The US is stuck in this weird irony where they recognize that Soviet-style central planning is a disaster but can't recognize that it's what megacorps do when they're insulated from competition. Internal politics, perverse incentives and a system that can sustain massive inefficiencies right up until the point that it doesn't.

In general productive economic activity generates a surplus and that surplus allows for slack. Human beings intuitively understand this. Hobbies are frequently de facto training for things that aren't currently happening but might later. Family-owned and operated businesses are much less likely to try to outsource their core competency for the sake of quarterly profits.

But regulatory capture and market consolidation causes the surplus to go to the corporate bureaucracies capturing the regulators instead of human beings with self-determination and goals other than number go up, and then the system optimizes for capturing the government rather than satisfying the people. "When you legislate buying and selling the first things to be bought and sold are the legislators." You throw away the competitive market and subject yourselves to the unaccountable bureaucracy, and then try to pretend it's not the same thing because this time the central planners are wearing business suits.

▲

NordStreamYacht 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> megacorps do when they're insulated from competition. Internal politics, perverse incentives and a system that can sustain massive inefficiencies right up until the point that it doesn't.

You just described Lucent.

	▲	AnthonyMouse 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's the end stage. The bigger problem is the companies rotting from the inside even though they're still alive, because they use their resources to suppress your alternatives to them while they're slowly dying on top of you.

▲

TheOtherHobbes 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes - ultimately it's the same system. Far from being daring and innovatory, it's backward-looking, unimaginative, and bureaucratic.

Vision for the future is limited to grandiose fantasies straight out of 1950s pulps and the "heroic" creation of narcissistic corporations that are cynically extractive and treat employees and customers with equal contempt.

The differences which used to provide a convincing cover story - no single Great Leader, a functional consumer economy, votes that appear to make a difference - are being dismantled now.

What's left are the same mechanisms of total monitoring (updated with modern tech) and reality-denying totalitarian oppression, run for the exclusive benefit of a tiny oligarchy which self-selects the very worst people in the system.

▲

adrian_b 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes, many Americans and other Westerners believe that the so-called "socialist" economies, like those of the Soviet Union and of Eastern Europe were non-capitalist.

This is only an illusion created by the fact that the communists were careful to rename all important things, to fool the weaker minds that the renamed things are something else than what they really are.

In reality, the "socialist" economies were more capitalist than the capitalist economies of USA and Western Europe. They behaved exactly like the final stage of capitalism, where monopolies control every market and there is no longer any competition.

Unfortunately, after a huge sequence of mergers and acquisitions started in the late nineties of the last century, the economies of USA and of the EU states resemble more and more every year the former socialist economies, instead of resembling the US and W. European economies of a few decades ago.

▲

AnthonyMouse 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Everyone wants to tag the evil with their opposition's name. The evil is concentration of power. But no one wants to call it that because then they can't pretend that it's something different when they're doing it themselves.

Witness the people who keep proposing to solve market consolidation with higher taxes. Higher taxes go to the government, and therefore the interests that have captured the government. Are we going to solve it by taking money from Warren Buffet and giving it to Larry Ellison? Do we benefit from increased funding for Palantir? No, you have to break up the consolidated markets through some combination of antitrust enforcement and peeling back the regulatory capture that prevents new competitors from entering the market.

▲

anon7725 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Higher taxes go to the government, and therefore the interests that have captured the government.

There is at least a chance for it to be redistributed, unlike private wealth.

▲

esseph 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'd argue we need both massive antitrust, and higher taxes on the wealthy to prevent them from amassing the power to prevent the antitrust.

	▲	don_esteban 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And change in laws regarding the legalized corruption (Citizens United, ...). And fight for real freedom of speech. This is very complex problem that needs to be tackled from all sides simultaneously, the entrenched interests are already well setup to defend themselves.

▲

samiv 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And to complete the reversal what is now referred to as the "golden age of capitalism" i.e the post WW2 USA was actually very socialist. Strong social movement and unions and social spending that created a wealth working/middle class with a bunch of spending power.

Inequality society producea inequal economy (and vice versa) which is the economy of any developing country. Few rich,. miniscule middle class and lots of poor people in slums snd poverty.