this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2024
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This is one of the supposed benefits of the free market. If left alone, under normal conditions, what's supposed to happen is that badly ran, uncompetitive firms end up showing themselves the door, making room for new market competitors who may not be so badly managed. Don't fucking save them, especially don't advocate for saving them if you claim to love free markets.
The problem with free markets is they are incredibly unstable and create booms and busts and people don't like this so we get the worst of all worlds which is unfettered capitalism and no competition or failure weeding out poorly managed companies. Maybe free markets are just a shitty ideal?
Yes. The answer to that question is yes. Free market capitalism encourages cutthroat competition in which the only factor in any decision-making process is maximizing profits. Safety isn't a factor. Employee well-being isn't a factor. National security isn't a factor. The economy at large isn't a factor. Long term investments aren't even a factor. Line go up this quarter equals good quarter. Regulations ensure mandatory minimums for societal prosperity.
Until corporations realise they can cheat and change the game by bribing politicians to tip the scales in their favour.
Business exists only for one thing; exploiting systems, even if that means meta-exploitation, since that's the highest form of exploitation, and the inevitable endgame.
free markets are a shitty idea, but ive never seen one in real life before.
I think America would actually benefit from switching to a free market economy, instead of our current bullshit where our politicans are too spineless to tell companies like Boeing "sucks to suck" when they ask for yet another handout instead of doing any real work
Agreed, but the big players have their hands tied up in Congress and the military so much that it's not gonna happen.
Then they should be nationalized, because they've already got the benefits, but none of the downsides, while the public get none of the benefits, and all of the downsides... At this point "too big to fail" are essentially critical government infrastructure setup by wealthy criminals to steal directly from tax payers.
Nationalizing industries? In America? We don't do that here, friend. We give corporations massive bailouts and forgive all felonies.
Ya know… I was going to say “You dropped this /s”
But then sadly, I realized you didn’t :-(
I mean the US came shocking close after the Penn Central collapse, even operating Conrail for several years as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Federal Government for several years
I would bring back Conrail immediately.
I think you could make the argument it is already nationalized if the government bails them out to protect it's military industry sector.
That's actually really sad to think about.
we dont have a free market. We have what i can only describe as Inverse Socialism
its socialism for the wealthy and the corporations, and "free market" for everyone else
this is part of the reason why theft of property from the rich, or violence against them, is not morally wrong.
They get tax breaks that we all pay for, and they influence policies that help themselves while killing us.
You cant steal what you already paid for, and its not murder when its self defense
It is, afaik, the literal, actual, unironic definition of the fascist economic model. Basically, the public sector only really exists in the form of "private" companies that are tightly coupled to the government.
thats what they taught us about communist Russia when i was in highschool
Our economics class learned that their "public" sector was a mix of private companies acting as both private citizens AND government agencies.
And my teacher was like "imagine if all the roads and utilities and infrastructure for the country was run by private, FOR PROFIT businesses that benefit from laws written for citizens, AND from laws written for corporations but are not bound by either"
20 years later i realize thats how its been here the whole time
Historically I don't think that's what the term "free market" was referring to, although some people do use it that way now. As always, we need to remember that there are no normal conditions, and free markets aren't free. If you don't have anti-monopoly legislation, if you don't have anti-corruption legislation, then large corporations will win.