5 ms·

If capitalism is to be the law of the land, why not let the rich lose everything? I guess they can easily live on the streets.

rcpt 6y ago
"socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor"
- nick_kline 6y ago
  Aka socializing the losses, privatizing the gains.
refurb 6y ago
I gathered the issue is when the rich lose everything that snowballs into failing business and low to middle class unemployment surge.
- coliveira 6y ago
  No, other people will take their place, this is how capitalism works. Let the rich lose everything.
  - refurb 6y ago
    Sure, other people will pick up the pieces but that doesn’t mean much to the blue collar worker who is out of a job for 2 years while someone “takes their place”.
    - gwright 6y ago
      I think it is better to reinforce social safety net programs for individuals (unemployment, food stamps, section 8 housing, etc) than it is to subsidize businesses. Businesses can restructure and re-allocate assets through sales, mergers, or even bankruptcy. In particular subsidizing now obsolete business models is madness to me. Help individuals who need help (why did stimulus checks go to people who still had jobs or who were retired?) and make it as easy as possible for businesses to restructure.
      - Karunamon 6y ago
        >why did stimulus checks go to people who still had jobs or who were retired? Because many people who still technically had jobs had their hours drastically cut, and because it's an economic stimulus, not strictly welfare.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    The rich may indeed deserve to lose everything ... or not, depending on your perspective. But what's equally important is ... if they are going to lose everything, how much of the social, economic and political infrastructure do they destroy on the way down? It may well be that the era of the mall is over, for example. But malls crashing and burning as the mortgages associated with them fail is very different than a slower process in which there is time to think about repurposing and to give those directly affected to contemplate their options.
- rurp 6y ago
  So... we'll let the bailouts trickle down?
treeman79 6y ago
That’s one of the tenants (no pun) of capitalism. Bad execution is punished by going out of business. This forces everyone to be hyper efficient at taking raw resources and getting useful value out of them. Thus people have more goods for less money. People get confused because government gets involved and you end up with cronyism. Free market is as another comment says, the minimum amount of regulation possible that isn’t killing people.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > People get confused because government gets involved and you end up with cronyism. Government was involved from the beginning; capitalism was historically a redirection of the power of government from serving the feudal aristocracy to serving the mercantile class. The utopian (and largely self-inconsistent) rationalizations for capitalism as something that magically exists separate from government and cronyism came much later than capitalism itself, and most of them even later than the early socialist critique of the reality of capitalism.
- notacoward 6y ago
  > Bad execution is punished by going out of business. That's true for the entrepreneurs, but this was about the investors and it tends not to be true for them. It should be.
- bmm6o 6y ago
  > That’s one of the tenants (no pun) of capitalism Not sure if it's just part of the joke, but the word is "tenet".
- coliveira 6y ago
  Crony capitalism is something that doesn't exist. It is all capitalism. For example, Facebook using the support of the US government to control markets around the world (while TikTok is banned) is just capitalism. MZ's fortune can only happen due to this marriage of capitalism and government.

rcpt 6y ago

"socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor"

nick_kline 6y ago
Aka socializing the losses, privatizing the gains.

refurb 6y ago

I gathered the issue is when the rich lose everything that snowballs into failing business and low to middle class unemployment surge.

coliveira 6y ago
No, other people will take their place, this is how capitalism works. Let the rich lose everything.
- refurb 6y ago
  Sure, other people will pick up the pieces but that doesn’t mean much to the blue collar worker who is out of a job for 2 years while someone “takes their place”.
  - gwright 6y ago
    I think it is better to reinforce social safety net programs for individuals (unemployment, food stamps, section 8 housing, etc) than it is to subsidize businesses. Businesses can restructure and re-allocate assets through sales, mergers, or even bankruptcy. In particular subsidizing now obsolete business models is madness to me. Help individuals who need help (why did stimulus checks go to people who still had jobs or who were retired?) and make it as easy as possible for businesses to restructure.
    - Karunamon 6y ago
      >why did stimulus checks go to people who still had jobs or who were retired? Because many people who still technically had jobs had their hours drastically cut, and because it's an economic stimulus, not strictly welfare.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  The rich may indeed deserve to lose everything ... or not, depending on your perspective. But what's equally important is ... if they are going to lose everything, how much of the social, economic and political infrastructure do they destroy on the way down? It may well be that the era of the mall is over, for example. But malls crashing and burning as the mortgages associated with them fail is very different than a slower process in which there is time to think about repurposing and to give those directly affected to contemplate their options.
rurp 6y ago
So... we'll let the bailouts trickle down?

treeman79 6y ago

That’s one of the tenants (no pun) of capitalism. Bad execution is punished by going out of business. This forces everyone to be hyper efficient at taking raw resources and getting useful value out of them. Thus people have more goods for less money. People get confused because government gets involved and you end up with cronyism. Free market is as another comment says, the minimum amount of regulation possible that isn’t killing people.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> People get confused because government gets involved and you end up with cronyism. Government was involved from the beginning; capitalism was historically a redirection of the power of government from serving the feudal aristocracy to serving the mercantile class. The utopian (and largely self-inconsistent) rationalizations for capitalism as something that magically exists separate from government and cronyism came much later than capitalism itself, and most of them even later than the early socialist critique of the reality of capitalism.
notacoward 6y ago
> Bad execution is punished by going out of business. That's true for the entrepreneurs, but this was about the investors and it tends not to be true for them. It should be.
bmm6o 6y ago
> That’s one of the tenants (no pun) of capitalism Not sure if it's just part of the joke, but the word is "tenet".
coliveira 6y ago
Crony capitalism is something that doesn't exist. It is all capitalism. For example, Facebook using the support of the US government to control markets around the world (while TikTok is banned) is just capitalism. MZ's fortune can only happen due to this marriage of capitalism and government.