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The demon is greed and its false god is the market.
by saubeidl 11mo ago
The demon is greed and its false god is the market.
- ap99 11mo agoAre you proposing the abolishment of the market?
- saubeidl 11mo agoYes. A mechanism that rewards the greediest and most ruthless is not a good basis for building a society.
- CalRobert 11mo agoMarkets tend to emerge where there are people who have some things while wanting other things
- saubeidl 11mo agoWhen something emerges, you can either embrace it or you can fight it. When a cancer emerges, one doesn't usually embrace it. I suggest we treat markets the same way.
- orphea 11mo agoWhat is an alternative and why do you think it would work?
- zimza 11mo agoBrother, writing something like this on EnlightenedCentristNews is a dead end, trust me.
- 1718627440 11mo agoFighting that people can decide what and how they want to sell and buy, results in a society I don't want to live. To enforce it you will eventually free the people from a bunch of other decisions, as they strangely refuse to follow your great ideas. What the problem is, is the asymmetry in the market, not the market itself.
- saubeidl 11mo ago> What the problem is, is the asymmetry in the market, not the market itself. Markets are inherently asymmetrical. The problem is a core feature of the system.
- 1718627440 11mo ago> Markets are inherently asymmetrical. Citation needed. A healthy market has so many sellers and buyers that no side can force a price above the other. Think your local bakery or butcher. In a healthy market profits are nearly zero.
- saubeidl 11mo agoAny market inherently results in consolidation. My local bakery is a giant chain. My local butcher has been driven out of business by supermarket chains.
- 1718627440 11mo ago> My local bakery is a giant chain. That's not what I would call a local bakery. Or are they making bread there? > Any market inherently results in consolidation. Only when you can undercut prices through scale. There are of course baking shops here as well, but they just don't have the quality of a real baker.
- saubeidl 11mo agoThat is exactly my point. Local artisan bakers are being priced out by crappier quality baking shops due to their economy of scale. The market optimizes for the cheapest slop made by the biggest conglomerate, the opposite of what I want.
- 1718627440 11mo agoAnd yet that is a problem of the past twenty years while we had markets for centuries. The concept of markets doesn't seem to be the problem. If you say we need more regulation and an actual Antitrust Division that does things, then I agree. If you say we need to get rid of free markets and capitalism and return to socialism, then I am strongly against that.
- fnordsensei 11mo agoPlanned economies don’t work great beyond small scopes. The market does work, but it’s a giant paper clip AI and needs regulation in order to not turn everything into paper clips.
- grafmax 11mo agoMoney is power. Markets produce wealth inequality. The richest use their money to buy influence and write the rules. Fundamentally a “regulated market” is an unstable system that eats itself, a fiction.
- mytailorisrich 11mo agoWhat is you definition of "markets"? Markets are nothing more than the aggregate expression of what people do, need, desire. It's an expression of a free society. No market means a Stalinist society. > Markets produce wealth inequality. That always reminds of Margaret Thatcher's famous words in Parliament: "They'd rather the poor be poorer provided that the rich were less rich."
- saubeidl 11mo ago> No market means a Stalinist society. It doesn't. That's just ideological propaganda. > They'd rather the poor be poorer provided that the rich were less rich. That is an absolutely reasonable stance? Wealth isn't absolute, it's relative. If the rich are less rich, more resources are available for everyone else.
- 1718627440 11mo agoRichness is about available resources. The poor being poorer means that they have even less resources, so it precludes that there would be "more resources available for everyone else". What you propose is the rich getting less rich and the poor getting less poor.
- grafmax 11mo agoMarkets are the expression of an unfree society because they concentrate power in the hands of the few. Those with more money benefit by exploiting those with less - exploiting workers on the one hand and consumers on the other (through rent extraction). Stalinism is one form of planned economy but in your view the choices are Stalinism vs unregulated markets as if no other options exist. Absurd. After decades of neoliberalism (thanks to politicians like Thatcher) we can see what a failure it has been. Wealth inequality is growing, climate change is getting worse, far right movements are spreading, governments are run by oligarchs, industry has declined, the working class is squeezed, labor movements have been crushed, housing shortages.. it’s an ideology of class war by the rich against the working class.
- penguin_booze 11mo agoHey, but greed is good, and market solves everything.