Taxing the rich is fine but you have to be careful not to create pressure on businesses that operate under the conglomerates like Walmart and Amazon - because you'd just end up with the top tier companies further monopolizing while reducing the barrier to entry for anyone wanting to create a sustainable company.

For example, Amazon uses contract provisions that prevents sellers who sell on amazon from selling on their own personal site or other sites at a price that's below what they are selling it for on amazon - essentially, dramatically reducing potential growth of the competition due to the inability to offer lower prices than amazon.

If I were a lefty, I'd be far more focused on disallowing that type of behavior than hamstringing businesses to the point to where your only options are now Amazon, Tesla Walmart and MCdonalds as they are going to be the ones best situated when aggressively raising taxes. Doing so also helps to stabilize prices as they aren't being dictated by a handful of sellers.

Again, I'd much rather live in a world where I have options to both choose from a variety of stores and products with competing prices and a choice to build my own than living under the dome of a few while possibly being assured that I will be compensated as my neighbor to not starve to death with no options available to create my own wealth.

My preferred, stronger version of socialism has an easy answer for this -- these types of behemoth businesses cease to exist. We should seize them, break them up, collectivize their wealth, and use their other useful stuff (like Amazon's distribution network, which, by the way, is one of the very few actual profitable things Amazon does) to help fulfill societal needs.

In our actual world, you raise a valid concern. I guess the more normal way to address this is incremental stuff like strengthening anti-trust laws, give tax credits to smaller businesses, etc. But those things are band-aids that don't address the actual problem -- it seems to me that you've just brought up another way in which capitalism is exploitative. Maybe liberals have an answer to this within the system.

I bet there are ways to manipulate the tax code to compensate for the inherent advantages massive companies enjoy in American capitalism. In any case, I think we can both "focus on disallowing that type of behavior" and address my three bolded points from before -- these things aren't mutually exclusive.

Are you suggesting that when a company reaches a certain level, the government should take them over and run the business based on how they choose? Would this be based on company size, or EBITDA or maybe adjusted on whether the company is a major asset to the citizens vs a pollution hog? Because even then a company could stay within these margins, whatever they'd be assuming that they didn't want to hand over their business.

How would you determine which companies stay and which go?

When we talk about abolishing capitalism, we need to be careful and specific about what we mean. In the imagined utopia of socialists / communists / even anarchists, it's not that there is never an exchange of money for goods and services at a fair price - it's understood that those might be necessary for standards of living and fairness. It's that our current form of capitalism is grossly unfair and exploitative.

It should be understood even by rightists that big corporations are insanely undemocratic in the way that they wield power over government and society. Rulings like Citizens United and Dodge vs Ford really highlight the way government has been bought by big business and serves its ends. If you are in favour of economic freedom for all, you would not be in favour of ceding the power over information that twitter and facebook have, the power of pricing that amazon has, the manipulation over our desires that the advertising industry have, wantonly and openly manufacturing envy and self-hatred in order to sell us more, etc etc. Even with strong and enforced anti-trust, if you allow companies to get too big, they do want companies in the global north do - everything they can, legal or not, to gain more money and power, because it's expected that ceos must serve the shareholder, not society at large. And society suffers.

As to how things get nationalised, that's less of an interesting question. Just seize their assets the way they have been seizing the commons from the rightful owners of it - the people - and seizing land and resources and labour from us.

If it were truly meritocratic, then I'd have more patience for the standardbearers of capitalism. But all too often we see that money begets money, and most billionaires are the product of a combination of generational wealth, and the wanton exploitation of whomever and whatever they can. That is not economic freedom for everyone - that's economic freedom for the few, or 'privilege'. A system that underlines undeserved privilege is not a system that creates freedom for the masses.

It seems obvious also that we should restrict corporations and nations from ravaging the natural resources of other countries, let alone your american government assassinating and rigging and threats of war and so on. By god, the legacy in Chile is absolutely terrifying.

Much the same way as your founding fathers nobly attempted but failed spectacularly to insulate government from religion, for a democracy to be true it must be insulated from capitalism. Market forces are fantastic for the market, but they are no way to run a country and should be left behind as soon as the traders pack up their stalls and the public marketplace becomes a debate about how to move forward. Leave pricing efficiency for goods and services, not for society.

Capitalism is a strong tool, but requires regulation. In USA money has consumed politics and the regulators are captured. We need reform in all stages of our "democratic" elections. Obviously things like Citizens United have to go. There should be a free central platform for all political candidates to use equally and it should be the only medium allowed for political interactions. We need to be rid of the 2 party system. Most people aren't D or R and lack representation especially in locals with closed primaries. Nearly everything is broken by corruption at this point. It's easy to see why folks are "black pilled". It's impossible to imagine how to make our system functional because it's that broken.

Wouldn't AI algorithms be the superior method of allocating capital in the not to distant future?

Why? The model will only do what it's trained to. So whoever makes the AI gets all the money? Pretty much anything is superior to giving over half the pie (in USA) to military. A monkey could allocate it better. They'd buy food or something.

This is a segue, and maybe this isn't the right thread, but the city of Chicago recently announced they are exploring opening up socialized grocery stores, as in the wake of pro crime Democratic Party progressive reforms (which the mayor champions) most grocery stores have been forced to close do to shoplifting and unsafe working conditions for employees.

This of course will never happen, and IF it does it will be a complete failure. There is 0.0% chance a bureaucracy run as incompetently and corruptly as Chicago could ever manage such a logistical feat. And even if it could, the amount of theft (from the inside and from the community) would be insane. Nothing would make it onto shelves.

Honestly, if Chicago wants to go this route they would be better off just subsidizing Target and Walmart for their losses due to theft so they would be willing to stay; although this doesn't address the issue of Chicago being unsafe for employees. But I dont see how city run grocery outlets would either.

I'm not familiar with the initiative, but it sounds like you're describing communist stores as they'd be run by government? Socialist stores would be owned by employees. A better idea would be to open free restaurants.

Scientology has tax exempt status of a religion in the US, which they received through blackmailing, one of their very popular techniques.

The flaws of capitalism are corruption obviously.

Check the list of status of each coungry if you like. In many countries it is a sect/ cult.



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scie...20tax%20exempt.

Are there any countries that are actually using a capitalism model?

The US doesn’t, who does? The US is a corporate socialist model; the govt pays for and bails out banks and defense contracting companies.

Where do you even get this nonsense from? Make it up yourself or is there some Tucker Carlson newsletter you’re aping?

you live in a fantasy world.

Sort of annoying that a known racist troll can disrupt every thread with blatant lies and dogwhistles.

Yeah, pretty much calls out for a Cite or Ban on this talking point. Please show us the data about the grocery stores closing in Chicago, Dun

Is this a new thing for you where every time you haven't heard of something that you disagree with you're going to argue "cite or ban"?

I googled it and got a bunch of recent articles with headlines like:

"Chicago exploring creation of city-owned grocery store for food deserts" https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-food...r-me/13780331/

"Chicago mayor proposes city-owned grocery stores as Walmart, Whole Foods exits leave ‘food deserts’" https://nypost.com/2023/09/18/chicag...rocery-stores/

Surely another random proposal that goes nowhere, as is the norm for this kind of thing. These links and others do mention, to dunyain's point, that stores like Wal-Mart and Whole Foods have been closing in certain Chicago areas, although his "most grocery stores have been forced to close do to shoplifting and unsafe working conditions for employees" claim is quite the exaggeration, to put it nicely.

Seems like a humane, incremental idea; if you have a system which allows large companies to quit service in certain areas, something should at least be made available for the citizens of those areas to shop for groceries and goods.

5 total stores closed. That is "most"?? lol

How confident are you that we have the correct number of closed stores in the first attempt at it?

THAT.... was my point, LB. Dun needs to clarify with actual data... why he said by "most".

Not sure why he would need to do that other than you threatening him with a ban if he doesn't.

it's a difficult claim to either prove or deny since almost all shoplifting numbers are completely made up out of wholecloth by the stores. they blame "urban" shoplifting for poor managerial decisions and the press and the police eat that **** up because it backfills their narratives that black people=crime.

on the subject, i like the idea in general. just base it off the defense commissionary agency that already runs government grocery stores on military bases.

Cite or ban please

He’d also need to show these stores closed due to shoplifting rather than the usual reasons grocery stores fold up and go out of business. None of it matters, he’s going to come back with fresh new lies.