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Trump Confuses Sioux City and Sioux Falls During Rally
(www.mediaite.com)
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this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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politics
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Americans vote nursing home candidates instead of presidential candidates
I don't think the average American wants politicians this old, they are being chosen by their political parties as having the highest chance of winning because we have a broken voting system that encourages fewer candidates per party so that they don't steal votes from each other.
That is why we need ranked choice voting, so that more candidates can run without competing and we could vote for people we actually like instead of voting against candidates we don't like.
Not to mention the need to level the playing field in terms of campaign financing which currently makes it more likely for more established politicians to have collected funding from private organizations, superpacs, and corporate lobbying.
This means that the politicians who are in the pockets of the capitalist elites are more likely to win and to enact the will of these corporations.
Those corpos aren't capitalist. They want government intervention (to save them when their little investing adventures fail)
Capitalism is the driving force of almost everything that's wrong in America. [1]
I agree that bailing out a corporation is not very capitalist, but that is not the primary goal of corporate lobbying. I believe it is mostly about keeping their industry legal, unregulated, low-taxed, etc.
Yes, and forming government-mantained monopolies, which kinda goes against capitalist principles
If you were a corporation, becoming a monopoly would be your wet dream. As a company becomes richer and more powerful, it gains more influence over politics. It's a feedback loop that gives them more and more power until they are monopoly. It's not the government that drives this, it's the corporations driving the government.
That's why the government should have cracked down on them before they bought their whole market instead of helping them become monopolies
Totally, privatize the profits, socialize the losses. The American "capitalist" way.
Wait, I almost forget socialize the massive environmental damages, drinking water sources destroyed, harmful chemicals spread everywhere, people harmed, CO2 and other pollutants dumped into the atmosphere, and all the other damaging effects of our business we didn't pay for.
Don't Google who dried up the Aral Sea
? Don't see what that has to do with this. Are you saying because Stalin and the USSR did something stupid to the aral sea in the 1940's it's fine for companies in America to cause massive environmental damages, hurt tons of people, and then keep all the profits they made over decades, declare bankruptcy, and pass the buck of the cleanup on to the American tax payers? Or make horribly risky investments, extract tons of bonuses, high executive compensation, and stock sales, then get bailed out by the US government and US taxpayers because their flimsy scheme had come crumbling down?
I wasn't trying to make an argument for communism or something if that's what you're getting at, fuck that genocidal maniac Stalin, just that private companies in America often pass on their losses to the American people while they keep all the profits. Often by hiding the costs in things like co2 emissions that we'll all collectively have to pay for later. If they want profits that's fine, but they should be held responsible for the losses too. And if American taxpayer money and public investment helped a company make profits, some of that should be returned to the taxpayers too. We need effective regulations and laws to make sure these thing happen.
What are they, if not capitalist?
It seems obvious that in a capitalist system those with capital will benefit if they use that capital to gain political power. Regulatory capture is just good business, right? It's the same reason capitalist enterprises will just buy up competition - they don't want competition, they want profit. It's a lot easier to win the game if you can cripple your opponents.
Until we make and are are able to enforce stronger laws protecting us little people, corporations will tend to wield power to keep squeezing us, because it's (unfortunately) perfectly legal (though obviously, at least IMHO, perfectly immoral).
Oligarchic maybe?
I can also make up a definition and claim communism is when Starbucks
Oligarchic fits, and isn't mutually exclusive with being a capitalist. IMHO it seems like that's an inevitable outcome in capitalist economies if safeguards aren't instituted. Also I certainly don't think oligarchies are restricted to capitalist economies, either. It just seems like it would be the natural goal of amassing capital: rig the system in your favor.
Also I don't want you making up definitions, I just assumed you had another one in mind when trying to define what most modern corporations aren't.
Is oligarchy with a superficial capitalist facade accurate enough to you?
Facade isn't accurate IMHO. Capitalist Oligarchy is fine though. Maybe a subtle distinction, but I think it's important.
Government intervention to block competition is against the basis of capitalism, a facade is accurate enough
Government intervention in the economy doesn't mean it's not Capitalism IMHO: I see that as an unnecessarily restrictive definition. I think of capitalism in more broad terms as being for-profit private ownership of trade/industry.
I can agree that there's some theoretical upper limit at which Crony Capitalism turns into an outright Corporate State, but I don't think we're quite there yet, and hopefully we can avoid it (as much as we seem to be headed that way, unfortunately).
Capitalism is literally defined by free markets, which means little to no government intervention, and specially not the government helping certain corpos crush their competitors
What you have in your country is a whole different thing
So my point from the start is that it seems inevitable that capitalists would levy their economic power to gain political power. The laissez-faire ideal sounds good (for those with capital, anyway), but without institutional protections against it, those with the most money would be dumb not to levy that money so they can rig the system.
So we're quibbling over different thresholds at which government intervention means it's no longer "Pure Capitalism", but from my perspective Regulatory Capture is kind of inevitable, without protections against that happening. So that's why I think it's just part of Modern Capitalism in most places, and an "Oligarchy with a Capitalist Facade" is just a different life-stage of Capitalism. I'm all in favor of the institutional controls against corporate takeover/influence of governmental bodies. Corporate lobbying is a cancer, because it's drowning out the public's voice in politics.
Yes, the state needs to set up rules to specifically prevent corruption of the market.
You don't seem to get that the rest of the world views capitalism differently from the US
You're making a pretty big assumption! I've lived most of the last fifteen years in South America, so I actually do have a good hold on how folks in other nations view capitalism, and the USA's economic and political systems. My job for years was in a biological research institute that was part of the Uruguayan government, and before that for a decade I worked in small towns across the Amazon, in Peru and Colombia.
You went from America to America's playground
Ah, so when you said the "rest of the world", you are excluding Latin America. Where is your high horse located, and what do you think the rest of the world includes?
Outside of those regions
Also, you didn't really explain how they didn't see capitalism as the lack of direct government intervention
Interesting stance from someone that thinks socialism is when the government does stuff
When did I say "socialism is when gubmint"?