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| ▲ | mghackerlady 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | free market capitalism will always end like this though. the end goal of capitalism is the consolidation of all things into a megacorporation or oligarchy that controls everything, creates nothing, and earns infinite money | | |
| ▲ | tavavex 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | Why is this downvoted? To me, it seems like a self-evident conclusion. Even the supporters of the current system would probably agree with it. When you have a system that encourages endless growth at absolutely all costs, while placing no limits at the amount of power a single entity can hold, what other outcome can there be but the biggest players absorbing everything into themselves and using their influence over people and governments to guarantee their dominance? | | |
| ▲ | forshaper 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | We haven't had a free market in the United States in awhile. It's public-private partnered market fixing. Which is good for the consumer, many times, though not all the time. | | |
| ▲ | tavavex 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Is there a difference in terms of outcomes? In the final form of a complete 'free market' without a government, the biggest entity would simply replicate the same levers of power that a government has through private militias, issuing scrip, having their own private courts and so on. But, since the US has a powerful government, it's much cheaper, simpler and more stable for them to just buy out as much of it as possible and use the same power through a proxy. Admittedly, the US government is not completely controlled by them, so it could still get much worse. | | |
| ▲ | forshaper 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | I had the pleasure of growing up around gray markets (relatively free, bribes were predictable & reasonable enough for an average noodle seller) in Southeast Asia in the 90s. It's quite different from large corporations getting Federal agencies and municipalities to lock out any potential competition. The enforcement of the US govt is far stronger than the enforcement of a handful of corrupt cops, as each precinct is essentially its own feudal regime, and within the department you have individuals mostly loyal to their families. A corrupt cop in a corrupt system driven by loose associations of extended families & fictive kin groups, one of five in a neighborhood say, can be pressured by a group of aunties and uncles serving street food or pirated goods through a web of personal relationships. This was much easier for them than hiring a lobbyist here would be. I'm not saying it's better, rule of law has many benefits, but it is an example of where there were markets which were more free, that did not have cyberpunk outcomes, and they were quite different. | | |
| ▲ | tavavex 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'll say that I don't know anything about 90s SEA, but I know a bit about gray markets. One thing that stands out to me in your description is that all the corruption is incredibly localized and small-scale. Everything happens at the scale of individuals. And I don't deny that living under these conditions won't be that bad (a single corrupt official's power can only go so far), but what's stopping it from eventually becoming more organized? With us encouraging endless growth of wealth and influence, corrupt individuals are bound to form groups, then rings, then whole organizations. To me, what you're describing seems like a transitory state caused by societal factors, instability and simply not having had enough time. What the thread is all about is end states. We're already in a place where removing government regulation would turn our biggest players into those same cops, except with trillions of dollars, offices in every country and an ability to get their hands onto anything that money can buy. | | |
| ▲ | forshaper 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm saying that those biggest players and our governments already work hand in hand to do that. Which is to say, the government is used as the enforcement arm for corporate interests. This is less "free" market, and more market commanded by interests. |
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| ▲ | beej71 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Without debating your point, I don't think it contradicts the GP's. |
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| ▲ | WarmWash 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | These mega-strong players always kill themselves and collapse. We can see this on the global geopolitical scale (which fundamentally acts as a true free market), where all the empires have always fallen. The stressing part is when they are at their peak, so people would like to use regulation to short-cut right to the collapse part. The only example we have a true free market victor that hasn't collapsed is humans, who have totally and completely dominated all other life on Earth, but man, it's certainly not looking good for us right now. | | |
| ▲ | tavavex 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | But does that collapse happen because of some universal axiom about controlling humans, or were those empires merely limited by what was possible in their era? This is the first time in history we have so much military power, ways to exert influence that's truly world-spanning, the most sophisticated technology and the most thorough surveillance ever - all at the same time. Whatever barrier there might be, who's to say that today's megacorporations won't be able to push past it? | | |
| ▲ | WarmWash 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'd say the axiom is that as your system becomes larger, more complex, the number of stable states it can exist in shrink. Which is something that is just generally true about systems. We can envision a future with an ASI controlled super corporation that owns everything with omnipresent micromanagement, but then why would the ASI even bother with humans. That event right there would be our "got to powerful for our(humans) own good" moment. |
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| ▲ | mghackerlady 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | (I agree, but generally commenting about downvotes isn't something we do here from what I've seen) | | |
| ▲ | tavavex 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | I didn't comment just to complain about them, though, but to tell people who leave them to elaborate on why. |
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| ▲ | nekusar 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | In my experience, most self-proclaimed "capitalists" either lap up the scholastic propaganda that capitalism is the 'bestest' economic system in the world, or are a real capitalist and don't have to give one fuck about what others say. And most of these types NEVER read past, say, page 20 of https://www.gutenberg.org/files/38194/38194-h/38194-h.htm , Adam Smiths treatise on capitalism. Here's a few failures that Smith wrote back in his initial treatise in 1776. I think so far, we're failing every one of these, and basically speedrunning all the terrible warnings Smith wrote about as accomplishments. Gross inequality was even mentioned there as something to significantly avoid. Book I, Ch. X, Part II; ~p. 50 Principal-agent problems in joint-stock companies. Managers of other people's money "cannot be expected to watch over it with the same anxious vigilance" as owners, leading to waste and negligence. Book V, Ch. I, Part III; ~p. 312-313 Mercantilist policy distortions. Protectionism, export bounties, and import restrictions enrich narrow merchant interests while reducing national wealth by intentionally misallocating capital. Book IV, Ch. II-V; ~p. 183-213 Underprovision of public goods. Markets fail to supply infrastructure (roads, bridges, canals, harbors) and institutions that benefit society broadly but yield no direct profit to private actors. Book V, Ch. I, Part III, Art. I; ~p. 303-305. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-cities-... Dehumanizing effects of extreme division of labor. Repetitive specialized labor "renders [the worker] as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become," impairing civic and moral capacities. Book V, Ch. I, Part III, Art. II; ~p. 324 . Even in the 1800's this got so bad that Karl Marx wrote about this in both of his critique of capitalism AND the communist manifesto. Merchant collusion and monopoly power. Smith warns that "people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices". Book I, Ch. X, Part II; ~p. 54 . Hello, eggs, meat packers,oil products (gasoline), grocery chains, electronics (RAM), health care. Collusion after collusion, and almost no enforcement. Im not communist, and probably not socialist. But its clear as day as to the failures of capitalism. And as a stopped clock is right 2x a day, capitalism does handle some problems better than any previous system. But we can do better. Lots better. But the entrenched power holds on to capitalism as fervent as a religion, and not dispassionate analysis. |
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