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> Yet, there’s a flaw at the heart of this claim. While the United States operates as a free market economy, the key agent within modern capitalism - the corpor

> Yet, there’s a flaw at the heart of this claim. While the United States operates as a free market economy, the key agent within modern capitalism - the corporation - works more like an authoritarian state This isn't particularly true, but where it is, it isn't a flaw. This is as designed. Where it's true: what capitalism wants to avoid is putting "money" in with "power" (i.e. "violence" and "rules") that the state has. Companies don't have violence and only have rules in a limited sense. E.g. a company can't lock you in a box for failing to give it some of your money. Only the state can do that. Having corporations limits the blast radius of what malicious/incompetent employees can do. In a capitalist system, with enough bad decisions, your company might go bankrupt. In a communist one, with enough bad decisions, 50 million people might starve to death[0]. Where it's not true: companies exist through free agreements between people. You might argue that they aren't free enough, although that gets vague fast, but you can't opt out of the state. That's the problem with authoritarian states. You can move job. Or, if you argue that people can't move job, the problem is so much harder for moving state that the point still stands. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward

batty_alex 3y ago
> Companies don't have violence and only have rules in a limited sense. E.g. a company can't lock you in a box for failing to give it some of your money Companies certainly do "have violence" and certainly have locked people up in the past. The only thing keeping large corporations from doing this now is the state. In the article, the author puts forth the problem with the Great Leap Forward: large central authority being disconnected from those starving workers. That's a problem large, centrally planned, corporations face.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > the author puts forth the problem with the Great Leap Forward: large central authority being disconnected from those starving workers. That's a problem large, centrally planned, corporations face. This is not the whole truth. The problem with the Great Leap Forward was that the state enforced farming techniques, and even what farmers should work on instead of farming, and took food to bring to the centre. It's not just disconnection. Disconnection is far too vague a word to choose. To compare a company not listening to its workers with what the GLF did - it's hard to avoid thinking you picked the one vague word that could technically describe both of those scenarios, despite the vast gulf between them. As I sort of said elsewhere - some companies are bad. That's fine, unless there's no competitor to move to. Then workers' situations are really bad, because they have to choose between retraining, moving, and staying, none of which is a great choice. But if you think that's bad, think how much worse it is that a state bureaucrat can lock you in jail, and your only option is to flee the country. Companies aren't perfect, but they limit the blast radius of the damage an incompetent or malicious employee can achieve.
lll-o-lll 3y ago
The line between large corporations and government is thin at best. If individuals can comfortably enrich themselves from the private sphere while in public office, if companies can modify or introduce legislation to their benefit, if even foreign policy can be influenced to benefit parts of the private sector, how can we conclude anything other than power is the outcome of enough money? That’s as an aside. Big companies trend towards authoritarian, communist style bureaucracy due to a desire to centralize decision making (or concentrate power). This is no more effective for a corporation than it is a government. Complexity theory shows us that all the interesting stuff happens on the edge of Chaos. Big companies suck because the desire for control kills the complexity dance.
- Bilal_io 3y ago
  Did you just use authoritarian and communism in the same sentence to describe big companies? Communism is where the means of production is owned by the people, and by that definition it's the opposite of authoritarian.
  - lll-o-lll 3y ago
    Yes I did. Show me a “communist” state without authoritarianism.
    - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
      Show me any government that doesn't have some "Authority".
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        Authority isn't the same, so this seems pointless.
    - Bilal_io 3y ago
      There are non, because they claim to be "communist" but they're not, just like many authoritarians claim "democracy".
boesboes 3y ago
By design doesn't mean it isn't flawed. Also, 'you can move jobs' is not really true for most people and 'not-as-bad-as' is no argument, it's a fallacy
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  Can you substantiate your first claim, and expand on your second, please? I've tried to write without just name-calling at things I disagree with. Would appreciate the same. Happy to explain things that are unclear or I mis-wrote, but I can't do that based on no information.
BoxOfRain 3y ago
>what capitalism wants to avoid is putting "money" in with "power" I'd argue the enormous amount of private money in politics is evidence against this being the case in practice, along with the well-recognised notion that outcomes in the justice system often depend on how much you can afford to spend on legal representation. Yes there's a lot of formal separation between what is public and what is private, but the realpolitik is that (for example) the water company pouring untreated sewage into the rivers has much more power than the people affected by that practice.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > but the realpolitik is that (for example) the water company pouring untreated sewage into the rivers has much more power than the people affected by that practice This is true, but it's purely a problem of lack of state oversight and competence. That company isn't capitalism. That company is a group of people making decisions, and not being held accountable by the state. A state-owned water company could be in exactly the same situation.
  - nathan_compton 3y ago
    I think you're doing an admirable job of explaining things, but what you might be missing is that many pro-capitalist/pro-libertarian public figures seem to be constantly trying to undermine the very government oversight and competence that you are saying is the real problem with capitalism. I don't mean to suggest that you are in that camp. I'm just trying to explain why people seem frustrated with the idea that states and companies are distinct entities which should be considered separately when thinking about society. In practice they interdepend on one another and many people with power and money that inhere in private institutions actively try to undermine the state's ability to pursue them. I think that reality is something we ought to acknowledge, although I'm not sure what to do about it. From my point of view European style socialism (modulo a few things) seems to be the optimal balance, but I'm happy to acknowledge it isn't trivial to predict in practice how anything will pan out.
    - randomdata 3y ago
lordnacho 3y ago
> Where it's not true: companies exist through free agreements between people. Works mainly in a more or less equal society of small businesses. I can certainly decide which restaurant to eat at. In practice, you aren't free to not do business with certain large corporations. > You might argue that they aren't free enough, although that gets vague fast It's in the vagueness that the problem exists, so we shouldn't sweep it away just because there's a lack of clear lines. > but you can't opt out of the state You can't, and that's why the state has a lot of the same issues as the large corporates.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > In practice, you aren't free to not do business with certain large corporations. This is true with geographic monopolies, e.g. a company that owns water delivery pipes to people's houses. It isn't great, and suffers from the same lack of positive incentives as other geographic monopolies such as regional and national government. Even more, because at least you can vote out a tiny fraction of the latter. But this is relatively minimal, and those companies often get nationalised, as they are utilities. That doesn't make them good; it just means that they are grouped in with the state.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    It's true outside of natural monopolies, too, at least in the US. I can make a pretty long list of companies that I object to doing business with, but I have no other choice than to continue to do business with them.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      No other choice, or no better choice?
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        Sometimes no other choice at all, sometimes no other feasible choice.
vmfunction 3y ago
It is important to disguise between: 1. capitalism as a form of free market. 2. capitalism as a form of corporatism, the kind that practiced by German conglomerates before and after the WWII. We can argue that 1 has never being tried any where. As markets are never really free currently. Number 2 is what the author and most people who don't like about capitalism. It is a form of authoritarianism rather than capitalism, just as how Soviet and China pretend to be communist while they were just practicing authoritarianism.
- Rinzler89 3y ago
  Not just German conglomerates, see the Korean Chaebols and their Japanese equivalents. They're nearly as powerful as the state itself.
- piva00 3y ago
  In that sense 1. is just fantastical wishful thinking. There's absolutely no way for complete free markets to exist without any sort of governmental interdiction to set rules and regulations, in the bare minimum for societal safety measures, and on a larger scope to try to minimise societal damage caused by an absolute free market. A complete free market would allow companies to sell toxic products (including food), would allow slave labour, would allow price dumping and other anti-competitive practices, so on and so forth. Absolute free marketism is as fantastical as believing in utopian Communism.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > It is important to disguise between: 1. capitalism as a form of free market. 2. capitalism as a form of corporatism. We can argue that 1 has never being tried any where. As markets are never really free currently. This is the fallacy of the excluded middle. There are plenty of markets that look a lot more like 1 than 2. You can have 1 with regulations. A free market is about who's allowed to trade with whom, e.g. can I buy a car from Japan without the government adding something to the price tag (a tariff; in addition to the tax also added to the price tag)? You can say in the extreme that regulations are not free market, or at least how they are currently implemented. Possibly state-funded bodies could generate safety logos instead of regulations, and people could check for the logo for their product, and shops could only sell with that logo, and it might work similarly, but without regulations, but instead by consumer choice. I don't see a lot of practical difference, though. Regulations are often (or should be, in a decent capitalist system) about enforcing minimums for fair competition. So a bank has to offer so much insurance on balances. A toy company has to make sure it doesn't use cheaper toxic materials. And companies can compete within that framework. That's still pretty free trade, and definitely a capitalist system. Types of corporatism are too broad a church to discuss, unless you specify which type you mean. But they are often nothing to do with capitalism.
notpachet 3y ago
> In a capitalist system, with enough bad decisions, your company might go bankrupt. Or your company might lobby against regulations that safeguard public health. Your company might make carcinogenic products and pressure government groups to downplay their effects[0]. Your company might consistently resist efforts to install better safety measures for chemical transport, resulting in hundreds of gallons of extremely toxic chemicals spilling and catching fire in your neighborhood[1]. Your company might contribute to pushing humanity into a doom loop of global externalities that we can't escape. In other words, the separation of "money" from "physical power" cuts both ways. Where it breaks down in capitalism is when corporations are able to use their money to evade or neuter the government's physical power so that they can continue doing harm. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Palestine,_Ohio,_train_derailment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Palestine,_Ohio,_train_de...
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  They can't use their money to evade or neuter the government's physical power. The people they pay are the government. The government is the problem in that situation, as it's responsible for making sure those things don't happen.
  - nathanbbarton 3y ago
    > The government is the problem in that situation, as it's responsible for making sure those things don't happen. The government would certainly be complicit in this scenario, but is the corporation doing the act not still responsible for their actions? The corporation is still the actor that is motivated to do "the bad thing" (ie: cut safety features to save money), and then lobbies the complicit government to turn a blind eye. The phrasing of this seems to imply that corporations can do whatever they want as long as they play by the rules, and then puts the full blame on the government because they either failed to provide a "perfect" ruleset or they were actively complicit in turning a blind eye. I know technically "doing whatever they want as long as they play by the rules" is in practice just following the letter of the law, but are they not responsible for taking some degree of responsibility beyond that?
zakki 3y ago
The truth is: - Company can work with government to put someone in jail. And the company has the important resource for that: money. - A google account blocked, so someone lost their income because their Adsense or developer account is not accessible anymore. This is a violence in my opinion. - Once you have an agreement with a company, the company can change the rule without your agreement.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > Company can work with government to put someone in jail Yes, but that is very unusual. It requires a lot of checks and balances to get past. > This is a violence in my opinion. Understood. We strongly disagree here, but it's interesting. I've never considered blocking an Adsense account to be in any way similar to being locked in jail for 20 years, for example, but I'll bear in mind that this is an opinion some people hold.
  - piva00 3y ago
    > I've never considered blocking an Adsense account to be in any way similar to being locked in jail for 20 years, for example, but I'll bear in mind that this is an opinion some people hold. I think it's the concentration of power in just a handful of players that carries the similarity, they control what you can do (not unlike the state but through economic means instead of violence). Being imprisoned is of course much worse than losing access to your Google Account but if you depend on having a Google/Amazon/Meta account for your work (let's say, as a small business owner selling online) it will be crippling to lose access to Adsense and Instagram/Facebook Ads while losing access on selling through Amazon Marketplace. In some markets you simply wouldn't be able to compete with others that haven't lost their access, you are essentially blocked from participating in the market. And those companies' processes don't have checks and balances like a functioning government provides.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      > not unlike the state but through economic means instead of violence Well - the state can do both of these, and does. > In some markets you simply wouldn't be able to compete with others that haven't lost their access, you are essentially blocked from participating in the market I partly agree. However, I think - say - Youtube Creator is a career with very limited potential outside of YouTube. But that's because YouTube pays really well compared to its competitors. If YouTube paid worse, then no one would rely on it as a revenue source. It's like spending your life servicing a rich person's Model T Ford. You might be well paid, but your alternatives are no better than mechanic in a garage. That's your choice, and your risk.
fipar 3y ago
If capitalism wants to avoid putting money in with power, then what is lobbying? And there are plenty of examples of companies having and using violence. That in more civilized countries it happens less than before is because of the struggle of previous generations and not out of the good design of capitalism. Mind you, I’ll take capitalism over any of the existing alternatives any day, but I think your view is very naive.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > If capitalism wants to avoid putting money in with power, then what is lobbying? Lobbying is spending money to try and pursuade people with power to do something. That's not the same as having power. And lobbying is not a particularly capitalist mechanism. It's people talking to government.
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    That explanation would only work if lobbyists were limited to sitting down and having conversations with those in power. In the real world, US politicians make off with plenty of "donations" and gifts/favors that greatly influence them. The NRA, for example, hasn't kept politicians from meaningful gun control laws because they hired the most convincing lobbyists/conversationalists.
    - nathan_compton 3y ago
      "The NRA, for example, hasn't kept politicians from meaningful gun control laws because they hired the most convincing lobbyists/conversationalists." Counterpoint: arguably they have.
      - _heimdall 3y ago
        So is it your opinion that the NRA has been so successful through words alone? That politicians have never received any financial or political gain from the NRA at all?
amiga386 3y ago
> Having corporations limits the blast radius of what malicious/incompetent employees can do Only if the state cares to reign them in. If it doesn't, or joins up in cahoots with them... For example, the Cuyaml Fruit Company's private army staging a coup d'etat against Honduras. Or the Iraq Petroleum Company assisting the Sultan of Muscat's invasion of Oman because of the bountiful hydrocarbons in the area. Or the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant in Bhopal accidentally poisoning 500,000 people.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > Only if the state cares to reign them in. If it doesn't, or joins up in cahoots with them... Yes I agree a corrupt/incompetent state is the cause of almost infinite ills. > Or the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant in Bhopal accidentally poisoning 500,000 people. No form of resource allocation can prevent accidents. This is about the deliberate apportioning of power, not (horrible) accidents.
  - trust_bt_verify 3y ago
    > Yes I agree a corruption/incompetence is the cause of almost infinite ills. -FTFY Only recognizing when it happens in government is a cognitive bias. Assuming it’s happening in a democracy you have a vote in, you have some power to change that. When it happens in private business, you are powerless.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      > Only recognizing when it happens in government is a cognitive bias. I'm not doing this. I'm at risk of repeating myself, but it's worse in government. And government gets free money from your wallet specifically to prevent corruption, and even define it. That's much worse than a company I can stop paying being corrupt. I have no voting power to remove a corrupt public servant, unless someone runs specifically on that platform. Which no one would.
      - 3y ago
sph 3y ago
People keep confusing capitalist economy with the state, and keep blaming the big bad of "capitalism" for shortcomings of the Big State, namely corruption and collusion of our politicians and lobbyists. Also, calling whatever economic model we have in our Western countries a "free market" is an oxymoron at best. There is no free market if politicians are allowed to force it to bend one way or the other with laws and trade restrictions. Like many words put on slogans and coopted to drive some agenda, "capitalism" and "free market" have lost all their meaning. Anyone uses those words to refer to their favourite scapegoat.
MSFT_Edging 3y ago
> can't lock you in a box for failing to give it some of your money. But they can hire a private prosecutor to legally harass you and force you into house arrest for winning a case against them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Donziger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Donziger It's silly to argue that Corporations don't have violence as a tool. In a literal sense, they might not be hiring thugs to break your legs, but with money comes many good lawyers who can tie you up in court for a decade, milking every bit of money(the thing you survive with) from you. This is a form of violence, an individual is defenseless against a large enough corporation that can basically spend 100x what you can on lawyers.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > This is a form of violence I don't see the point of calling things violence that aren't. Not everything bad is violence. And only the state is allowed to perform actual violence (non-defensive).
bartonfink 3y ago
not all violence uses sticks and stones dope
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
"companies exist through free agreements between people." I think this is the common "Libertarian" view, that then goes down the Libertarian Rabbit Hole : "That is Anarchy, wait no, we need some rules, guess we're back to having some type of government and/or corporation, back to the drawing board". Humans keep re-inventing Moloch.
- randomdata 3y ago
  Yes, the Libertarian view is that people should be free to enter into agreements with each other. Which is nothing like anarchy. Libertarians in no way believe people should be free to do whatever they want. Government (or at least something resembling government) is always necessary under Libertarianism. After all, who else is going to ensure that agreements are upheld? Who is going stop those who try to act absent of an agreement?
pvdoom 3y ago
> what capitalism wants to avoid is putting "money" in with "power" Sorry but this is plain out wrong. Under a capitalist system money IS power, as it is fundamental for survival, and that people with money are the ones that tend to have disproportionate amount of leverage both over the government and individuals. Under capitalism the government mostly exists to protect the interests of businesses and property holders, a lot more than say the common person on the street.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  No, power is power. If you're a company, you don't have the power to set rules, or lock people in boxes, or (in some places) kill people. The state has power. Capitalism says that companies don't get power. They need money to survive, but that doesn't mean money is power. Money is money. > Under capitalism the government mostly exists to protect the interests of businesses and property holders No, that's not right. That might sometimes happen, but it's in no way fundamental. Under capitalism the government sets and enforces the rules, and provides currency and other bits and bobs to let people trade fairly and at a minimum standard.
  - pvdoom 3y ago
    > you don't have the power to set rules, or lock people in boxes, or (in some places) kill people Quite the opposite - companies literally set rules all the time. How the work should be done, who should do what, who the boss is, when are you allowed to leave, etc. Being obliged to be in an office is tantamount to being locked in a box for a considerable amount of your time - and you don't get to choose which part, so you end up spending the vast majority of your precious time locked in a box working for someone, because otherwise, and here we come to the last part: Companies have the power to ruin livelihoods, cause homelessness and death, etc. The government of capitalist countries creates that system, and has done so historically, so that the system above is upheld. And the government works mostly in favour of businesses and business owners as a whole, because it is made of said people. You are obliged to go to work for someone else or face starvation, exactly because this is a choice that was made and continues to be made by governments in favour of businesses. You are obliged to pay exorbitant amount of money to afford basic necessities. etc. etc. > but that doesn't mean money is power. Money is money. Exactly the opposite - money is pure power. Money is literally congealed social relationships. With little money you can't do much. With a lot of money, you go golfing with senators and lawmakers like I go for Friday beers with my mates. With a little money you're forced to continue working that deadend job to make ends meet. With a lot of money you can have a yacht bigger than the house of the person in the previous sentence (oh, wait, that person doesn't actually own the house)

batty_alex 3y ago

> Companies don't have violence and only have rules in a limited sense. E.g. a company can't lock you in a box for failing to give it some of your money Companies certainly do "have violence" and certainly have locked people up in the past. The only thing keeping large corporations from doing this now is the state. In the article, the author puts forth the problem with the Great Leap Forward: large central authority being disconnected from those starving workers. That's a problem large, centrally planned, corporations face.

robertlagrant 3y ago
> the author puts forth the problem with the Great Leap Forward: large central authority being disconnected from those starving workers. That's a problem large, centrally planned, corporations face. This is not the whole truth. The problem with the Great Leap Forward was that the state enforced farming techniques, and even what farmers should work on instead of farming, and took food to bring to the centre. It's not just disconnection. Disconnection is far too vague a word to choose. To compare a company not listening to its workers with what the GLF did - it's hard to avoid thinking you picked the one vague word that could technically describe both of those scenarios, despite the vast gulf between them. As I sort of said elsewhere - some companies are bad. That's fine, unless there's no competitor to move to. Then workers' situations are really bad, because they have to choose between retraining, moving, and staying, none of which is a great choice. But if you think that's bad, think how much worse it is that a state bureaucrat can lock you in jail, and your only option is to flee the country. Companies aren't perfect, but they limit the blast radius of the damage an incompetent or malicious employee can achieve.

lll-o-lll 3y ago

The line between large corporations and government is thin at best. If individuals can comfortably enrich themselves from the private sphere while in public office, if companies can modify or introduce legislation to their benefit, if even foreign policy can be influenced to benefit parts of the private sector, how can we conclude anything other than power is the outcome of enough money? That’s as an aside. Big companies trend towards authoritarian, communist style bureaucracy due to a desire to centralize decision making (or concentrate power). This is no more effective for a corporation than it is a government. Complexity theory shows us that all the interesting stuff happens on the edge of Chaos. Big companies suck because the desire for control kills the complexity dance.

Bilal_io 3y ago
Did you just use authoritarian and communism in the same sentence to describe big companies? Communism is where the means of production is owned by the people, and by that definition it's the opposite of authoritarian.
- lll-o-lll 3y ago
  Yes I did. Show me a “communist” state without authoritarianism.
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    Show me any government that doesn't have some "Authority".
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      Authority isn't the same, so this seems pointless.
  - Bilal_io 3y ago
    There are non, because they claim to be "communist" but they're not, just like many authoritarians claim "democracy".

boesboes 3y ago

By design doesn't mean it isn't flawed. Also, 'you can move jobs' is not really true for most people and 'not-as-bad-as' is no argument, it's a fallacy

robertlagrant 3y ago
Can you substantiate your first claim, and expand on your second, please? I've tried to write without just name-calling at things I disagree with. Would appreciate the same. Happy to explain things that are unclear or I mis-wrote, but I can't do that based on no information.

BoxOfRain 3y ago

>what capitalism wants to avoid is putting "money" in with "power" I'd argue the enormous amount of private money in politics is evidence against this being the case in practice, along with the well-recognised notion that outcomes in the justice system often depend on how much you can afford to spend on legal representation. Yes there's a lot of formal separation between what is public and what is private, but the realpolitik is that (for example) the water company pouring untreated sewage into the rivers has much more power than the people affected by that practice.

robertlagrant 3y ago
> but the realpolitik is that (for example) the water company pouring untreated sewage into the rivers has much more power than the people affected by that practice This is true, but it's purely a problem of lack of state oversight and competence. That company isn't capitalism. That company is a group of people making decisions, and not being held accountable by the state. A state-owned water company could be in exactly the same situation.
- nathan_compton 3y ago
  I think you're doing an admirable job of explaining things, but what you might be missing is that many pro-capitalist/pro-libertarian public figures seem to be constantly trying to undermine the very government oversight and competence that you are saying is the real problem with capitalism. I don't mean to suggest that you are in that camp. I'm just trying to explain why people seem frustrated with the idea that states and companies are distinct entities which should be considered separately when thinking about society. In practice they interdepend on one another and many people with power and money that inhere in private institutions actively try to undermine the state's ability to pursue them. I think that reality is something we ought to acknowledge, although I'm not sure what to do about it. From my point of view European style socialism (modulo a few things) seems to be the optimal balance, but I'm happy to acknowledge it isn't trivial to predict in practice how anything will pan out.
  - randomdata 3y ago

lordnacho 3y ago

> Where it's not true: companies exist through free agreements between people. Works mainly in a more or less equal society of small businesses. I can certainly decide which restaurant to eat at. In practice, you aren't free to not do business with certain large corporations. > You might argue that they aren't free enough, although that gets vague fast It's in the vagueness that the problem exists, so we shouldn't sweep it away just because there's a lack of clear lines. > but you can't opt out of the state You can't, and that's why the state has a lot of the same issues as the large corporates.

robertlagrant 3y ago
> In practice, you aren't free to not do business with certain large corporations. This is true with geographic monopolies, e.g. a company that owns water delivery pipes to people's houses. It isn't great, and suffers from the same lack of positive incentives as other geographic monopolies such as regional and national government. Even more, because at least you can vote out a tiny fraction of the latter. But this is relatively minimal, and those companies often get nationalised, as they are utilities. That doesn't make them good; it just means that they are grouped in with the state.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  It's true outside of natural monopolies, too, at least in the US. I can make a pretty long list of companies that I object to doing business with, but I have no other choice than to continue to do business with them.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    No other choice, or no better choice?
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      Sometimes no other choice at all, sometimes no other feasible choice.

vmfunction 3y ago

It is important to disguise between: 1. capitalism as a form of free market. 2. capitalism as a form of corporatism, the kind that practiced by German conglomerates before and after the WWII. We can argue that 1 has never being tried any where. As markets are never really free currently. Number 2 is what the author and most people who don't like about capitalism. It is a form of authoritarianism rather than capitalism, just as how Soviet and China pretend to be communist while they were just practicing authoritarianism.

Rinzler89 3y ago
Not just German conglomerates, see the Korean Chaebols and their Japanese equivalents. They're nearly as powerful as the state itself.
piva00 3y ago
In that sense 1. is just fantastical wishful thinking. There's absolutely no way for complete free markets to exist without any sort of governmental interdiction to set rules and regulations, in the bare minimum for societal safety measures, and on a larger scope to try to minimise societal damage caused by an absolute free market. A complete free market would allow companies to sell toxic products (including food), would allow slave labour, would allow price dumping and other anti-competitive practices, so on and so forth. Absolute free marketism is as fantastical as believing in utopian Communism.
robertlagrant 3y ago
> It is important to disguise between: 1. capitalism as a form of free market. 2. capitalism as a form of corporatism. We can argue that 1 has never being tried any where. As markets are never really free currently. This is the fallacy of the excluded middle. There are plenty of markets that look a lot more like 1 than 2. You can have 1 with regulations. A free market is about who's allowed to trade with whom, e.g. can I buy a car from Japan without the government adding something to the price tag (a tariff; in addition to the tax also added to the price tag)? You can say in the extreme that regulations are not free market, or at least how they are currently implemented. Possibly state-funded bodies could generate safety logos instead of regulations, and people could check for the logo for their product, and shops could only sell with that logo, and it might work similarly, but without regulations, but instead by consumer choice. I don't see a lot of practical difference, though. Regulations are often (or should be, in a decent capitalist system) about enforcing minimums for fair competition. So a bank has to offer so much insurance on balances. A toy company has to make sure it doesn't use cheaper toxic materials. And companies can compete within that framework. That's still pretty free trade, and definitely a capitalist system. Types of corporatism are too broad a church to discuss, unless you specify which type you mean. But they are often nothing to do with capitalism.

notpachet 3y ago

> In a capitalist system, with enough bad decisions, your company might go bankrupt. Or your company might lobby against regulations that safeguard public health. Your company might make carcinogenic products and pressure government groups to downplay their effects[0]. Your company might consistently resist efforts to install better safety measures for chemical transport, resulting in hundreds of gallons of extremely toxic chemicals spilling and catching fire in your neighborhood[1]. Your company might contribute to pushing humanity into a doom loop of global externalities that we can't escape. In other words, the separation of "money" from "physical power" cuts both ways. Where it breaks down in capitalism is when corporations are able to use their money to evade or neuter the government's physical power so that they can continue doing harm. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Palestine,_Ohio,_train_derailment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Palestine,_Ohio,_train_de...

robertlagrant 3y ago
They can't use their money to evade or neuter the government's physical power. The people they pay are the government. The government is the problem in that situation, as it's responsible for making sure those things don't happen.
- nathanbbarton 3y ago
  > The government is the problem in that situation, as it's responsible for making sure those things don't happen. The government would certainly be complicit in this scenario, but is the corporation doing the act not still responsible for their actions? The corporation is still the actor that is motivated to do "the bad thing" (ie: cut safety features to save money), and then lobbies the complicit government to turn a blind eye. The phrasing of this seems to imply that corporations can do whatever they want as long as they play by the rules, and then puts the full blame on the government because they either failed to provide a "perfect" ruleset or they were actively complicit in turning a blind eye. I know technically "doing whatever they want as long as they play by the rules" is in practice just following the letter of the law, but are they not responsible for taking some degree of responsibility beyond that?

zakki 3y ago

The truth is: - Company can work with government to put someone in jail. And the company has the important resource for that: money. - A google account blocked, so someone lost their income because their Adsense or developer account is not accessible anymore. This is a violence in my opinion. - Once you have an agreement with a company, the company can change the rule without your agreement.

robertlagrant 3y ago
> Company can work with government to put someone in jail Yes, but that is very unusual. It requires a lot of checks and balances to get past. > This is a violence in my opinion. Understood. We strongly disagree here, but it's interesting. I've never considered blocking an Adsense account to be in any way similar to being locked in jail for 20 years, for example, but I'll bear in mind that this is an opinion some people hold.
- piva00 3y ago
  > I've never considered blocking an Adsense account to be in any way similar to being locked in jail for 20 years, for example, but I'll bear in mind that this is an opinion some people hold. I think it's the concentration of power in just a handful of players that carries the similarity, they control what you can do (not unlike the state but through economic means instead of violence). Being imprisoned is of course much worse than losing access to your Google Account but if you depend on having a Google/Amazon/Meta account for your work (let's say, as a small business owner selling online) it will be crippling to lose access to Adsense and Instagram/Facebook Ads while losing access on selling through Amazon Marketplace. In some markets you simply wouldn't be able to compete with others that haven't lost their access, you are essentially blocked from participating in the market. And those companies' processes don't have checks and balances like a functioning government provides.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > not unlike the state but through economic means instead of violence Well - the state can do both of these, and does. > In some markets you simply wouldn't be able to compete with others that haven't lost their access, you are essentially blocked from participating in the market I partly agree. However, I think - say - Youtube Creator is a career with very limited potential outside of YouTube. But that's because YouTube pays really well compared to its competitors. If YouTube paid worse, then no one would rely on it as a revenue source. It's like spending your life servicing a rich person's Model T Ford. You might be well paid, but your alternatives are no better than mechanic in a garage. That's your choice, and your risk.

fipar 3y ago

If capitalism wants to avoid putting money in with power, then what is lobbying? And there are plenty of examples of companies having and using violence. That in more civilized countries it happens less than before is because of the struggle of previous generations and not out of the good design of capitalism. Mind you, I’ll take capitalism over any of the existing alternatives any day, but I think your view is very naive.

robertlagrant 3y ago
> If capitalism wants to avoid putting money in with power, then what is lobbying? Lobbying is spending money to try and pursuade people with power to do something. That's not the same as having power. And lobbying is not a particularly capitalist mechanism. It's people talking to government.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  That explanation would only work if lobbyists were limited to sitting down and having conversations with those in power. In the real world, US politicians make off with plenty of "donations" and gifts/favors that greatly influence them. The NRA, for example, hasn't kept politicians from meaningful gun control laws because they hired the most convincing lobbyists/conversationalists.
  - nathan_compton 3y ago
    "The NRA, for example, hasn't kept politicians from meaningful gun control laws because they hired the most convincing lobbyists/conversationalists." Counterpoint: arguably they have.
    - _heimdall 3y ago
      So is it your opinion that the NRA has been so successful through words alone? That politicians have never received any financial or political gain from the NRA at all?

amiga386 3y ago

> Having corporations limits the blast radius of what malicious/incompetent employees can do Only if the state cares to reign them in. If it doesn't, or joins up in cahoots with them... For example, the Cuyaml Fruit Company's private army staging a coup d'etat against Honduras. Or the Iraq Petroleum Company assisting the Sultan of Muscat's invasion of Oman because of the bountiful hydrocarbons in the area. Or the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant in Bhopal accidentally poisoning 500,000 people.

robertlagrant 3y ago
> Only if the state cares to reign them in. If it doesn't, or joins up in cahoots with them... Yes I agree a corrupt/incompetent state is the cause of almost infinite ills. > Or the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant in Bhopal accidentally poisoning 500,000 people. No form of resource allocation can prevent accidents. This is about the deliberate apportioning of power, not (horrible) accidents.
- trust_bt_verify 3y ago
  > Yes I agree a corruption/incompetence is the cause of almost infinite ills. -FTFY Only recognizing when it happens in government is a cognitive bias. Assuming it’s happening in a democracy you have a vote in, you have some power to change that. When it happens in private business, you are powerless.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > Only recognizing when it happens in government is a cognitive bias. I'm not doing this. I'm at risk of repeating myself, but it's worse in government. And government gets free money from your wallet specifically to prevent corruption, and even define it. That's much worse than a company I can stop paying being corrupt. I have no voting power to remove a corrupt public servant, unless someone runs specifically on that platform. Which no one would.
    - 3y ago

sph 3y ago

People keep confusing capitalist economy with the state, and keep blaming the big bad of "capitalism" for shortcomings of the Big State, namely corruption and collusion of our politicians and lobbyists. Also, calling whatever economic model we have in our Western countries a "free market" is an oxymoron at best. There is no free market if politicians are allowed to force it to bend one way or the other with laws and trade restrictions. Like many words put on slogans and coopted to drive some agenda, "capitalism" and "free market" have lost all their meaning. Anyone uses those words to refer to their favourite scapegoat.

MSFT_Edging 3y ago

> can't lock you in a box for failing to give it some of your money. But they can hire a private prosecutor to legally harass you and force you into house arrest for winning a case against them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Donziger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Donziger It's silly to argue that Corporations don't have violence as a tool. In a literal sense, they might not be hiring thugs to break your legs, but with money comes many good lawyers who can tie you up in court for a decade, milking every bit of money(the thing you survive with) from you. This is a form of violence, an individual is defenseless against a large enough corporation that can basically spend 100x what you can on lawyers.

robertlagrant 3y ago
> This is a form of violence I don't see the point of calling things violence that aren't. Not everything bad is violence. And only the state is allowed to perform actual violence (non-defensive).

bartonfink 3y ago

not all violence uses sticks and stones dope

FrustratedMonky 3y ago

"companies exist through free agreements between people." I think this is the common "Libertarian" view, that then goes down the Libertarian Rabbit Hole : "That is Anarchy, wait no, we need some rules, guess we're back to having some type of government and/or corporation, back to the drawing board". Humans keep re-inventing Moloch.

randomdata 3y ago
Yes, the Libertarian view is that people should be free to enter into agreements with each other. Which is nothing like anarchy. Libertarians in no way believe people should be free to do whatever they want. Government (or at least something resembling government) is always necessary under Libertarianism. After all, who else is going to ensure that agreements are upheld? Who is going stop those who try to act absent of an agreement?

pvdoom 3y ago

> what capitalism wants to avoid is putting "money" in with "power" Sorry but this is plain out wrong. Under a capitalist system money IS power, as it is fundamental for survival, and that people with money are the ones that tend to have disproportionate amount of leverage both over the government and individuals. Under capitalism the government mostly exists to protect the interests of businesses and property holders, a lot more than say the common person on the street.

robertlagrant 3y ago
No, power is power. If you're a company, you don't have the power to set rules, or lock people in boxes, or (in some places) kill people. The state has power. Capitalism says that companies don't get power. They need money to survive, but that doesn't mean money is power. Money is money. > Under capitalism the government mostly exists to protect the interests of businesses and property holders No, that's not right. That might sometimes happen, but it's in no way fundamental. Under capitalism the government sets and enforces the rules, and provides currency and other bits and bobs to let people trade fairly and at a minimum standard.
- pvdoom 3y ago
  > you don't have the power to set rules, or lock people in boxes, or (in some places) kill people Quite the opposite - companies literally set rules all the time. How the work should be done, who should do what, who the boss is, when are you allowed to leave, etc. Being obliged to be in an office is tantamount to being locked in a box for a considerable amount of your time - and you don't get to choose which part, so you end up spending the vast majority of your precious time locked in a box working for someone, because otherwise, and here we come to the last part: Companies have the power to ruin livelihoods, cause homelessness and death, etc. The government of capitalist countries creates that system, and has done so historically, so that the system above is upheld. And the government works mostly in favour of businesses and business owners as a whole, because it is made of said people. You are obliged to go to work for someone else or face starvation, exactly because this is a choice that was made and continues to be made by governments in favour of businesses. You are obliged to pay exorbitant amount of money to afford basic necessities. etc. etc. > but that doesn't mean money is power. Money is money. Exactly the opposite - money is pure power. Money is literally congealed social relationships. With little money you can't do much. With a lot of money, you go golfing with senators and lawmakers like I go for Friday beers with my mates. With a little money you're forced to continue working that deadend job to make ends meet. With a lot of money you can have a yacht bigger than the house of the person in the previous sentence (oh, wait, that person doesn't actually own the house)