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This is a very Anglo point of view. In other parts of the world the relationship is much more antagonistic than you would expect. The state has to get its money

This is a very Anglo point of view. In other parts of the world the relationship is much more antagonistic than you would expect. The state has to get its money from somewhere, and the locals rarely have much of it. The state is often heavily intertwined with industry, through massive regulation and, too often, good old-fashioned corruption. If the state thinks it can get away with nationalizing a vital industry concern, it will without a pause. Usually though it can't because it knows that bureaucrats make horrible managers.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Not sure it's an Anglo view. The State has a monopoly on force and regulation, allowing for the governing of degrees of Capitalism. Capitalism has no such control over the State.
- hashkb 9y ago
  Except look at this situation... Amazon clearly does.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Amazon is asking for a hand out, it does not have control. We could always nationalize Amazon if we decided to, the State never loses that control. All it takes is political regime change.
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  The English innovated on this with a strong legal system protecting the nobles from the depredations of the State. This was only possible because the English was separated from the rest of the continent so it wasn't ever seriously threatened. Every other country in Europe progressed without these innovations and as such they're always only a few steps away from fascism / dictatorship. Except the Dutch. The Dutch were reasonably well protected and they also created a commercial empire. The US Constitution is modeled after the Dutch one. The difference is that the English weren't able to build their commercial empire until after the legal reforms took place, while the Dutch couldn't make their legal reforms until after they built their commercial empire. No such legal reforms exist in other nations. These laws are instrumental in allowing a class structure other than ruling class-peasants. Other countries can vary in the amount of wealth they can spread amongst their peasants, but the peasants don't really participate in the governing. The big caveat here is France. The French mechanism for making demands on the ruling class is social unrest. Nothing like a good French riot. The spectre of a second French Revolution scares the everloving crap out of the rulers and that forces them to the negotiating table. This has the unfortunate effect of making them uniquely vulnerable to fascism. But enterprise in France is just as state-intertwined as it is everywhere else, because there aren't any strong institutions there to counteract it. Only in Anglo countries can industry and state compete as equals. When industry bands together and cooperates, as we used to call monopoly / cartel, only a coordinated state response can check it. This is enshrined in law and a bedrock feature that our capitalistic society relies on for its competitiveness.
  - lovich 9y ago
    So by virtue of being English/Dutch descended they have a better system. The leaps in your logic are all over the place. How is France "uniquely vulnerable to fascism? How do you think that having a response to monopolies enshrined in law makes it a "bedrock feature" of our society when the US has seemingly abandoned any serious enforcement of antitrust law? How do you respond to the state and industries working together as in the case of regulatory capture or governments adding protections for companies like preventing state level governments preventing municipalities from forming their own ISPs? Your whole post just reads as "us good, them bad" with no actual evidence on the results
    - vinceguidry 9y ago
      My original point is that capitalism has to operate on equal footing with the state if it is to thrive, otherwise it will be subsumed into the state at the convenience of said state. > So by virtue of being English/Dutch descended they have a better system. Sure. Systems persist through generations. You can still see remnants of the old French colonial government in Louisiana to this day. I don't understand why this should be a controversial statement. The British attitude towards commerce evolved over hundreds of years, and their colonies inherited it. > How is France "uniquely vulnerable to fascism? A poor choice of words, sorry. They're 'particularly vulnerable', not 'uniquely vulnerable'. > How do you think that having a response to monopolies enshrined in law makes it a "bedrock feature" of our society when the US has seemingly abandoned any serious enforcement of antitrust law? When it comes to very very large institutions with difficult-to-check amounts of power, then ordinary law fails to provide for one side. The antitrust regime in particular was fighting against Standard Oil, a conglomerate that deployed the sharpest legal minds in existence at that time to circumvent federal regulation. It was checked by Teddy Roosevelt, who led the charge to disrupt their operations so they could be brought back under state supervision. Where law fails, individuals and/or mobs take over. The ability of those corrective agents to actually check power is the operative concept here. As another example, the Magna Carta was rammed down the throat of the British Crown by the aristocracy, which was tired of seeing their concerns meddled with by the Crown for no good reason they could see. A full-on war had to be fought between the baronies and the Crown before the Carta could be accepted as a legitimate check on authority. When making a power play, you're changing who gets to write the rules. The mark of a functioning society is when royals, elites and commoners can square off against each other without igniting a war. If they can't do that, then one swallows the other, usually the state consuming private enterprise. Only robust national institutions can maintain the balance of power between entities. After the Carta was passed, the actual text of the charter quickly became obsolete, but the ideas that it represented, that the Crown cannot just do whatever it wants, became enshrined in the minds of the British. Without this innovation, private enterprise cannot flourish, except in a trickle-down fashion from the state. It's not really private anymore, it's 'at the pleasure of the state.' My argument is that only the Anglosphere and the Dutch managed to evolve this institutions throughout history, in slightly different ways, and that all other countries try to ape the institutions, and fail to create robust ones. Because it goes farther than merely having a judiciary and constitution. The public themselves has to buy into the system, which is what makes the French public so scary to its lawmakers.

toomuchtodo 9y ago

Not sure it's an Anglo view. The State has a monopoly on force and regulation, allowing for the governing of degrees of Capitalism. Capitalism has no such control over the State.

hashkb 9y ago
Except look at this situation... Amazon clearly does.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Amazon is asking for a hand out, it does not have control. We could always nationalize Amazon if we decided to, the State never loses that control. All it takes is political regime change.
vinceguidry 9y ago
The English innovated on this with a strong legal system protecting the nobles from the depredations of the State. This was only possible because the English was separated from the rest of the continent so it wasn't ever seriously threatened. Every other country in Europe progressed without these innovations and as such they're always only a few steps away from fascism / dictatorship. Except the Dutch. The Dutch were reasonably well protected and they also created a commercial empire. The US Constitution is modeled after the Dutch one. The difference is that the English weren't able to build their commercial empire until after the legal reforms took place, while the Dutch couldn't make their legal reforms until after they built their commercial empire. No such legal reforms exist in other nations. These laws are instrumental in allowing a class structure other than ruling class-peasants. Other countries can vary in the amount of wealth they can spread amongst their peasants, but the peasants don't really participate in the governing. The big caveat here is France. The French mechanism for making demands on the ruling class is social unrest. Nothing like a good French riot. The spectre of a second French Revolution scares the everloving crap out of the rulers and that forces them to the negotiating table. This has the unfortunate effect of making them uniquely vulnerable to fascism. But enterprise in France is just as state-intertwined as it is everywhere else, because there aren't any strong institutions there to counteract it. Only in Anglo countries can industry and state compete as equals. When industry bands together and cooperates, as we used to call monopoly / cartel, only a coordinated state response can check it. This is enshrined in law and a bedrock feature that our capitalistic society relies on for its competitiveness.
- lovich 9y ago
  So by virtue of being English/Dutch descended they have a better system. The leaps in your logic are all over the place. How is France "uniquely vulnerable to fascism? How do you think that having a response to monopolies enshrined in law makes it a "bedrock feature" of our society when the US has seemingly abandoned any serious enforcement of antitrust law? How do you respond to the state and industries working together as in the case of regulatory capture or governments adding protections for companies like preventing state level governments preventing municipalities from forming their own ISPs? Your whole post just reads as "us good, them bad" with no actual evidence on the results
  - vinceguidry 9y ago
    My original point is that capitalism has to operate on equal footing with the state if it is to thrive, otherwise it will be subsumed into the state at the convenience of said state. > So by virtue of being English/Dutch descended they have a better system. Sure. Systems persist through generations. You can still see remnants of the old French colonial government in Louisiana to this day. I don't understand why this should be a controversial statement. The British attitude towards commerce evolved over hundreds of years, and their colonies inherited it. > How is France "uniquely vulnerable to fascism? A poor choice of words, sorry. They're 'particularly vulnerable', not 'uniquely vulnerable'. > How do you think that having a response to monopolies enshrined in law makes it a "bedrock feature" of our society when the US has seemingly abandoned any serious enforcement of antitrust law? When it comes to very very large institutions with difficult-to-check amounts of power, then ordinary law fails to provide for one side. The antitrust regime in particular was fighting against Standard Oil, a conglomerate that deployed the sharpest legal minds in existence at that time to circumvent federal regulation. It was checked by Teddy Roosevelt, who led the charge to disrupt their operations so they could be brought back under state supervision. Where law fails, individuals and/or mobs take over. The ability of those corrective agents to actually check power is the operative concept here. As another example, the Magna Carta was rammed down the throat of the British Crown by the aristocracy, which was tired of seeing their concerns meddled with by the Crown for no good reason they could see. A full-on war had to be fought between the baronies and the Crown before the Carta could be accepted as a legitimate check on authority. When making a power play, you're changing who gets to write the rules. The mark of a functioning society is when royals, elites and commoners can square off against each other without igniting a war. If they can't do that, then one swallows the other, usually the state consuming private enterprise. Only robust national institutions can maintain the balance of power between entities. After the Carta was passed, the actual text of the charter quickly became obsolete, but the ideas that it represented, that the Crown cannot just do whatever it wants, became enshrined in the minds of the British. Without this innovation, private enterprise cannot flourish, except in a trickle-down fashion from the state. It's not really private anymore, it's 'at the pleasure of the state.' My argument is that only the Anglosphere and the Dutch managed to evolve this institutions throughout history, in slightly different ways, and that all other countries try to ape the institutions, and fail to create robust ones. Because it goes farther than merely having a judiciary and constitution. The public themselves has to buy into the system, which is what makes the French public so scary to its lawmakers.