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Top-level
The number of people in my mentions saying, “you don’t hate Google, you hate capitalism”. Now, I’m on Mastodon, so I can see why you would think that. But no. Turns out capitalism does *not* require monopolistic practices. In fact, the world did capitalism for quite some time without encouraging those. You can do capitalism and still punish overreach! Typically with laws, but taxes also work. Capitalism does not mean “no taxes”. That’s just what the USA and UK would like you to believe. 26 comments
@caoilte I broadly agree with you. It seems to me that the core of it is people believing the capitalism is the goal, rather than one of several means. Of course, this belief is put there by those who benefit from it (hi, Murdoch), who are using the reach afforded to them by capitalism. So perhaps it was always inevitable. @samir It's a very liberal sensibility to suppose that if we could just tweak capitalism a little bit everything would be okay and our privilege would be preserved. But it's getting harder and harder to pretend that we could even tweak capitalism a little bit and since the alternatives are too scary to think about we're paralysed in confusion. Samir, curious about your answers: What is “the goal”? When, where and how did the world do capitalism without it trending toward corruption and monopoly? @realn2s Yes, I think it’s very good! When you have several multinational, highly profitable corporations simultaneously conducting mass layoffs, I think it becomes clear that monopolies are failure states. When you have capitalists taking advantage of discrepancies in fundamental human rights to create a market (e.g. cheap clothes made in terrible conditions), you’ve got a failure condition. I think the core issue is capitalism as religion. @samir @realn2s An example policy: In Italy, they have a policy where if a company lays off workers, those workers can get their unemployment payments as a lump sum and combine them to create a worker co-op. Naturally, they'll likely be a competitor since that's what they know. They also have the social capital to be able to pull more talent that wasn't originally laid off from the original company.  @samir capitalism doesn’t require monopolies or low taxes, but it sure does tend towards them. Centralisation of business and individual wealth then acts on the political process to protect that wealth - like in the US and UK, as you noted. @Brendanjones @samir Brendan, so would you recommend using regulations to prohibit monopolies and encourage competition? Or ? What about using tax structures to curb the risk of power abuses, while investing revenues in regulation and other pro-social programs, that encourage healthy competition and benefit all human society members? @tolortslubor @samir I'm definitely for all those things. I would prefer a post-capitalist system but in the mean time I'll take making capitalism the best it can be. @samir the issue is the contradiction of Capitalisms inevitable tendency to monopolization, and the concentration of power being shifted to those with the most to benefit from the monopolization. Any attempt to stop the drift into monopolization will be hamstrung by those with power, since those attempts would be a direct challenge to their power and profit. I'd say the time it was doing it without the monopolies, it just hadn't reached that level yet. @samir In fact "capitalism" explicitly notes that monopolistic practices must be guarded against (they are a danger to #capitalism working properly). Monopolies and Oligopolies do not a Free Market Make I think you are arguing against the false claims about capitalism. From the link I included: "The idea that businesses would try to suppress the free market (by gaining power that suppress competition) is not some new brilliant idea. At the creation of capitalist thought this was an obvious flaw in the practical application of free markets recognized by all. The government role was to assure that the market stayed very close to perfect competition... Adam Smith, in..."   @samir @shantini I agree very much with your underlying point here: what people call “capitalism” can mean a lot of things, leading in quite different directions. In fact, it’s a word that means such wildly divergent things to different people — anything from “the belief that market effects exist at all“ to “the belief that pricing the dollar value of individual is a moral good“ — that I’ve become hesitant to even use the term without careful clarification of meaning.   @samir A lot of people decry capitalism when they fully don't understand what it is. It has its problems for sure but those problems can be easily mitigated with proper regulation. The problem is often that modern political leaders lack the courage and conviction to properly regulate markets and bust monopolies. Also tax has become a dirty word. Taxation properly applied is part of a successful socio-economic architecture. @samir that’s pretty silly of them, capitalism implies free entreprise, and that’s hard to have if there’s a monopoly in place in the domain you want to build your entreprise in.  I sometimes wonder if the EU will managed to spawn an EU aligned search engine. The US, Russia, and China all have search tools aligned with their power structures, but the EU has mostly been tagging along with the US. @samir I know this is probably not the thing you want to argue.. but capitalism doesn't require monopolistic practices, but it does unevitably create monopolies or oligopolies as end result. (Before things come crashing down anyways.) Capitalism doesn't, on the whole, naturally allow for a truly open system, as something will capitalise on it, keeping it open requires effort.   |
Gregory's Server
@samir capitalism trends toward monopolies and rewards companies that behave badly (a race to the bottom where people say, "if I didn't do this someone else would"). We've been through similar periods before (eg the gilded age). Google's behaviour is natural and consistent with that order. But the accusation against you is a bit like saying you shouldn't hate a wife beater, you should hate the uncle that sexually abused him. It doesn't help anyone.