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Google Calendar removes Pride Month and Black History Month (www.thepinknews.com)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

It’s little more than a scary story they tell to convince people to go along with their authoritarian ideas

This is where I think you may have misinterpreted me. I'm not trying to push socialism. I think we're genuinely fucked and there is no way out.

Sure, but that overlap should be as small as possible while still ensuring a competitive market

This is a fantasy. We talk about "free market capitalism" as if it's some pristine, untouched mechanism that would work perfectly fine if only the government followed the rules. But the moment big money arises, the entire political field is lured in. Wealth itself becomes a gravitational force that pulls legislators, laws, and lobbyists into its orbit.

This is not a bug, it's a feature. It's fundamental to the system. A free market can never remain a free market. For two very simple reasons.

a) economies of scale. It's cheaper to a lot of something per thing compared to a little of something per thing. so there is a financial incentive to get bigger and that is a self-perpetuating cycle. Eventually at the end of the game of Monopoly, there's only one landlord standing who bought everything else up.

b) wealth is power. if you have power, you will use it to ensure your position is improved. this is human nature. this works the same in any other political economic system.

It’s not that a pure free market is corrupted by government, or that a pure socialism is corrupted by incompetent central planners; both are myths in the sense that they never truly exist in the real world. We either get forms of crony capitalism or state-managed capitalism, but the “free” part is always an abstraction.

What we need to acknowledge is that the political and economic systems are not two separate worlds that only overlap by accident. They’re conjoined twins. Pretending one can neatly excise government from the economy is a fantasy—just as fantastical as imagining the perfect socialist utopia.

The trick is to recognize that the moment large-scale wealth accumulates, it necessarily accumulates political clout. And from there, the “free market” gradually becomes a marketplace that’s anything but free.

This is what people mean by late stage capitalism. It's capitalism that has eroded all of the public institutions and in a short amount of time fascism will take root. We're witnessing the transition right now as we speak.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 1 points 2 hours ago

This is a fantasy

It used to be reality. Copyright law was reasonable and largely unchanged for 180 years, it lasted 28 years, with an optional extension for another 28 years. Originally it was 14 years, with an optional extension for another 14 years. The same is true for a number of other stupid laws that large corporations exploit.

But the moment big money arises, the entire political field is lured in

Agreed, and maybe we should consider constitutional limits on what governments can do. You won't bribe someone who is legally restricted from helping you...

But honestly, the root of the problem, I think, is the two-party system, which encourages corruption, especially when state governments get to redraw federal districts. We shouldn't be pushing for individual changes to separate government from big money until we solve the problem with party politics.

Some suggestions:

proportional representation for House Reps - you vote in your party primary to rank candidates, and seats are awarded in the general based on percent of popular vote; eliminates gerrymandering, with the risk of candidates being geographically consolidated (totally worthwhile tradeoff, and IMO not something that actually matters)
term limits - not a solution in and of itself (creates a pipeline to industry, encouraging corruption), but could be useful in addition to the first
campaign finance reform - ban political ads, and only allow organized debates and town halls, with a central location for info about each candidate (w/ fact checking by other candidates)
end FPTP - preference for STAR or Approval voting, but the specific option isn't important; needs to be paired w/ a solution to gerrymandering though, because on its own, this doesn't do much

Wealth itself becomes a gravitational force that pulls legislators, laws, and lobbyists into its orbit.

That's true of any economic system. You said you're not pushing socialism, but you didn't offer what you do support, so I'll speak broadly.

Power attracts money, and money attracts power. These are constants in human nature, and they need to be watched very closely. My point is that increasing the ability of governments to make changes that benefit or hurt the market attracts big money, so we should be very careful of anything we ask our governments to do. Having a political system that encourages entrenched politicians just exacerbates the problem. And moving more and more powers to the executive branch reduces the amount of work companies need to put in to get a desired result (e.g. Trump can be bought).

My opinion is that, in general, rules should be crafted and enforced as locally as possible, which would then dramatically increase the work required for a large entity to get what they want. Federal policy should be simple and limited to only what's needed for a functioning union, and likewise down the chain.

there is a financial incentive to get bigger and that is a self-perpetuating cycle. Eventually at the end of the game of Monopoly, there’s only one landlord standing who bought everything else up.

What you're missing is that as companies get bigger, they lose sight of their competitive advantage. Look at big household names from 50 years ago (or sooner!) that don't really exist today. Capitalism works by smaller upstarts finding a competitive advantage, exploiting it, and then the cycle repeats.

The way large orgs compete now is by buying small orgs. We could consider blocking corporations from buying other corporations, which should encourage more disruption vs larger orgs (i.e. erode wealth of the big players), since they can't just buy their competitors.

It’s capitalism that has eroded all of the public institutions and in a short amount of time fascism will take root.

I really don't think the two are related. Look at fascism before WW2, they didn't need to erode capitalism first, they just ran on a populist platform, identified a common enemy, and used the platform and enemy as an excuse to eliminate democracy, at which point they could nationalize whatever industries they want. The transition to fascism throughout history has been through political means, not the market.

I suppose it's possible for it to happen in the other order, but I don't think it's inevitable. We had a similar situation w/ Standard Oil taking over everything, and we ended up doing some trust busting to fix the issue. It's not too late to change course, we just need the public to recognize the problem and demand change.