in.
Encourage transparency in Police forces and Government with strong legislation and strong support for whistleblowers and punishment of infractions and you have yourself a system that people can begin to trust.
It's not just the police. How could such a corrupt police exist without corrupt superiors higher up in the government? Fear of governments is justified, they're the most powerful entity in our world. They can get away with murder.
The US is not Iceland, a simple fix that would just make people trust the police is impossible. Also as an aside, the police isn't your only problem. Tesla, Google & co are paving the way normalizing these mobile surveillance units. We'll have millions of them driving around everywhere with HD cameras, microphones, in some cases even LiDAR and radar. Recording constantly. Of course there's a bit of an issue if you are not a fan of mass surveillance. Even if corporations are the only ones in charge of that data. I know for example that the Tesla video feed can be accessed online, because owners can remotely view it with their app. And if they can do this, so can others in theory. All you need is a bug or Tesla servers getting hacked.
Well actually that brings up an interesting piece about how the US is structured. I think the reason your police can be more corrupt is because of the federated nature of policing.
Cops are usually only answerable to the mayor of the city (and sometimes the electorate) rather than higher ups in the government. So there is a lack of authority and control there. If they were answerable to politicians and politicians were actually responsible for their actions you could take very firm political actions against those politicians - but in the states nobody in the Cabinet or Government is responsible for law enforcement.
And I understand why this federated system was originally put in place, but this isn't the 1700s. In communication terms the US might as well be Iceland - you can communicate from one end of the land mass to the other instantly, so we don't need to have localized and federated decision making.
IANAL... The reason you can get a huge settlement in the talc case but not in this case is because people are purchasing the talc and so it is a product liability issue.
In the research case people are basing their care and procedures off another person's research. There is no direct payment from the person receiving the care to the researcher and so it is difficult to draw a direct line from Person A says X to Person B gets injured.
I'd suggest you revise your competitor analysis. Bazel definitely has a test command that with remote execution and caching absolutely allows you to run entire test suites in seconds* both locally and in CI eg. https://blog.aspect.build/typescript-with-rbe
> This blog post says 2 and a half minutes not seconds.
It's meaningless to say "we can run tests in seconds". You can't run my tests in seconds because they're single threaded and take 10 minutes. The important thing is the speedup, and they got a pretty good speedup. Arguably the nop build/test time is important too but it doesn't look like they measured that.
> Basel does not solve this problem out of the box.
Yes it does.
> I wonder why stripe didn’t “just use Bazel”.
In my experience it's because setting up Bazel is a) more work than setting up some ad-hoc build system (Make or CMake or whatever) and b) difficult to switch to retrospectively. So it only gets used where you have people who are experienced enough to know that you will wish you had started with it, and can convince the inexperienced people that it's worth the effort.
Usually you get too many inexperienced people saying "it's too difficult; we'll be fine with Make".
Stripe does use Bazel. It just didn't exist before Stripe built some of its own internal systems, but it's gradually replacing ~everything from a build standpoint.
The one thing to know about Bazel is that it's both incredibly impressive, and also one of the least ergonomic pieces of software ever created. It's very clearly an internal project which was cleaned up and open sourced without any attempt to make it more usable outside of Google.
Bazel's kind of like Kubernetes in a way -- you don't actually get enough benefits to adopt it until you're at a certain point in the company lifecycle, and to get to that point you usually have to build other systems first. Then you have to gradually replace those systems with Bazel.
First release of Basel was in 2015 when Stripe was already 5 years old and the progenitor of this tooling was already running with several dozen users.
To be clear the sync step is used for the test suite execution not only the one off command running - it’s just something we can also easily do because we have a hot env in the cloud
> They don’t work from your local development env and also work in your CI env.
This is one of the biggest selling points of bazel-like build systems. Like to the extent that, for some changes, bazel can say "even though you changed this source file, I can be 100% certain that that change didn't affect any tests and so I will not run them"
Decaf is simple to pick out by a person who is competent at tasting coffee. As easy as your red/white wine visual test. People in general are very bad at tasting and especially thinking and communicating about tasting. Plus also people may not know what decaf coffee tastes like or may have never thought about it before.
The same decaf coffee is more expensive. The producers decaffeinate their lesser coffees. But you've hit on why the "sugar-cane method" i.e. the solvent based approach produces better coffee. It's possible for it to be done at origin and so the actual coffee producers can choose what coffee to decaffeinate and can absorb some of the additional costs in the "processing" stage while using higher quality coffee in the process.
It's such a small amount of money per person that it is hard to see what effects one would expect. I think for the majority of people reading hacker news $1000 per month would be barely noticeable in their bank account (obviously some people out there would notice it, but for say a lowly software dev making $150k it's not going to change much about their lifestyle). So to think it would fundamentally change someones life is a stretch. I mean it's not enough to not have to earn money (and so have the financial security to start a company or restart education) and it's not enough to purchase accommodation (especially cause it's limited to 3 years). Most I would expect is people could pay down some of their debt - so they can tread water a little easier for a few years.
That's still more than just using an exact date that never needs to be updated. Also that seems like something you would do client side anyway. ie. you send a timestamp that never changes and then have the client convert it to "X years/days ago."
Most people render the html on the server side and then you can just cache it wholesale.
You could cache the page itself or even the article itself (I'm not talking about browser cache, I'm talking about caching on the web server).
The idea being that you don't have to keep rendering or even hitting your DB for the content you just have a html fragment that you create once and cache and then serve. You'll only need to rebuild the content when the date expires so when "one year ago" becomes "two years ago" .
