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The market has spent the GDP of Madagascar to fuck over cabbies in a handful of metro areas in the US. Meanwhile "efficiency" in the ISP market has lead to regi

The market has spent the GDP of Madagascar to fuck over cabbies in a handful of metro areas in the US. Meanwhile "efficiency" in the ISP market has lead to regional near-monopolies and some of the worst residential bandwidth on the planet. Let's not with "efficiency and innovation" yeah? The emperor is clearly buck-ass naked.

pembrook 2y ago
Ahhh yes, the old "because the market didn't turn out the way I wanted it to once, it means the entirety of the capitalist system and the idea of free markets is fundamentally broken" retort. I call this the "Jr. developer fallacy." Start a job, encounter some bugs, suggest rewriting the entire codebase from scratch on [insert-trendy-framework].
- malcolmgreaves 2y ago
  > once The many systemic market failure modes of capitalism are well documented and written about at great lengths.
  - nradov 2y ago
    The many systemic market failure modes of socialism and economic central planning are well documented and written about at great lengths.
    - forgetfreeman 2y ago
      You wanna review the track record of market driven healthcare systems vs socialized medicine? Spoiler: the US has one of the worst (by any metric you care to track) healthcare systems of any industrialized nation. Just because someone else's shit is broken doesn't necessarily mean your shit is working.
      - nradov 2y ago
        I care to track cancer 5-year survival rates and the number of new drugs introduced per year. By those metrics the US is at or near the top. The US healthcare system has plenty of flaws but it does some things quite well.
        forgetfreeman 2y ago
        Drug discovery clusters in the US because the EU doesn't permit profiteering
        nradov 2y ago
        Then it seems that permitting profiteering results in better outcomes. At least for certain things.
        forgetfreeman 2y ago
        Tell that to the folks that are dying because they can't afford off-patent insulin. I know a young lady who passed away in her dorm room a couple years back because she'd been rationing, I could introduce you to her family, I'm sure they'd be delighted for your take on medical profiteering.
      - jcranmer 2y ago
        > Spoiler: the US has one of the worst (by any metric you care to track) healthcare systems of any industrialized nation. That "by any metric" is just plain wrong. There's several metrics by which the US healthcare system is among the best--in general, if the metric you are tracking is largely covering the success rates of medical procedures (sibling comment mentions 5-year cancer survival rates, for example), then the US generally scores high. If the metric you are tracking is instead covering general population health or things easily caught with preventative medicine, then the US scores abysmally in those metrics. In other words, the US healthcare system actually turns out to be very good (if perhaps not on a per-cost metric)... but access to the good healthcare system is extremely poor. And that's kind of what you'd expect for a market-driven system: good healthcare if you can afford it, shit healthcare if you can't.
    - piva00 2y ago
      Socialism does not mean central planning of a whole economy. That was the Soviet model of communism, which doesn't work at all. I feel that the USA's education system has indoctrinated students so deeply into the red scare that real terms have become meaningless to discuss political and economical systems with the larger American audience, the words simply don't mean the same, they mean what you've been indoctrinated to believe they mean.
      - qwytw 2y ago
        > Socialism does not mean central planning of a whole economy What other forms of semi-stable functional "socialism" are there? > have become meaningless to discuss political and economical systems with the Discussing hypothetical pseudo-utopian systems like "socialism" or "communism" isn't particularly meaningful either (from the economics perspective, not philosophical). IMHO the problem with socialism is that it will pretty always be outcompeted by private ("capitalist") enterprises which can provide goods and services which are both higher quality and cheaper (yes by "underpaying" their workers but also they tend to be much more efficient). Therefore you can't really allow both in the system/country. So realistically "socialism" can only exist if the state suppresses any alternatives using various degrees of coercion and force. Since no real competition and by extension dissent can exist (i.e. nobody has enough resources to challenge the state without significantly damaging their career/status/wellbeing) the state ends up becoming more and more oppressive/controlling and unavoidable corrupt. I'd love to see any empirical evidence disproving this but as far as I can tell historically that's what always ended up happening.
        Miner49er 2y ago
        > What other forms of semi-stable functional "socialism" are there? Cooperatives. This article we're discussing here is advocating for socialism, it's just not using that word.
        qwytw 2y ago
        If cooperatives can survive and compete with private enterprises without excessive regulation and government coercion that limits and competition and leads to lower productivity that's great. As far as I can tell that's rarely (but probably occasionally) the case unless we're also including "guild" like organizations. However I'm not sure cooperatives are strictly a "form" of socialism, they have been a part of capitalist societies since pretty much the very beginning. I guess it depends where we draw the lines between partnerships etc. and cooperatives, I guess hiring additional workers who don't have an equal stake/share in the enterprise or subcontracting any sort of labor (let's say on a significantly meaningful scale, but still very hard to avoid) would be it.
    - andrepd 2y ago
      I'm glad TFA is not about central planning then?
- forgetfreeman 2y ago
  That's just a couple examples I picked off the pile. You wanna do hyperconcentration of wealth crushing entire small business industries, collusion on pricing, ag services cartels driving farmers to commit suicide at record numbers, centralized manufacturing eliminating meaningful competition in consumer goods markets, or the last 15 years of bullshit where the term "innovation" was rolled out to describe some combination of fleecing dumb money and fucking over low wage workers let me know. Junior developer my ass, I been doing this shit for decades sonny.
stale2002 2y ago
> cabbies in a handful of metro areas in the US. The ones that were overcharging consumers? Yeah it is great for customers when prices go down. That's a benefit, not a drawback. Those cabbies should have offer better service at a lower price if they wanted to compete.
- nativeit 2y ago
  Overcharging? It’s easier to beat their prices if you don’t have drivers or cars to pay for.
- andrepd 2y ago
  Compared to dumping I guess everybody is "overcharging"...
  - stale2002 2y ago
    If you can't give the best product to consumers for the best price then get out of the market. Consumers are the judge of what's best. And they vote with their wallet and feet.
    - forgetfreeman 2y ago
      Three quarters of a trillion dollars are spent annually on marketing worldwide. Consumers are persistently manipulated into all manner of poor choices.

pembrook 2y ago

Ahhh yes, the old "because the market didn't turn out the way I wanted it to once, it means the entirety of the capitalist system and the idea of free markets is fundamentally broken" retort. I call this the "Jr. developer fallacy." Start a job, encounter some bugs, suggest rewriting the entire codebase from scratch on [insert-trendy-framework].

malcolmgreaves 2y ago
> once The many systemic market failure modes of capitalism are well documented and written about at great lengths.
- nradov 2y ago
  The many systemic market failure modes of socialism and economic central planning are well documented and written about at great lengths.
  - forgetfreeman 2y ago
    You wanna review the track record of market driven healthcare systems vs socialized medicine? Spoiler: the US has one of the worst (by any metric you care to track) healthcare systems of any industrialized nation. Just because someone else's shit is broken doesn't necessarily mean your shit is working.
    - nradov 2y ago
      I care to track cancer 5-year survival rates and the number of new drugs introduced per year. By those metrics the US is at or near the top. The US healthcare system has plenty of flaws but it does some things quite well.
      - forgetfreeman 2y ago
        Drug discovery clusters in the US because the EU doesn't permit profiteering
        nradov 2y ago
        Then it seems that permitting profiteering results in better outcomes. At least for certain things.
        forgetfreeman 2y ago
        Tell that to the folks that are dying because they can't afford off-patent insulin. I know a young lady who passed away in her dorm room a couple years back because she'd been rationing, I could introduce you to her family, I'm sure they'd be delighted for your take on medical profiteering.
    - jcranmer 2y ago
      > Spoiler: the US has one of the worst (by any metric you care to track) healthcare systems of any industrialized nation. That "by any metric" is just plain wrong. There's several metrics by which the US healthcare system is among the best--in general, if the metric you are tracking is largely covering the success rates of medical procedures (sibling comment mentions 5-year cancer survival rates, for example), then the US generally scores high. If the metric you are tracking is instead covering general population health or things easily caught with preventative medicine, then the US scores abysmally in those metrics. In other words, the US healthcare system actually turns out to be very good (if perhaps not on a per-cost metric)... but access to the good healthcare system is extremely poor. And that's kind of what you'd expect for a market-driven system: good healthcare if you can afford it, shit healthcare if you can't.
  - piva00 2y ago
    Socialism does not mean central planning of a whole economy. That was the Soviet model of communism, which doesn't work at all. I feel that the USA's education system has indoctrinated students so deeply into the red scare that real terms have become meaningless to discuss political and economical systems with the larger American audience, the words simply don't mean the same, they mean what you've been indoctrinated to believe they mean.
    - qwytw 2y ago
      > Socialism does not mean central planning of a whole economy What other forms of semi-stable functional "socialism" are there? > have become meaningless to discuss political and economical systems with the Discussing hypothetical pseudo-utopian systems like "socialism" or "communism" isn't particularly meaningful either (from the economics perspective, not philosophical). IMHO the problem with socialism is that it will pretty always be outcompeted by private ("capitalist") enterprises which can provide goods and services which are both higher quality and cheaper (yes by "underpaying" their workers but also they tend to be much more efficient). Therefore you can't really allow both in the system/country. So realistically "socialism" can only exist if the state suppresses any alternatives using various degrees of coercion and force. Since no real competition and by extension dissent can exist (i.e. nobody has enough resources to challenge the state without significantly damaging their career/status/wellbeing) the state ends up becoming more and more oppressive/controlling and unavoidable corrupt. I'd love to see any empirical evidence disproving this but as far as I can tell historically that's what always ended up happening.
      - Miner49er 2y ago
        > What other forms of semi-stable functional "socialism" are there? Cooperatives. This article we're discussing here is advocating for socialism, it's just not using that word.
        qwytw 2y ago
        If cooperatives can survive and compete with private enterprises without excessive regulation and government coercion that limits and competition and leads to lower productivity that's great. As far as I can tell that's rarely (but probably occasionally) the case unless we're also including "guild" like organizations. However I'm not sure cooperatives are strictly a "form" of socialism, they have been a part of capitalist societies since pretty much the very beginning. I guess it depends where we draw the lines between partnerships etc. and cooperatives, I guess hiring additional workers who don't have an equal stake/share in the enterprise or subcontracting any sort of labor (let's say on a significantly meaningful scale, but still very hard to avoid) would be it.
  - andrepd 2y ago
    I'm glad TFA is not about central planning then?
forgetfreeman 2y ago
That's just a couple examples I picked off the pile. You wanna do hyperconcentration of wealth crushing entire small business industries, collusion on pricing, ag services cartels driving farmers to commit suicide at record numbers, centralized manufacturing eliminating meaningful competition in consumer goods markets, or the last 15 years of bullshit where the term "innovation" was rolled out to describe some combination of fleecing dumb money and fucking over low wage workers let me know. Junior developer my ass, I been doing this shit for decades sonny.

stale2002 2y ago

> cabbies in a handful of metro areas in the US. The ones that were overcharging consumers? Yeah it is great for customers when prices go down. That's a benefit, not a drawback. Those cabbies should have offer better service at a lower price if they wanted to compete.

nativeit 2y ago
Overcharging? It’s easier to beat their prices if you don’t have drivers or cars to pay for.
andrepd 2y ago
Compared to dumping I guess everybody is "overcharging"...
- stale2002 2y ago
  If you can't give the best product to consumers for the best price then get out of the market. Consumers are the judge of what's best. And they vote with their wallet and feet.
  - forgetfreeman 2y ago
    Three quarters of a trillion dollars are spent annually on marketing worldwide. Consumers are persistently manipulated into all manner of poor choices.