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What's free market about total state regulatory capture, calling the President when your bids get rejected, or setting up wars and domestic police actions to en

by api 10mo ago

What's free market about total state regulatory capture, calling the President when your bids get rejected, or setting up wars and domestic police actions to enrich yourself with contracts using taxpayer funds? There are legitimate criticisms of a pure free market, but this is "state capitalism" not a free market. The Trump administration is absolutely not pro free market. They're putting fingers on the scale all over the place, taking Federal positions in private companies, taking literal bribes for regulatory favors, influencing the selection of executives and board members, and using the power of the state to attack privately owned companies for platforming speech they don't like (like this 60 Minutes segment, made by a private company). Trump/MAGA looks a lot more like the CCP than anything else. Of course if you pay attention to the discourse, MAGA and national conservatism are an explicit repudiation of Reagan/Clinton "neoliberalism" and "libertarian conservatism." They explicitly support a large administrative state that centrally plans the economy and culture, just one they run and use to push right wing and nationalist agendas. I remember saying back during the Bush years: if the right is forced to choose between liberty and cultural conservatism, they will throw out liberty. The right only supports the freedom to do what they think people should be doing. (Yes, there are similar attitudes in some parts of the left too. There are not many principled defenders of individual liberty.) Edit: I'm really just arguing that we should call things what they are. Calling MAGA's CCP-like state capitalism a free market is like calling Bernie Sanders or Mamdani communism (they're socialists, not communists, these are not the same) or calling old school conservative republicans fascists. Words mean things.

the_gastropod 10mo ago
I think you're missing the implied cause and effect here. Lighthanded regulations allow for ridiculous amounts of wealth to be acquired in the U.S. Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, etc. are so unfathomably rich (and therefore powerful), they can now trivially bend government to their will.
- api 10mo ago
  I don't entirely disagree, but also note that the extreme wealth of both these guys is at least partly a result of state spending not pure private market forces. Oracle has always had a huge presence in government. Large companies too, but Federal use has really helped keep them afloat as open source and competing products that are far cheaper have eaten their lunch. For Musk the case is even more extreme. Tesla's early growth was bankrolled by EV credits and carbon offsets, which were state programs, and SpaceX is a result of both Federal funding and direct R&D transfer from NASA to SpaceX. The latter was mostly uncompensated. NASA just handed over decades of publicly funded R&D. These two would probably be rich without the state, but would they be this rich? The same was true back in the original Gilded Age. The "robber barons" were built by railroad and other infrastructure subsidies. However I do agree that private wealth beyond a certain point begins to pose a risk to democracy and the rule of law. It's a major weakness in libertarian schemes that call for a "separation of economy and state." That's a much, much harder wall to maintain than separation of church and state. Enough money can buy politicians and elections.
  - the_gastropod 10mo ago
    Let’s remember: Musk bought Tesla. He was already ridiculously wealthy in order to get himself into this position of basically robbing the U.S. government.
    - api 10mo ago
      This is true but he was nowhere near as wealthy as he is now, not even close.
      - the_gastropod 10mo ago
        Of course. That was also my point, as I think it is yours. There is an event horizon after which an individual can corrupt government and really accelerate their wealth accumulation even faster.
        ElectronCharge 9mo ago
        What you see as “corrupt government” others see as a “virtuous cycle”… The main problem with your thought process is that your conflating “wealth accumulation” with “wealth creation”!
  - raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
    As much as I don’t like Musk and think Tesla is overvalued meme stock and the cars suck compared to other EVs (I have driven a lot of EVs during the year that we went without a car on purpose - long story), SpaceX did something that the government couldn’t do - have a lot of failures before it had a success. Politics wouldn’t let it happen.
- hypeatei 10mo ago
  Peel it back even more: how does any State not fall victim to monied interests? This is usually handwaved away by socalists in the sense that everything is handled by "independent commissions" that can totally not be corrupted. The solution is really to keep the scope of government small so that any corruption isn't detrimental to the populace, and they can handle it in the next election.
  - ModernMech 10mo ago
    That's not a solution, that just removes an opponent of monied interests from the table entirely, it's exactly what they want. The only thing these people want more than a government they can capture is a government so small they can replace it entirely.
  - dpark 10mo ago
    > The solution is really to keep the scope of government small Of course. Politically active billionaires are always famously lobbying for large government and more regulations.
  - nielsbot 10mo ago
    Small government leads to big capitalism which is its own kind of tyranny. Our current problems are not because government is too big. Powerful regulation which answers to the people is the answer.
    - _DeadFred_ 10mo ago
      Small government goes against the original and deepest Capitalist thinkers, who all pushed that strong government oversight was a REQUIRED part of Capitalism to keep it healthy and in balance.
  - the_gastropod 10mo ago
    Which countries on the planet do you think are the least corrupt? What does their system of government look like?
- websiteapi 10mo ago
  Isn’t the cause that people just happened to elect someone who doesn’t care and is corrupt? Are you implying money decided the election? How do you reconcile this with the fact that trump was outspent?
  - ethbr1 9mo ago
    "Outspent" is a nebulous concept, post-Citizens United.
steveBK123 10mo ago
The tariffs are at least partially about crony capitalism if you look how they have repeatedly played out. Announce big, broad, sweeping industry & country level tariffs. Talk to Big Tech execs, quietly delay/rescind specific sub-components or even companies from said tariffs. Rinse & repeat. The companies left fully paying tariffs are the ones that aren't big enough to have the orange mans ear / "donate" to the ballroom construction.
- HDThoreaun 10mo ago
  Trump forced the UAE to buy $2 billion of his stable coin in order to avoid tariffs. He is making $80 million a year farming yields off that. The tariff nonsense was 100% just a backdoor for corruption. Edit: and I forgot he pardoned the binance guy for facilitating this corruption too. Trumps pardons are the most corrupt in american history but MAGA is still yelling about the hunter biden pardon even though Joe was absolutely right that trump would maliciously prosecute him
  - steveBK123 10mo ago
    It’s actually a lot of small to midsize manufacturers importing subcomponents that are getting hurt in the heartland. They can’t lobby for exemptions & don’t have the supplier negotiating power of the megacaps.
    - k12sosse 9mo ago
      Sorry widgetCo. Shoulda been a billionaire!
  - DarknessFalls 10mo ago
    I've said this before, but Trump's form of tariffs are basically a firewall and paying tribute opens specific ports and addresses.
    - ethbr1 9mo ago
      Bribe knocking?
ambicapter 10mo ago
> There are legitimate criticisms of a pure free market, but this is "state capitalism" not a free market. Yeah, that's what OP said. I hate these sort of comments where the poster acts like they vehemently disagree with what was said, but then just restate what was said in a slightly different way.
- jama211 10mo ago
  This should be higher, absolutely right
- CamperBob2 9mo ago
  Yeah, that's what OP said. No, OP lectured us about the evils of free markets and how they need to be regulated... presumably by the same corrupt, captured government he's complaining about. The one who's giving Ellison his orders to pass along to Weiss. Because that's who'll do the regulating, in the world OP is implicitly asking for. The problem isn't the money or the market. The problem is the power.
  - gmd63 9mo ago
    Money is power. Trump's and the Republican party's whole shtick is deregulation. The financial tumors in the economy love it when the white blood cells look the other way. That's why folks like Ellison and Elon bought this election. These are the types of orders they are happy to comply with for favorable treatment. If you don't regulate, you're just opening the door for the free market to birth a tyrant or cabal that makes up their own power structures.
    - CamperBob2 9mo ago
      If you don't regulate, you're just opening the door for the free market to birth a tyrant or cabal that makes up their own power structures. Perhaps, but right now the only tyrants and cabals I see around me were elected democratically. I don't have to use Facebook or Amazon, but I have to pay taxes to Trump's treasury department. The fact that stupid people can be easily herded into voting against almost everyone's best interests, including their own, is not an indictment of the free market. If anything, it speaks to the apparently-unresolvable incompatibility of social media and democracy. I'm pretty sure we'll have to give up one or the other before long.
SilverElfin 10mo ago
The recent defense bill is evidence of this. Who has access to these contracts and massive spending increases? Is it any random startup that is building a good product? Nope. It’s the incumbent companies that are big donors and the various defense tech companies from the Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale ecosystem, who are ideologically aligned to the administration and support them vocally. Same with the new ICE and border agency funding. They’re tripling these agencies budgets. Who’s getting contracts to hire thousands of new agents or to build software profiling the millions they want to deport in 2026? Their friends like Palantir probably.
- TechDebtDevin 10mo ago
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TechDebtDevin 10mo ago
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gmd63 9mo ago
In a free and unregulated market, you will see cronyism by the wealthiest players who have captured it. The payoff of capture is enormous and therefore investors have incentive to offer up capital to accelerate the capture. Tyrants emerge from anarchy. A corrupt MAGA administration bought by private money is the product of a poorly regulated market.

by api 10mo ago

the_gastropod 10mo ago

I think you're missing the implied cause and effect here. Lighthanded regulations allow for ridiculous amounts of wealth to be acquired in the U.S. Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, etc. are so unfathomably rich (and therefore powerful), they can now trivially bend government to their will.

api 10mo ago
I don't entirely disagree, but also note that the extreme wealth of both these guys is at least partly a result of state spending not pure private market forces. Oracle has always had a huge presence in government. Large companies too, but Federal use has really helped keep them afloat as open source and competing products that are far cheaper have eaten their lunch. For Musk the case is even more extreme. Tesla's early growth was bankrolled by EV credits and carbon offsets, which were state programs, and SpaceX is a result of both Federal funding and direct R&D transfer from NASA to SpaceX. The latter was mostly uncompensated. NASA just handed over decades of publicly funded R&D. These two would probably be rich without the state, but would they be this rich? The same was true back in the original Gilded Age. The "robber barons" were built by railroad and other infrastructure subsidies. However I do agree that private wealth beyond a certain point begins to pose a risk to democracy and the rule of law. It's a major weakness in libertarian schemes that call for a "separation of economy and state." That's a much, much harder wall to maintain than separation of church and state. Enough money can buy politicians and elections.
- the_gastropod 10mo ago
  Let’s remember: Musk bought Tesla. He was already ridiculously wealthy in order to get himself into this position of basically robbing the U.S. government.
  - api 10mo ago
    This is true but he was nowhere near as wealthy as he is now, not even close.
    - the_gastropod 10mo ago
      Of course. That was also my point, as I think it is yours. There is an event horizon after which an individual can corrupt government and really accelerate their wealth accumulation even faster.
      - ElectronCharge 9mo ago
        What you see as “corrupt government” others see as a “virtuous cycle”… The main problem with your thought process is that your conflating “wealth accumulation” with “wealth creation”!
- raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
  As much as I don’t like Musk and think Tesla is overvalued meme stock and the cars suck compared to other EVs (I have driven a lot of EVs during the year that we went without a car on purpose - long story), SpaceX did something that the government couldn’t do - have a lot of failures before it had a success. Politics wouldn’t let it happen.
hypeatei 10mo ago
Peel it back even more: how does any State not fall victim to monied interests? This is usually handwaved away by socalists in the sense that everything is handled by "independent commissions" that can totally not be corrupted. The solution is really to keep the scope of government small so that any corruption isn't detrimental to the populace, and they can handle it in the next election.
- ModernMech 10mo ago
  That's not a solution, that just removes an opponent of monied interests from the table entirely, it's exactly what they want. The only thing these people want more than a government they can capture is a government so small they can replace it entirely.
- dpark 10mo ago
  > The solution is really to keep the scope of government small Of course. Politically active billionaires are always famously lobbying for large government and more regulations.
- nielsbot 10mo ago
  Small government leads to big capitalism which is its own kind of tyranny. Our current problems are not because government is too big. Powerful regulation which answers to the people is the answer.
  - _DeadFred_ 10mo ago
    Small government goes against the original and deepest Capitalist thinkers, who all pushed that strong government oversight was a REQUIRED part of Capitalism to keep it healthy and in balance.
- the_gastropod 10mo ago
  Which countries on the planet do you think are the least corrupt? What does their system of government look like?
websiteapi 10mo ago
Isn’t the cause that people just happened to elect someone who doesn’t care and is corrupt? Are you implying money decided the election? How do you reconcile this with the fact that trump was outspent?
- ethbr1 9mo ago
  "Outspent" is a nebulous concept, post-Citizens United.

steveBK123 10mo ago

The tariffs are at least partially about crony capitalism if you look how they have repeatedly played out. Announce big, broad, sweeping industry & country level tariffs. Talk to Big Tech execs, quietly delay/rescind specific sub-components or even companies from said tariffs. Rinse & repeat. The companies left fully paying tariffs are the ones that aren't big enough to have the orange mans ear / "donate" to the ballroom construction.

HDThoreaun 10mo ago
Trump forced the UAE to buy $2 billion of his stable coin in order to avoid tariffs. He is making $80 million a year farming yields off that. The tariff nonsense was 100% just a backdoor for corruption. Edit: and I forgot he pardoned the binance guy for facilitating this corruption too. Trumps pardons are the most corrupt in american history but MAGA is still yelling about the hunter biden pardon even though Joe was absolutely right that trump would maliciously prosecute him
- steveBK123 10mo ago
  It’s actually a lot of small to midsize manufacturers importing subcomponents that are getting hurt in the heartland. They can’t lobby for exemptions & don’t have the supplier negotiating power of the megacaps.
  - k12sosse 9mo ago
    Sorry widgetCo. Shoulda been a billionaire!
- DarknessFalls 10mo ago
  I've said this before, but Trump's form of tariffs are basically a firewall and paying tribute opens specific ports and addresses.
  - ethbr1 9mo ago
    Bribe knocking?

ambicapter 10mo ago

> There are legitimate criticisms of a pure free market, but this is "state capitalism" not a free market. Yeah, that's what OP said. I hate these sort of comments where the poster acts like they vehemently disagree with what was said, but then just restate what was said in a slightly different way.

jama211 10mo ago
This should be higher, absolutely right
CamperBob2 9mo ago
Yeah, that's what OP said. No, OP lectured us about the evils of free markets and how they need to be regulated... presumably by the same corrupt, captured government he's complaining about. The one who's giving Ellison his orders to pass along to Weiss. Because that's who'll do the regulating, in the world OP is implicitly asking for. The problem isn't the money or the market. The problem is the power.
- gmd63 9mo ago
  Money is power. Trump's and the Republican party's whole shtick is deregulation. The financial tumors in the economy love it when the white blood cells look the other way. That's why folks like Ellison and Elon bought this election. These are the types of orders they are happy to comply with for favorable treatment. If you don't regulate, you're just opening the door for the free market to birth a tyrant or cabal that makes up their own power structures.
  - CamperBob2 9mo ago
    If you don't regulate, you're just opening the door for the free market to birth a tyrant or cabal that makes up their own power structures. Perhaps, but right now the only tyrants and cabals I see around me were elected democratically. I don't have to use Facebook or Amazon, but I have to pay taxes to Trump's treasury department. The fact that stupid people can be easily herded into voting against almost everyone's best interests, including their own, is not an indictment of the free market. If anything, it speaks to the apparently-unresolvable incompatibility of social media and democracy. I'm pretty sure we'll have to give up one or the other before long.

SilverElfin 10mo ago

The recent defense bill is evidence of this. Who has access to these contracts and massive spending increases? Is it any random startup that is building a good product? Nope. It’s the incumbent companies that are big donors and the various defense tech companies from the Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale ecosystem, who are ideologically aligned to the administration and support them vocally. Same with the new ICE and border agency funding. They’re tripling these agencies budgets. Who’s getting contracts to hire thousands of new agents or to build software profiling the millions they want to deport in 2026? Their friends like Palantir probably.

TechDebtDevin 10mo ago
[dead]

TechDebtDevin 10mo ago

[dead]

gmd63 9mo ago

In a free and unregulated market, you will see cronyism by the wealthiest players who have captured it. The payoff of capture is enormous and therefore investors have incentive to offer up capital to accelerate the capture. Tyrants emerge from anarchy. A corrupt MAGA administration bought by private money is the product of a poorly regulated market.