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Artificially limiting the 'means of production' (which is such an increasingly inappropriate and dated concept to use for these sort of discussions) is precisel

Artificially limiting the 'means of production' (which is such an increasingly inappropriate and dated concept to use for these sort of discussions) is precisely the issue. Imagine a kingdom where a king created rules that, in effect, named exactly one black smith owning [puppet], one tavern owning [puppet], one brothel owning [puppet], etc. And these individuals were free to buy, sell, and trade these businesses so long as the transactions remained within the regulations of the king. That's not capitalism, not even a little. And that is really the issue. The further you limit the ability of people to engage the market (as buyer and seller) the further away you move from capitalism. And that is precisely what our current system is doing. Repeating the same example just because it's so stupefying. In most places in America today you cannot legally setup a lemonade stand and start selling lemonade on your own property. We're creating a culture of passive consumers driven by extreme regulations against everything except such!

int_19h 8y ago
We don't have a problem with monopolization of lemonade stands, though. But we do have a problems with large corporations monopolizing their respective markets, and they are doing that not because they are granted said monopoly from up above, but because they are able to consolidate it. Limiting the amount of capital one can own is not equivalent to your scheme, by the way. The rule isn't that only one guy can own a tavern, or that there can only be one tavern - the rule is that one guy cannot own more than one tavern (just as an example - I don't think that's the level at which we should actually cap capital).
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  The issues are intrinsically connected. People don't just start out e.g. going from nothing to building let's say a telecoms company. Entrepreneurship and creating businesses is a cycle of growth. For instance Bezos' first 'gig' followed a summer of work at McDonalds, which he hated. The next summer he setup a week long education camp for younger kids. He only got a dozen or so signups, but he probably made more from those signups than he did in last year's work at McDonalds. When you start making entrepreneurship difficult from the bottom up, you're going to end up with a really distorted picture of capitalism at the top since you're going to have some sort of strange bias in the companies represented. And this is where I think corporatism excels. There are now just an immense number of rules and laws that are all increasingly esoteric even to operate quite simple businesses. And that's before you get into the countless fees and costs the government demands before you've even sold your first product. In other words when you kill off entrepreneurship and start moving away from capitalism, you invariably head towards corporatism which is itself headed much closer to feudalism than capitalism. As for the king example, this was relating to the feudalism -> capitalism -> corporatism -> feudalism loop, not your specific suggestion. As for your suggestion, there are two big issues. The first is the same as discussed here. Capitalism and competition is a growth system. The reason e.g. Elon Musk was able to create a competitive rocket and vehicle company was because he earned hundreds of millions of dollars in another venture. No individual has any personal need for hundreds of millions of dollars, but it is strictly required if this individual wishes to engage in large scale ventures - the sort of which stand to massively improve society. The second issue is probably the bigger point. We already have countless laws, on the order of thousands of pages, of laws relating to competition, anticompetitive behavior, restrictions on mergers and acquisitions, etc. These were all geared minimizing anti-competitive ownership. But the general rule in a corporatist society holds true. We have the FTC approve mergers between e.g. AT&T/Time Warner/Charter while rejecting mergers between far smaller companies that could eventually become the competitors for these sort of behemoths that increasingly stand above the law, and perhaps even above government. In other words, write the laws and expect to see you and I only be able to own e.g. one tavern. But expect to see the king's friends somehow manage to own thousands. Corporatism in a nutshell.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    Our anti-monopoly enforcement is actually much scaled back compared to what it used to be for most of 20th century. More importantly, the focus was changed. The original monopoly busting approach, at its peak under FDR, was all about ensuring that the markets stay competitive - it was hindrance to competition that had the feds cracking down on you, not e.g. jacking up prices on consumers. That was changed under Reagan, and the new approach was that monopolies were only to be regulated if they start to affect consumers. And that's very much by design - according to the people who devised this regime, monopolies are not in and of themselves bad, because they're more efficient due to economy of scale. So, for example, if a merger happens, the reason why they can block it is if they can demonstrate that it would raise prices or reduce quality of service. If they can't prove that, that's too bad - even if the sheer size of the resulting behemoth is obviously a problem for market competitiveness, it's just out of scope. I don't think it's a coincidence that monopolies dominate the market under these new rules, in a way that they haven't done before.
    - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
      Mostly agreed - we're saying the exact same thing here. You'll also find that going back in time there were also far fewer rules against individual entrepreneurship. And where there were rules they were enforced in a more sane fashion. E.g. - even if a kid's lemonade stand isn't obeying regulation 3753 section 3, or city ordinance 4725-4 or whatever, you don't go and shut down the stand as the stand is doing nothing but good for everybody. But as we transition towards corporatism rules against large companies start to disappear or fail to be enforced, while those rules against small companies and individuals start to grow and become unreasonably burdensome as well as extremely actively enforced. The one part we don't agree on is why corporations are allowed to merge. For instance it's quite evident that Time Warner alone has already exploited their monopoly to increase prices unreasonable. Internet service in America is far more expensive than in many parts of the world, yet the quality is not particularly remarkable. And there's no justifiable reason. It's just companies agreeing not to compete and then jacking up their prices. Because of this it's not reasonable to suggest they're being technically allowed to merge/acquire further competitors because there's no evidence that they won't do what they're already doing. This is just another aspect of corporatism where rules disappear as companies grow large enough.

int_19h 8y ago

We don't have a problem with monopolization of lemonade stands, though. But we do have a problems with large corporations monopolizing their respective markets, and they are doing that not because they are granted said monopoly from up above, but because they are able to consolidate it. Limiting the amount of capital one can own is not equivalent to your scheme, by the way. The rule isn't that only one guy can own a tavern, or that there can only be one tavern - the rule is that one guy cannot own more than one tavern (just as an example - I don't think that's the level at which we should actually cap capital).

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
The issues are intrinsically connected. People don't just start out e.g. going from nothing to building let's say a telecoms company. Entrepreneurship and creating businesses is a cycle of growth. For instance Bezos' first 'gig' followed a summer of work at McDonalds, which he hated. The next summer he setup a week long education camp for younger kids. He only got a dozen or so signups, but he probably made more from those signups than he did in last year's work at McDonalds. When you start making entrepreneurship difficult from the bottom up, you're going to end up with a really distorted picture of capitalism at the top since you're going to have some sort of strange bias in the companies represented. And this is where I think corporatism excels. There are now just an immense number of rules and laws that are all increasingly esoteric even to operate quite simple businesses. And that's before you get into the countless fees and costs the government demands before you've even sold your first product. In other words when you kill off entrepreneurship and start moving away from capitalism, you invariably head towards corporatism which is itself headed much closer to feudalism than capitalism. As for the king example, this was relating to the feudalism -> capitalism -> corporatism -> feudalism loop, not your specific suggestion. As for your suggestion, there are two big issues. The first is the same as discussed here. Capitalism and competition is a growth system. The reason e.g. Elon Musk was able to create a competitive rocket and vehicle company was because he earned hundreds of millions of dollars in another venture. No individual has any personal need for hundreds of millions of dollars, but it is strictly required if this individual wishes to engage in large scale ventures - the sort of which stand to massively improve society. The second issue is probably the bigger point. We already have countless laws, on the order of thousands of pages, of laws relating to competition, anticompetitive behavior, restrictions on mergers and acquisitions, etc. These were all geared minimizing anti-competitive ownership. But the general rule in a corporatist society holds true. We have the FTC approve mergers between e.g. AT&T/Time Warner/Charter while rejecting mergers between far smaller companies that could eventually become the competitors for these sort of behemoths that increasingly stand above the law, and perhaps even above government. In other words, write the laws and expect to see you and I only be able to own e.g. one tavern. But expect to see the king's friends somehow manage to own thousands. Corporatism in a nutshell.
- int_19h 8y ago
  Our anti-monopoly enforcement is actually much scaled back compared to what it used to be for most of 20th century. More importantly, the focus was changed. The original monopoly busting approach, at its peak under FDR, was all about ensuring that the markets stay competitive - it was hindrance to competition that had the feds cracking down on you, not e.g. jacking up prices on consumers. That was changed under Reagan, and the new approach was that monopolies were only to be regulated if they start to affect consumers. And that's very much by design - according to the people who devised this regime, monopolies are not in and of themselves bad, because they're more efficient due to economy of scale. So, for example, if a merger happens, the reason why they can block it is if they can demonstrate that it would raise prices or reduce quality of service. If they can't prove that, that's too bad - even if the sheer size of the resulting behemoth is obviously a problem for market competitiveness, it's just out of scope. I don't think it's a coincidence that monopolies dominate the market under these new rules, in a way that they haven't done before.
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    Mostly agreed - we're saying the exact same thing here. You'll also find that going back in time there were also far fewer rules against individual entrepreneurship. And where there were rules they were enforced in a more sane fashion. E.g. - even if a kid's lemonade stand isn't obeying regulation 3753 section 3, or city ordinance 4725-4 or whatever, you don't go and shut down the stand as the stand is doing nothing but good for everybody. But as we transition towards corporatism rules against large companies start to disappear or fail to be enforced, while those rules against small companies and individuals start to grow and become unreasonably burdensome as well as extremely actively enforced. The one part we don't agree on is why corporations are allowed to merge. For instance it's quite evident that Time Warner alone has already exploited their monopoly to increase prices unreasonable. Internet service in America is far more expensive than in many parts of the world, yet the quality is not particularly remarkable. And there's no justifiable reason. It's just companies agreeing not to compete and then jacking up their prices. Because of this it's not reasonable to suggest they're being technically allowed to merge/acquire further competitors because there's no evidence that they won't do what they're already doing. This is just another aspect of corporatism where rules disappear as companies grow large enough.