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Crony capitalism may be cannibalizing productive capitalism in the U.S.

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Re: Crony capitalism may be cannibalizing productive capitalism in the U.S.

#121

Post by mars4rp »

bogomipz wrote: post #102
mars4rp wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we don't have capitalism in US we have corporationism. free market would have been a good thing before automation and AI, but it won't work for the future. but you can't convince people to go toward socialism in this country. but left and right agree that problem is crony capitalism ! let's start from there and do something!!!

>"free market would have been a good thing before automation and AI, but it won't work for the future." Can you elaborate on this? I am curious to hear why those two things - a free market and AI are mutually exclusive.

because in a society when most of people don't need to work because there is nothing to do for them. you can't compete by working, you can compete by the amount of your capital. for example if you use robots to produce X, the only way I can compete with you is having more or better robots (there would be still competition on building better robots as long as people making robots and AIs not AIs generating more AIs). in such a word most of people don't contribute to the economy, allocating resources based on amount of work or capital is going to leave most of society without any resources! free market is still going to be helpful in making AI and Robot owners compete, but they shouldn't be the sole benefactor of robot's work!

Re: Crony capitalism may be cannibalizing productive capitalism in the U.S.

#122

Post by dragonwriter »

pm90 wrote: post #118
sadfjhsdf66 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the monopolies have exerted pressure on public education, including universities, to churn out advocates for the corporations bottom line. With no basis in reality, we've brainwashed people to believe the bottom lines of the elite are to be protected. That's the outcome sought of our educational system. It fascinates me how, on the one hand, we complain about how lazy people are. How much inducement the prole…

This is unfortunately too close to the truth. One thing I would like to add though is that despite the fruits of labor accruing disproportionately to the elite, the system has managed to lift up everyone else as well, right? So the system does work, and I wonder what would happen if it was changed to be more egalitarian....

> the system has managed to lift up everyone else as well, right?

By some measures, all of which fail to account for the fact that relative deprivation is a substantial source of experienced disutility.

Re: Crony capitalism may be cannibalizing productive capitalism in the U.S.

#123

Post by Allower »

zackmorris wrote: post #39

I think the great problem of our time is that the challenges get easier to solve every day but we mostly spend our time making rent. And not the kind of rent mentioned in the article - just plain old fashioned too-much-month-not-enough-money kind of rent. When we’re desperate, we grovel and do whatever work we need to to survive. This is akin to how researchers spend inordinate amounts of time applying for grants rat…

>In the olden days, the main force balancing this was taxation.

What? Taxation in the US has never been higher, you are a fucking moron

Re: Crony capitalism may be cannibalizing productive capitalism in the U.S.

#124

Post by dmoy »

CalChris wrote: post #104
api wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The F35 is indeed welfare, but it's not the most damaging kind. Things like that represent waste but do little in the way of active harm, and sometimes they can even have side benefits like funding the development of advanced technologies that can find more productive use elsewhere. The real active harm comes when you get a professional class that does very bad things. These can be mistakes, like the total collapse o…

Agreed. However, in addition to viewing the F35 as welfare you can also see it as Too Big To Fail. I think there are side benefits to defense spending. Silicon Valley was built on that [1]. But there's tremendous risk with large (and doomed) projects when they fail (which they will). [1] https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ Uber is going to fail. The F35 is going to fail. Throwing good money after bad will stave of…

At some point though, if major world powers never go to war with each other, then the F35 can't really fail insofar as it will never actually see combat.

It reminds me of the sci fi novels Dread Empire's Fall, in which the galactic civilization's ship fleet has never fought a battle in thousands of years, so nobody can actually know how to do it, and they don't know if a certain tactic, ship, etc is really a failure or not.

Re: Crony capitalism may be cannibalizing productive capitalism in the U.S.

#125

Post by tanderson92 »

mowenz wrote: post #48
dv_dt wrote: post #27

Does it seem to anyone else that the finance industry is increasingly distracted from actually matching up capital to fundamentally productive companies, especially new companies? Looking at the stock market, there are few IPOs, and after IPO, being public only provides access to limited access vis issuance of new stock... Some capital flows to VCs, but it seems the more capital flows to large VC funds, the more the…

>Does it seem to anyone else that the finance industry is increasingly distracted from actually matching up capital to fundamentally productive companies, especially new companies? This is somewhat controversial to posit, but I believe the corruption in the financial industry is extraordinarily entrenched because of the Fed. Before you call me a lunatic, smart and good people from Aaron Schwartz to Sanders have said…

Do you have a source where Sanders said the Fed should be eliminated, or was that Swartz?

I believe the comment about socialism for the rich -- here is his NYT op-ed on the Fed: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/opinion/bernie-sanders-to...

Re: Crony capitalism may be cannibalizing productive capitalism in the U.S.

#126

Post by Shivetya »

zackmorris wrote: post #39

I think the great problem of our time is that the challenges get easier to solve every day but we mostly spend our time making rent. And not the kind of rent mentioned in the article - just plain old fashioned too-much-month-not-enough-money kind of rent. When we’re desperate, we grovel and do whatever work we need to to survive. This is akin to how researchers spend inordinate amounts of time applying for grants rat…

taxes in the US are far more progressive than they used to be. there are however many new avenues to follow to increase wealth. those below a certain income level are more likely to get eaten up by embedded taxes, regulatory fees and government service fees.

then throw in we are bombarded every day continuously to buy this,buy that, go here, do that. We get told every day of wonderful stuff available for pennies or dollars a day. we have tv shows and advertisements implying status for owning certain products.

besides managing their money we fail to teach kids in school just how well marketing manipulates them into believing what is needed to have them spend money.

still regulation has become the go to tool to prevent competition and when that doesn't work the fear of exploitation of the poor or under privileged is brought to the foreground.

the simple fact is we have too much government for it to be effective for the regular person, it only serves those who can afford to operate on its level

Re: Crony capitalism may be cannibalizing productive capitalism in the U.S.

#127

Post by function_seven »

BFatts wrote: post #108
projectramo wrote: post #18

There is a theory that all above market profits are generated by government granted monopolies. So, for instance, software is protected by patents, oil and gas is protected by mineral rights, drugs are protected by patent law, entertainment is protected by IP rights, and so on. In so far as there is competition, it often arises when the rent-seeking motivates people to disrupt the government protection by making it u…

Software isn't protected by patents - it's just IP laws as well. You can't patent software in general. Maybe the look and feel of your product, but not the functionality.

Maybe it ought to be this way, but it's clearly not. MP3, GIF, patent trolls, and the Eastern District of Texas are all well-known examples of software patents.

Re: Crony capitalism may be cannibalizing productive capitalism in the U.S.

#128

Post by mercurial »

crpatino wrote: post #84
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or simply, our means of production have become so efficient that it didn't matter whether you were right or wrong, things would still hum along and the profits would continue. In the agricultural age, if you fucked up a harvest, you and your family could starve. Before agriculture, if you fucked up a hunt, your whole kin-clan could starve. Nowadays, if you fuck up the housing market, and millions of people go bankrup…

It is not that we are so efficient, but that a priviledged tiny cabal have learned how to push the consequences of their mistakes to the rest of the population. To borrow your example: In agricultural age, if you fucked up harvest your family starves. Today, if you fuck up the housing market, thousand of families end up in bankrupcy, and tens of thousands of small investors loose their savings... but you do not perso…

> There's historic precedent for that kind of divorce between actions and consequences, and it is not pretty. There's a certain French doctor you should google: his name's Josheph Guillotin.

I'm not sure what analogy you are going for. Guillotin did not invent the guillotine, and only advertised it as a more humane way of execution. He was opposed to the death penalty.

Re: Crony capitalism may be cannibalizing productive capitalism in the U.S.

#129

Post by jondubois »

rtx wrote: post #81
jondubois wrote: post #65

I think that these issues are getting a lot of attention recently. A lot of people feel that their jobs are not meaningful anymore and that they cannot find any meaningful work that pays well. Most of the jobs that pay well are zero-sum games. Finance, tech, law. Even medicine and pharmaceuticals are becoming zero-sum games (e.g companies boosting drug prices because it's easier than inventing new ones). People have…

Thats why we need space colonization. We as a species are programmed to expand. We have become stagnant in the last 100 years.

Based on how humanity is evolving I can extrapolate that if aliens do exist, they are probably malevolent.

Re: Crony capitalism may be cannibalizing productive capitalism in the U.S.

#130

Post by [deleted] »

rtx wrote: post #81
jondubois wrote: post #65

I think that these issues are getting a lot of attention recently. A lot of people feel that their jobs are not meaningful anymore and that they cannot find any meaningful work that pays well. Most of the jobs that pay well are zero-sum games. Finance, tech, law. Even medicine and pharmaceuticals are becoming zero-sum games (e.g companies boosting drug prices because it's easier than inventing new ones). People have…

Thats why we need space colonization. We as a species are programmed to expand. We have become stagnant in the last 100 years.

[deleted]
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