I've been trying to consider, given the broad debates over capitalism vs. anything else, if we actually live under capitalism.
So capitalism at its core is free enterprise, being free to engage in trade with others and others being able to trade with you, and private ownership and control of capital.
Well, we live in a society with some free enterprise. There are businesses started by nobodies that grow and others that fail and nobody from the state has anything to do with it, so that's a tick in the "for" column.
On the other hand, there's a lot of limitations on who you're allowed to do business with. Cops instead of spending time tracking down violent criminals or finding thieves are searching for unlicensed businesses, or unlicensed contractors, or all kinds of other people who are being prevented from working in a certain way solely because they haven't gotten approval by the state.
The stock market means that individuals can purchase shares of different companies and if those companies grow then those individuals can get rich without asking permission from anyone (besides their stock broker) for the privilege.
On the other hand there, many of the largest companies on the planet heavily rely on government. Obviously aerospace and weapons companies rely on the military directly paying their bills, but there's a lot of companies that accept large government contracts that fundamentally sustain their businesses, or that rely on favorable regulatory conditions that let them exist and succeed but also make it harder for competition to exist.
Then there's a painful reality that a working man pays more than half his pay to the government through various taxes. When the government gets more of what you make than you do, I don't think you can consider that system capitalism, even if there are free markets and some level of private ownership of capital.
Private control of capital is another thing altogether. We're living in the most regulated society in the history of the world. You can't take a shit without it ticking a bunch of boxes from 14 different government departments. If you own a thing you don't really control it because there's so little you can do with it.
So I guess in reality we can say we have little bits of capitalism here and there that work well, but we also have massive amounts of not capitalism. We have an oppressive superstate that takes everything from everyone and micromanages everyone, but while it does almost nothing for us in return we do need to figure out how to feed ourselves on our own...
So capitalism at its core is free enterprise, being free to engage in trade with others and others being able to trade with you, and private ownership and control of capital.
Well, we live in a society with some free enterprise. There are businesses started by nobodies that grow and others that fail and nobody from the state has anything to do with it, so that's a tick in the "for" column.
On the other hand, there's a lot of limitations on who you're allowed to do business with. Cops instead of spending time tracking down violent criminals or finding thieves are searching for unlicensed businesses, or unlicensed contractors, or all kinds of other people who are being prevented from working in a certain way solely because they haven't gotten approval by the state.
The stock market means that individuals can purchase shares of different companies and if those companies grow then those individuals can get rich without asking permission from anyone (besides their stock broker) for the privilege.
On the other hand there, many of the largest companies on the planet heavily rely on government. Obviously aerospace and weapons companies rely on the military directly paying their bills, but there's a lot of companies that accept large government contracts that fundamentally sustain their businesses, or that rely on favorable regulatory conditions that let them exist and succeed but also make it harder for competition to exist.
Then there's a painful reality that a working man pays more than half his pay to the government through various taxes. When the government gets more of what you make than you do, I don't think you can consider that system capitalism, even if there are free markets and some level of private ownership of capital.
Private control of capital is another thing altogether. We're living in the most regulated society in the history of the world. You can't take a shit without it ticking a bunch of boxes from 14 different government departments. If you own a thing you don't really control it because there's so little you can do with it.
So I guess in reality we can say we have little bits of capitalism here and there that work well, but we also have massive amounts of not capitalism. We have an oppressive superstate that takes everything from everyone and micromanages everyone, but while it does almost nothing for us in return we do need to figure out how to feed ourselves on our own...
I was just joking around since threads was supposed to be the biggest thing since color TV and sliced bread but fell off pretty quickly.
Increasing the number of active users by 50%! (It's happening threadsbros! Threads is going to the moon!)
You know that joke "I could do that if I wanted to, I just don't want to"
I couldn't do that. Especially not while dancing around like that.
I couldn't do that. Especially not while dancing around like that.
Honestly though? This post is fuckin true. There's a six figure market for just going door to door with a snowblower in winter and a lawnmower in summer.
One of my goals with my son has been to try to listen to different music from around the world and throughout time. If you just start immediately after the class of the Roman empire with Gregorian chanting then you might assume that there's a nice linear progression from monotone to polyphony to early classical, but stuff like Sumerian hymns and ancient Greek hymns are much more complex, and that's just the stuff that was written down. It's really true history isn't written by the winners but by those who write it down and maintain those writings.
There are universal human values, but it's not what these people think they are.
There have been societies that we would think are objectively terrible throughout history. The Assyrians bragged about forcing someone to grind the bones of his wife and children before being executed himself. And people might think "but where's the universal human values in that?" But it's built right into the sentence. The Assyrians did this to the outgroup, because humans are tribal. They forced this guy to grind the bones of his wife and children because family is universally important. And then they killed him because staying alive is universally important.
The problem is with those basic human values that are built into us by genetics, you can take those as a start and then start driving in different directions and end up with something completely different. Sun Tzu said there were 5 notes and from those 5 notes you could create infinite melodies, and 5 basic elements of strategy and from those you could produce an infinite variety of strategies. In an even more correct way, you can start with a few fundamental human values and drive them into an infinite number of systems of ethics, and they can all look completely different.
There have been societies that we would think are objectively terrible throughout history. The Assyrians bragged about forcing someone to grind the bones of his wife and children before being executed himself. And people might think "but where's the universal human values in that?" But it's built right into the sentence. The Assyrians did this to the outgroup, because humans are tribal. They forced this guy to grind the bones of his wife and children because family is universally important. And then they killed him because staying alive is universally important.
The problem is with those basic human values that are built into us by genetics, you can take those as a start and then start driving in different directions and end up with something completely different. Sun Tzu said there were 5 notes and from those 5 notes you could create infinite melodies, and 5 basic elements of strategy and from those you could produce an infinite variety of strategies. In an even more correct way, you can start with a few fundamental human values and drive them into an infinite number of systems of ethics, and they can all look completely different.
Good thing they're going to bring in all the people in Epsteins little black boo -- just kidding lol
The guys I've liked lately will never make it. Samson and five times August went hard and oh will you look at that
I could never do YouTube and streaming as a job because I'm not very charismatic or interesting. It'd be like the worst public access cable TV show but worse.
The real key is to make sure that you're actually getting what the things are worth. In the case of a lot of privatization you have the public take all the risk and spend all the money to build the thing, then you hand it out to some politically connected actor for pennies on the dollar.
Public companies potentially could be used as an alternative to taxation, but you would need a dramatically smaller government for that to work.
Public companies potentially could be used as an alternative to taxation, but you would need a dramatically smaller government for that to work.
If there was an antitrust case to be made against google, I feel like this would be the one.
I have them on gog and just started a playthrough of BG1. The fact that there's an open source port is nice.