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Sotha

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Guess i have to be happy that you did not call it communism.

Well, it's socialism, specifically. I'm happy to make a distinction, as you can have a socialist that isn't communist, just not the other way around.

 

That doesn't make it any less questionable. But I don't consider things through ideological lenses, so I rather discuss ideas on their own merits, rather than on the basis of which particular ideology they come out of. At least insofar as the discussion is being that specific. We haven't been discussing the big picture of socialism, but rather the finer details, the feasibility of these socialist policies, specifically.

 

It has nothing to do with Robin Hood.

Indeed. They are two different things, the Robin Hood Effect and Robin Hood.

It's the way you put it before: "So the art of building a welfare state is to get the rich pay for the poor."

Is a mindset that leads, or can lead, to it.

 

It is just a subsidy like every other. The state as a whole decides that no one should die of starvation or because he can't afford healthcare - and spends tax money to make that sure.

It is not about whether the rich are good or bad or whether it is okay to hoard ridiculous amounts of money. That just doesn't matter. Welfare expenses in the end are just expenses and have to be paid somehow. You can't take the money from the poor, because they don't have it. So obviously you have to take it from the rich.

What if no one's actually dying of starvation or with lack of healthcare in the first place? What if the state is going off of hypothetical scenarios and appeals to emotion to convince people that there is? What if that's all just appealing rhetoric for socialist sophists (or more likely actual communists) to win elections? Just like foreign aid is (that video has the longest appeal to emotion I've ever seen: 42 seconds of fallacious hot air, starting at the 04:08 mark).

 

Does that sound far fetched to you?

 

The concept of the consumerism and entrepreneurship of the rich fixing the poorness problem is called Trickle-down economics and works as well as communism with real humans...

 

Let them go - and exspell them from the country so they aren't able to come back.

Aren't you keeping in mind they pay loads of salaries? And don't you think that's rather unfair? It's one thing to want to help poor people, it's another thing to screw everyone else doing it.

 

Beeing a citizen of a welfare state does not only mean that you get help if you need it - it also means, that you have to pay for others getting that help if you can afford it.

Let me put it this way: why don't we go to a pub and have a bear. I'll pay for yours and you pay for mine.

 

People who decide to not beeing part of that state should not be part of that state.

They should have to get citizenship somewhere else or buy themselves an island where they could declare their own state and wich they would have to protect with their own military. Should not be a problem for the filthy rich wich also like to be hermits (hint: Most humans don't like to be alone)...

But I just happened to be born here. And I was never asked if I wanted to take part in any of it, and if I don't take part in it they'll come at me with guns.

And what if I'm too poor to travel? What if I'm one of the people you're purportedly trying to help? All I want is to make my living and be left alone.

 

The rich are actually the ones that agree with that (while they don't realize what's happening). They often feel guilty for being filthy rich and vote in favor of being taken money away, instead of feeling happy to have moved the world forward and made the economy boom. Bill Gates is one of the best examples (which is why the economist Yaron Brook uses it) of someone who created tons of new jobs and wealth for tons of other people.

 

The market for low wage labour is driven by an oversupply of humans that are not skilled enough for the higher tier jobs. Some of them fled from the countries we destabilized or helped to destabilize.

That is why we have seen a race to the bottom in the low wage sector in the last decades.

Basically, the low wage labour market seems to be broken beyond repair (well, a pandemic could fix it, but we hopefully don't get one soon) in the USA and most (if not all) of the EU.

You're forgetting all the youngsters that just turned 18 and have no experience or skills, all the people who switch jobs to industries they never worked in, all the physically hindered or incapacitated people.

 

The current competitive economic also comes with high overhead costs. Advertising, multiplied company structures / production facilities, Salesmen...

Whatever economic system you chose, it will not be free.

Indeed, but the difference is that only those who need it pay for it. It bears no cost to a nation, only to its consumers, and it has no bureaucrats and bureaucracies making it even more expensive (unless of course the state decides to make it so).

 

Humans are greedy and as long as they are, we will spend at least twice the amount of resources (and produce twice the amount of pollution) on everything than we would have to spend if greed would not be a thing. We would not even need the concepts of money or "buying something" without it.

It's interesting you mention that, because the most capitalist parts of the world are also the least polluted.

 

Also money exists because it's inconvenient and hard to be trading 0.75 cow for 12.25 rabits.

 

So it is not about overhead but about whether it works or not. If people starve or can't afford healthcare, that means to me, that the system is failing for them. For me, that is a bug that has to be fixed. Whether that also is a bug for you, depends on your ethics (for a social darwinist it would be a feature).

It's also interesting that it's also in the most capitalist parts of the world where poor people are fat. And it turns out the states in those parts aren't providing any food at all to anyone and no one is concerned with it.

 

You call it greed, but perhaps you're not talking about greed. Perhaps you're making the same mistake Walter Williams made when he called it greed: he was right, but he wasn't talking about greed.

 

I call a failure to a system where one too many die waiting to be saved. People are dying for lack of healthcare under the very system that is purportedly built to prevent people from dying for lack of healthcare.

Edited by Skaruts

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healthcare is expensive due to drug companies charging hospitals more for drugs than that same drug costing at a Pharmacist eg one drug (pill, trablet, capsule) in a shop cost $10, while the hospital was being charged $2500 for the same drug. (thats per pill). even though it cost the drug company 2 cents to make that pill.

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Dentistry is not a life and death question (under most circumstances) so in many countries it is not covered by the minimum healthcare package. And that's ok. It's more like a luxury domain.

 

It's the same as every other kind of healthcare, it's just specialized in one part of you. It may or may not be a matter of life and death just like the rest of healthcare.

And it's certainly not a luxury. Dentistry is a part of healthcare that either got privatized or never got nationalized. Maybe it cropped up after the rest was already public. But making a distinction between dentistry and healthcare would be like making a distinction between kung fu and martial arts.

 

Well some parts of it can be luxurious. Getting extra-super-duper-white-teeth, or like in Japan there are girls who turn one canine tooth outward because they find it attractive. But then that's a cherry on top. One that would never exist if dentistry was public, because the state wouldn't be using tax money for luxury. You can think of it much like candy. Food isn't a luxury, but the industry grew such that candy was made possible. Govs would never develop candy. It's only the private market that develops luxury on top of necessities.

 

Just by the way, luxury items are actually also a necessity. Think how your sanity would be like if you lived your life without a comfy bed, a comfy sofa, tasty succulent food, hot water to taste, a car that looks cool, a computer that runs TDM, etc etc. Government would never develop TDM. :rolleyes:

 

People don't complain about dentistry because they know there's nobody responsible for giving it away for free (conventionally speaking). If you have the money you'll get good teeth, if not it's all on you and your eating habits/sleep and all that jazz.

 

People don't complain because they get treated. And quickly so.

 

Ok, but you do agree that if medical services were not regulated than we'd have a lot of placebo, homeopathy and pseudoscience sold as if it was legit medicine? And we still get that despite regulations in ads and such. Only people who bother to read deeper understand that none of this helps and it is a waste of time and money.

 

Well science, despite being state funded, isn't regulated against pseudoscience. To my knowledge, it's the Scientific Method that weeds out fraud and fraud can be taken to a court of law, and a fraudulent "scientist", even if not prosecuted, loses credibility and reputation, which is carrear suicide. Science is self regulated in that way, and that's pretty much what I would expect from medicine as well. Much like in the internet people gang up on liars and scammers, so do people in real life.

 

Also, not all science is publicly funded; much of it takes place within private companies that need to improve their own products, and you don't find pseudoscience there either. People themselves developed ways to make pseudoscience pretty much as clandestine as it can be in its own little corner.

 

You do agree that over diagnosing various conditions as well and underdiagnosing them are both dangerous extremes impossible to avoid with control, regulation and punishment from the government?

I don't think doctors like being sued to begin with.

 

But I'm wondering: I don't know a place that has actual privatized healthcare, aren't the regulations that exist made to prevent those failures in public healthcare?

 

Especially in areas where science did not develop well like psychiatry, neurology, oncology (most cases being terminal). We're less than half a century after lobotomy was alright. Now it's banned and that's where it stays.

You can ban stuff regardless of whether they're performed in public or private enterprises. Lead was banned from the market, and uranium too I think.

 

I don't dismiss all regulation as harmful or undesirable, although there's a distinction to be made between regulations and protection from aggression and fraud. In either case, it's indeed the duty of the gov to be the arbiter in the competition. The problem I see is just with when the gov gets in the way of free and fair competition.

 

But I don't contest that it's a huge waste of human resources to have doctors filling in endless paperwork instead of practicing medicine/consulting patients. C'est la vie I guess. Yet I don't see how it can be avoided in the private sector neither.

Neither do I... But then, no one's trying to find out, because they're not permitted to.

 

No, because then doctors will use their position in private clinics and through corruption variously take profits from both places.

There should be as you emphasized competition between the public and private clinics/hospitals.

As you said, wages are better in the private sector. But that doesn't mean we should block growth by letting things go with conflict of interests.

Working in two places doesn't cancel their competition. Although the gov doesn't compete either way, so in that case, the private clinics compete with gov, but that's it.

 

I don't see anything wrong with them having two jobs, though, but you mentioned corruption, so if there's a problem it's likely in that.

 

I don't think their two jobs is what prevents growth, what seems to do it is that one of them is "free", but I don't think that's the doctor's concern.

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healthcare is expensive due to drug companies charging hospitals more for drugs than that same drug costing at a Pharmacist eg one drug (pill, trablet, capsule) in a shop cost $10, while the hospital was being charged $2500 for the same drug. (thats per pill). even though it cost the drug company 2 cents to make that pill.

How is that possible though? I can't conceive of even bureaucrats being as thick headed as to buy from that drug company for such a price when they could just go to the pharmacist and buy it cheaper, or choose another supplier.

 

EDIT: Unless there's some thick headed regulation mandating that the buying gov entity can only buy from specific suppliers. Which is not hard to believe. I think something like that was mentioned in an article Anderson linked to a few posts back.

Edited by Skaruts

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1. Let me put it this way: why don't we go to a pub and have a beer. I'll pay for yours and you pay for mine.

 

2. It's interesting you mention that, because the most capitalist parts of the world are also the least polluted.

1. This analogy is not really spot on. It should rather be "Let's go to a pub, but could you pay for my beer, as I am short on money right now. I will pay for you, when you are the next time."

 

2. I would disagree on that. The U.S. as the "classical" capitalist country still has a quite high pollution. I would rather say this is more dependnet on the development and education of a country (although the U.S.A. should count to that, so it might be a bad example in any case). The worst polluters are countries that are still right in the middle of industrialisation. We (as the developed countries) were not much better a couple of decades / few centuries ago. Europe just has developed past the worst pollution, while others have not. Education is important in this regard as well, because people will learn how pollution affects the world and themselves and that it might be better to reduce pollution. Without it, people will not care and do what is easiest (as discussed before, people are lazy). A colleague of mine recently told me of a foreign friend (I think he was Chinese) who told him that he found it strange that the cough of his son disappeared whenever they got out of the city and into nature. He should be able to see that this is due to the pollution in the cities, but apparently he could not. Hence, education and awareness.

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Some state regulation is always needed, whatever the industry. It's pretty misguided to think that any industry left alone will do nothing to exploit its customers. History of capitalism proves it time and time again. If the market is left unregulated, it always leads to cartels and monopolies. As for healthcare, remember Martin Shkreli? That jackass who ramped up price of a cheap drug from something like 10$ to 600$, "to reflect its real market value"? That's free market for you. One of the greatest smoke and mirrors in the phrase "free market" is that is associates it with democratic freedom. If anything, the unregulated market is a jungle. You can't do anything you want and become anyone you want, because the big cats will gang up on you and eat you, if you try to change the established status quo they profit from.

 

It's not like the state manages things better, but it's also a great lie, the phenomenon that is happening since early 90s, that marketing and economy graduates that were let into government institutions, made things better by seeing everything through simplistic lens of supply, demand, and KPIs. A lot of aspects managed by a state is beyond making money or economical growth.

Edited by Judith
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1. This analogy is not really spot on. It should rather be "Let's go to a pub, but could you pay for my beer, as I am short on money right now. I will pay for you, when you are the next time."

 

2. I would disagree on that. The U.S. as the "classical" capitalist country still has a quite high pollution. I would rather say this is more dependnet on the development and education of a country (although the U.S.A. should count to that, so it might be a bad example in any case). The worst polluters are countries that are still right in the middle of industrialisation. We (as the developed countries) were not much better a couple of decades / few centuries ago. Europe just has developed past the worst pollution, while others have not. Education is important in this regard as well, because people will learn how pollution affects the world and themselves and that it might be better to reduce pollution. Without it, people will not care and do what is easiest (as discussed before, people are lazy). A colleague of mine recently told me of a foreign friend (I think he was Chinese) who told him that he found it strange that the cough of his son disappeared whenever they got out of the city and into nature. He should be able to see that this is due to the pollution in the cities, but apparently he could not. Hence, education and awareness.

It wasn't supposed to be accurate, it was just supposed to illustrate a point, that we might as well be paying for our own beers.

 

When it comes to taxes it's more like you pay for 75% of my bear, and I pay yours and the rest of mine, because you are by some arbitrary threshold which was devised under some arbitrary criteria, not able to pay those 25%. You're still paying. And you know the criteria is arbitrary when the same rule is applied as one-size-fits-all to everyone poor in the entire nation.

 

2- When we were polluting even more, the rest of the world was polluting even more than that. In the soviet union, for example, there were places you could barely breed, or even ever open your windows. Go a few more decades back in the West, and people could be sued for polluting (you could sue businesses or individuals (neighbors) for polluting the air in your frontyard). When regulations started being imposed on companies those laws were changed and made practically useless (and if there's a pollution problem, that's why).

 

Go a century back and people were making a business out of picking horse poop from the streets. Eventually they also figured out how to made a business out of channeling people's waste away from the streets.

 

The reason why the West is cleaner is because you can profit from cleaning it.

Edited by Skaruts

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History of capitalism proves it time and time again. If the market is left unregulated, it always leads to cartels and monopolies.

That's not entirely untrue. You always get people trying dumb things, and cartels are a dumb thing to do. Because they don't work, because other competitors will thrash them. Unless protected by government from competition, then they can work. So if cartels exist, the problem isn't the market, it's the state involvement in it. Cartels (or oligarchies) are a variant of state monopolies, which are the only monopolies out of the three types of monopolies (natural monopoly, state monopoly and cartel) that you have to worry about.

 

Free competition doesn't allow for long lasting monopolies. The market eventually kills even state monopolies (which are the only kind of die-hard monopolies). The postal service is a good example: it's pretty much dead since emails arrived. The taxi monopoly is another. Uber is just tearing it to pieces (my father's a cabbie, and of course he's not happy about it, but he can only blame the gov for the licensing and regulations that make his cab more expensive than Uber's).

 

It's even debatable whether the "Natural Monopoly" is a monopoly in the first place, since at any given point in time someone will hold the majority of any given market. But that doesn't mean they will be holding it next year, or even next month. The tech industry market is a good example: it's been mostly deregulated so far, its graveyard is vast and crowdy, and only in recent years have the US gov (and some others) started handing out tax breaks and funding to certain corporations. "Coincidentally", it's also in the recent years that we've had longer lasting monopolies in this market.

 

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/07/03/google-tesla-apple-facebook-rake-in-massive-subsidies-report/

https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/why-are-taxpayers-subsidizing-facebook-and-the-next-bubble/

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-governments-are-giving-billions-in-tax-breaks-to-apple-amazon-and-other-tech-giants-2016-10-13

 

What I think it's more amusing is to see the same people who are against monopolies, defending the state monopolies of public healthcare and public education... (which would also, under different circumstances (if they were private), be hammered with antitrust for predatory pricing -- unless they were obediently enacting lobbying; then they'd be fine).

 

As for healthcare, remember Martin Shkreli? That jackass who ramped up price of a cheap drug from something like 10$ to 600$, "to reflect its real market value"? That's free market for you. One of the greatest smoke and mirrors in the phrase "free market" is that is associates it with democratic freedom. If anything, the unregulated market is a jungle. You can't do anything you want and become anyone you want, because the big cats will gang up on you and eat you, if you try to change the established status quo they profit from.

I don't know who Martin Shkreli is, but either that story is false or there was government involvement prohibiting or thwarting competition or something of the sort.

 

Come on, use your head: if the market is free and you ramp up your beer from $2 to $500, do you really think people will buy it when they can buy mine for $2?

 

Come on...

 

It's only if the market is not free, either because the state prohibits me from selling beer, or because it's imposing high costs of licencing, regulation, taxes and bureaucracies to deter me and others from entering or staying in that market, only in that case will people have no choice but to pay $500 for a beer. But even in that case, doubtfully the costs of all those things will force me to raise my price that high, so if I can still sell beer for $20, people won't buy any beers for $500.

 

 

A lot of aspects managed by a state is beyond making money or economical growth.

That's a claim that has yet to be demonstrated. In fact, the opposite of that is being demonstrated all around us as we speak:

 

First, the markets are providing you with EVERYTHING except those very few things you think can't be provided by the market. Why are they exceptions? Well, they aren't actually, and you know that because:

 

Second, the market is actually providing those things too as we speak. Private clinics and private education exists. They can't really compete with "free", so they're more expensive. Well rich people seem to prefer them. And it's not just because they can afford them, it's because they get better served there.

 

I'm not an anarcho-capitalist, but I'd like to also point out that the market also provides security (within the limitations imposed by gov), and the Foreign Legion has been a thing for a long long time.

Edited by Skaruts

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Well, you seem to deny stuff doesn't fit into your view and what isn't "logical" by your standards, which is rather discouraging. And this view of the world is rather simplistic, with this bias on some kind of government conspiracy.

 

As for market being free, study the history and look how many major companies were in US like in the 50s or 70s vs now. Study cases of Rockefeller and Bill Gates. Cartels and monopolies are there, and they will form up every time there's a loophole in law, or when law doesn't keep up with reality. And by abusing works of psychology, philosophy and sociology (making people "love" brands, "free" market = national freedom) businesses are using language as a weapon, to distort the way we use words and their meaning, so they can make a profit on it. The same goes with public space (tons of big-format adverts obscuring our view everyday, blurring the lines between public space and corporate space, ever heard of Coca Cola Park case?)

 

Also, look up that Shkreli story instead of denying it. Guy jacked up the price not because production cost was high, but because some people's lives depended on it, and he knew it.

 

That's a claim that has yet to be demonstrated.

 

It has been demonstrated for decades now. It's almost like you don't understand what democracy means, in terms of what we are trying to do as citizens and the state to provide equality for everyone. And one of the cornerstones of the democracy is providing its citizens even chances at life. Noone ever chooses where he/she is born. If there were no public schools and universities, there would be no chance in hell to educate a genius from a poor family. Noone would ever have a chance to escape their fate, predetermined by their origins. In other words, we'd still live in medieval times. And actually in my country, public schools and universities have much longer tradition than private ones, and they provide much higher quality of education.

 

Same thing goes for all those trades and disciplines deemed by "business leaders" as "unmarketable". Art, philosophy, history, literature faculties. All the disciplines that examine our times and our works, so we can know ourselves better and be better educated citizens, better humans. All those who create art to make us feel better, or to make us understand something about ourselves, they need to be detached from super competitive world of wall-street yuppies, so they can focus on their work, even if they won't be worldwide successful.

 

And in more down-to-earth area, if marketers and managers were in charge of something like i.e. public transportation, most of bus and tram lines would be closed because they don't make a profit. Fortunately, that's not the case, so buses can go through little villages and rural areas to pick up those few people and drive them to work, and they don't need to pay half of their income to commute. That's where some of my taxes go, and this is normal in democracy that is focused on values and growth of its people as humans, and not 100% economic growth.

 

Besides, I work for 6-8 hours a day and sleep for around 7. I'm not my work, and I'm not spending all remaining time to consume, consume, consume. And with strictly capitalist mindset, there's nothing else to do in this world. Speaking of consume, a book which is quite hard to swallow, but worth reading: https://www.amazon.com/Consumed-Markets-Children-Infantilize-Citizens/dp/0393330893

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Oh, and about Uber, this is actually about Lyft, among other things, but more importantly, about gig economy, another great thing provided by free unregulated market: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/jia-tolentino/the-gig-economy-celebrates-working-yourself-to-death

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What to do you mean by omniously mentioning ”The Foreign Legion”?

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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Oh, and about Uber, this is actually about Lyft, among other things, but more importantly, about gig economy, another great thing provided by free unregulated market: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/jia-tolentino/the-gig-economy-celebrates-working-yourself-to-death

 

Sad fact, Yandex Taxi has a deal with Uber so that Uber never gets to Moldova. So we have their shitty services around with a shitty app that does not care about user privacy and probably collects tons of info for Russians. Yay for jungle capitalism. Even Ukrainians were luckier (they have Uber). No wonder people get abducted, tortured, killed in Transnistria with ease.

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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Sounds like a problem with that woman being rather dumb, than a problem with that company. At least in that story.

 

What to do you mean by omniously mentioning The Foreign Legion?

Ominously? :blink::P

 

I was just mentioning it because, unless I'm missing something, it's a profitable private market example of an actual army, that seems to work well enough that it still exists (and now that I think about it, I don't think it ever exerted its power under the hands of tyranny either). This was in response to a full-certainty that some things can't possibly be handled by the market. I personally just never found market equivalents for courts of law and firefighters.

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Well, you seem to deny stuff doesn't fit into your view and what isn't "logical" by your standards, which is rather discouraging. And this view of the world is rather simplistic, with this bias on some kind of government conspiracy.

I'm not just denying things, I'm explaining how they work. It's not my standards, it's what can be observed. I don't have a political affiliation.

 

I don't have a bias on some kind of government conspiracy; it's a historically observable fact that power corrupts. It's a demonstrable fact that governments are riddled with corruption, it's a demonstrable fact that people lie, cheat and deceive to get in power, and it's a demonstrable fact that people abuse power. No political system can ever be perfect, and none of them so far evolved beyond being easily exploitable for the purpose of making money or gaining power over other people.

 

What part of that do you think is untrue?

 

As for market being free, study the history and look how many major companies were in US like in the 50s or 70s vs now. Study cases of Rockefeller and Bill Gates. Cartels and monopolies are there, and they will form up every time there's a loophole in law, or when law doesn't keep up with reality. And by abusing works of psychology, philosophy and sociology (making people "love" brands, "free" market = national freedom) businesses are using language as a weapon, to distort the way we use words and their meaning, so they can make a profit on it. The same goes with public space (tons of big-format adverts obscuring our view everyday, blurring the lines between public space and corporate space, ever heard of Coca Cola Park case?)

I didn't say cartels never existed, I said cartels don't work unless they have government protection against competition.

Never heard of Coca Cola Park case.

 

Standard Oil was on the brink of collapse when Thomas Edison invented electric light. That man single handedly almost made Standard Oil defunct. One single idea is all it takes for the market to kill a mammoth corporation. The only reason why Standard Oil survived was that luckily for them combustion engines were invented and Henry Ford became their best "friend".

 

What about Bill Gates? I'm not aware that he colluded with anyone. Microsoft was coerced under the threat of antitrust to bail out Apple -- which should never happen -- but that's another story. And that was the hand of the gov.

 

Just in case you may be confusing or conflating "collusion" with "cooperation", though, don't. They're different things. Cooperation and competition aren't mutually exclusive, so companies can and do cooperate. Your concern should be focused on whether the consumer benefits from whatever they're doing or not. Cooperation usually benefits the consumers if it benefits the companies mutually (they only cooperate if that's the case -- or if the state coerces them with antitrust, like they did to Microsoft).

 

An example of actual collusion (an actual cartel) were the Robber Barons.

 

Also, look up that Shkreli story instead of denying it. Guy jacked up the price not because production cost was high, but because some people's lives depended on it, and he knew it.

I didn't deny the story, I pointed out that it didn't make sense as it was described.

 

But so he was a fraud and a scammer, and he is in prison for it. I'm not exactly sure why you brought him up, then. These things happen regardless of markets and also regardless of regulations. He did what he did in a regulated market:

 

"In September 2015, Shkreli received widespread criticism when Turing [Turing Pharmaceuticals] obtained the manufacturing license for the antiparasitic drug Daraprim and raised its price by a factor of 56 (...)" - wikipedia:

 

It surely wasn't the free market that put that license in place and decided he was eligible to have it.

 

Obviously I don't know much about it besides this cursory look at it, so maybe you could tell me something relevant that I don't know that might make a difference.

 

It has been demonstrated for decades now.

 

I would think I pointed at enough things that demonstrate the opposite.

 

It's almost like you don't understand what democracy means, in terms of what we are trying to do as citizens and the state to provide equality for everyone. And one of the cornerstones of the democracy is providing its citizens even chances at life.

I know enough about democracy to know you're lumping in a lot of baggage on democracy that it doesn't originally bring with it. Let me see what wikipedia says:

 

"According to American political scientist Larry Diamond, democracy consists of four key elements: a political system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections; the active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life; protection of the human rights of all citizens; a rule of law, in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens.[5] Todd Landman, nevertheless, draws our attention to the fact that democracy and human rights are two different concepts and that "there must be greater specificity in the conceptualisation and operationalization of democracy and human rights".[6]" -- Wikipedia

 

What do you mean by "equality" though? I don't want to be going on assumptions.

 

Noone ever chooses where he/she is born. If there were no public schools and universities, there would be no chance in hell to educate a genius from a poor family. Noone would ever have a chance to escape their fate, predetermined by their origins. In other words, we'd still live in medieval times. And actually in my country, public schools and universities have much longer tradition than private ones, and they provide much higher quality of education.

That's all very nice, but we came out of medieval times a long time before socialism was even a thing, and all the industrial and scientific revolutions of the last ~400 years happened regardless or because of the circumstances where people were born.

 

The unfortunate reality is that what breeds problem-solvers is problems. The majority of the richest people on earth came from poverty. On the other hand over 70% of family fortunes don't last more than 3 generations. The poor grandfathers had to learn to make money, the rich grandkids don't.

 

That doesn't mean there aren't things we can control and remove from people's way as we can, but we must acknowledge the reality that we can't make things perfect.

 

Same thing goes for all those trades and disciplines deemed by "business leaders" as "unmarketable". Art, philosophy, history, literature faculties. All the disciplines that examine our times and our works, so we can know ourselves better and be better educated citizens, better humans. All those who create art to make us feel better, or to make us understand something about ourselves, they need to be detached from super competitive world of wall-street yuppies, so they can focus on their work, even if they won't be worldwide successful.

What do you mean unmarketable? All of those things you enumerated have been and are being marketed all over the place. Art, philosophy, history, literature... all of them. For centuries.

 

And you can't take competition out of something that's naturally competitive. All life is competitive. We are competitive. It's a biological imperative. You're trying to go straight on a curved railroad if that's really what you want. If your solutions aren't based on reality and don't play along with it, then you're gonna take things off the rails down the abyss. On a side note, that's essentially the track-record that socialism has.

 

And in more down-to-earth area, if marketers and managers would be in charge of something like i.e. public transportation, most of bus and tram lines would be closed because they don't make a profit. Fortunately they don't, so buses can go through little villages and rural areas to pick up those few people and drive them to work, and they don't need to pay half of their income to commute.

Buses in my country have been privatized some 15 or 20 years ago, and railroads have been privatized some 5 years ago, and your predictions don't hold true. There's even an hourly bus dedicated to coming all the way into my little cul-de-sac neighborhood.

 

That's where some of my taxes go, and this is normal in democracy that is focused of values and growth of its people as humans, and not 100% economic growth.

 

The irony is that tax money is totally hinged on the markets. And you don't seem to realize that if you have economic growth, that means you're making poor people richer and able to fend for themselves. My father started working at age 10, and his wage was barely enough to buy bread. Ten years later he was driving a Lotus and a Beetle, working as a barman at the airport, and I was born 2 years later and children didn't have to choose between working or starving anymore.

 

Besides, I work for 6-8 hours a day and sleep for around 7. I'm not my work, and I'm not spending all remaining time to consume, consume, consume. And with strictly capitalist mindset, there's nothing else to do in this world.

Who told you that? Really, who got that kind of rubbish in your head?

 

Capitalism and consumerism may be related but they're two different things. Capitalism is a naturally occurring system of free trade and private ownership. Free as in voluntary, devoid of coercion: you're free to trade with whoever you want in whatever ways you want, provided that you're not breaking the non-aggression principle or committing fraud, and you're entitled to the money you make, etc. That's all.

 

Consumerism is not inherently a bad thing either. It's what makes the economic wheels turn. There is such a thing as too much consumerism, and indeed some people are dumb enough to let themselves be taken by advertisers. And I think there's a case you can make for blaming advertisers (although banks (which are heavily regulated and entangled with gov, I might add) do much worse than them) for being manipulative to some extent, and in some cases to a great extent, but... hold on a minute, what is the socialist government doing about them? Why aren't they regulating advertisers?

 

Oh... they're funding them...

Edited by Skaruts

My FMs: By The Cookbook

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I never thought there is a difference between American and European definition of democracy, but it seems there is a huge difference between in understanding of social aspect of democratic state, and you call socialism everything that falls into that category. Maybe it's because American culture grew up on protestant values, where accumulation of wealth was also something approved by God, and eventually he was replaced in culture by money making as a goal. Europe is founded on Greek and Catholic values, and these always played role in perception of society.

 

There is no ultimate definition of democracy, and it has been changing throughout the years. In France, one of the most culturally influential countries on the continent, national motto says: Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood (roughly translated). The social role of the state as trying to level inequalities between citizens is completely normal thing, and has been for a long time. It translates to many things. On the most basic level, we don't kill / abandon cripples or people with disabilities (e.g. Stephen Hawking would have died in his 20s in your model of the state). Public schools give people chance not only to escape poverty. They can be more more equal in knowledge about how state works. In other words, they are better, more demanding voters, choosing better politicians, etc. Unfortunately, today's politicians know this, and degradation of education sector and playing on voters emotions works in their favor. Although it also made neo-fasist rise, so I hope they see it wasn't worth it.

 

IMO American culture has this ingrained thing, I guess it's from the World War II, Cold War, and the fear of Russian spies infiltrating the society, that it sees communism in everything that isn't a self-made-man story, everyone for themselves, or competition. And there's more life than this. While communism was a pipe dream (a horrible, horrible one, at expense of thousands of people), it doesn't mean you have to get allergic to every thought about state helping the disadvantaged, and contributing to national welfare beyond the simplistic values of supply and demand.

 

And that agenda that governments are super corrupt and seeking to make our lives miserable is as silly as thinking that all corporations of the world are bent on destroying it. Most people want to live in peace and undisturbed, and they obey the law like everyone else. But it's the will of the few power-hungry higher-ups that sets the course.

 

By the way, here are good corporations improving their communities by paying taxes:

https://inews.co.uk/news/ed-sheeran-paid-more-tax-starbucks-amazon/

Edited by Judith
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Well, "power corrupts" is something we can agree upon (at least in most cases; there may be very few people with enough integrity to not let it happen, but this is negligible). The problem is: people will always find loopholes in any system and use it to their advantage. And it is one job of the government to find these loopholes and close them.

Regarding monopolies: It is true that the state (or rather current law) will make monopolies possible, but this is exactly due to said loopholes in law. The Shkreli case is a good example. Licensing is a way of protecting intelectual property. The purpose is that the loads of money and years of time spent on research is not "stolen" from you just by anyone. Thus, the licensing is actaully meant to protect the owner of the intelectual property. In this case, this was the only licence there was for the medicine, which resulted in a monopoly for Shkreli. With that monopoly he had the power to lieterally force people to pay or die. So, the system meant to protect the intelectual property was abused to create a monopoly. Still, abolishing the licencing system would result in firms abandoning research, because any results they create could (and would) be taken by their competition.
The way you say it, it sounds like you think that the state wants to create monopolies, while the exact opposite is the case. In recent years there were several cases in Germany, where two firms (or rather conglomerates) wanted to merge, but were forbidden to do so, because they would gain a monopoly. And while your example of Edison is nice, it is usually very hard to break the monopoly position of a firm, because this firm is the one that dictates the prizes. If there actually was a small firm that would threaten them, they would either try to buy them off or they could temporarily lower their prices to a minimum (even making a loss at that time). A smaller firm will not be able to compete in this case, get bankrupt and after that the big firm can raise their prices to any standard they want. Keep in mind that these firms have A LOT of money. Any small start-up will not have a chance against them.

What do you mean unmarketable? All of those things you enumerated have been and are being marketed all over the place. Art, philosophy, history, literature... all of them. For centuries.

Unmarketable is anything that creates stuff without much revenue. It is true that art, philosphy, history, etc have been practiced, but almost never have they been privatised. Simply because you cannot make money from history or philosphical ideas. As a consequence they are not really part of any market and more often than not only funded by states.

 

 

I personally just never found market equivalents for courts of law and firefighters.

This is, because there aren't any. Mercenary groups are established since ancient times. People who are desperate enough to sell their lives for money (in many cases literally). It is quite easy to get something like that. But courts cannot be part of a monetised system; they have to be impartial. In any other case the one with the most money would win each time (arguably, this is also the case in courts right now: the one who can afford the better lawyer, wins, but this is another topic). Firefighters also can only exist in the way they do right now. The only way firefighters work is by paying them in advance to help you in case of a fire. Of course only very rich people can afford to pay their own firefighters (there are actually a couple of firms that have their own internal ones) and as a result people will band together to pay them, in fear that their house could burn down. And voila you have the system we have right now: a community pays people (in our case via taxes) to douse fires, when there are any.

 

Finally, I want to comment on public transportation. It may be that they have been privatised (it has been the same in Germany for a long time). Still, they are heavily subsidised by the government (in part even the EU). If they were not, they would be bankrupt in a matter of months. If public transportation would actually charge what they have to without subsidy, no regular person could afford them. The result is, noone would use them and that would be the end. How do you think they can afford to cater to a little cul-de-sac neighbourhood like you describe? How many people use the hourly bus (especially during non-commute hours)? These are losses for the firm that would be the first to be cut if they would not get money from somewhere else. The result would be that only one or two busses would drive during hours with a lot of traffic, as this would be the only time the firm would actually make a profit. Any other time, you would have to find a way on your own.

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Destined gets it, thank you.

 

About firefighters, have you heard about recent case where Comcast throttled down internet connection speed for firefighters during great fire in California, because they exceeded their monthly limit in the middle of their efforts? They had to pay huge amounts to make their infrastructure operational again, despite the situation. That's how social responsibility of corporations look like in practice. And that is the reason why they have to be heavily regulated whenever they enter social and public space. I can't imagine something like that being done in Europe, not without massive outrage and financial consequences for the internet provider.

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Ominously? :blink::P

 

I was just mentioning it because, unless I'm missing something, it's a profitable private market example of an actual army, that seems to work well enough that it still exists (and now that I think about it, I don't think it ever exerted its power under the hands of tyranny either). This was in response to a full-certainty that some things can't possibly be handled by the market. I personally just never found market equivalents for courts of law and firefighters.

Ok, thought so too. You were just not specific in context that it was precisely The French Foreign Legion because there is only one. I thought you used that as a reference to migrants getting asylum or something.

 

Courts of law ab initio cannot be market driven because justice should not and cannot be bought or sold unless it is a mafia state/captured state.

 

Firefighting except the government funded services can also be alternatively as a voluntary activity. For example it is common to be so in Argentina. Without any wages whatsoever.

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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I never thought there is a difference between American and European definition of democracy, but it seems there is a huge difference between in understanding of social aspect of democratic state, and you call socialism everything that falls into that category.

Democratic socialism is a thing. Venezuela adopted it in 1999. The state running the police and the courts isn't socialism because none of that was ever put in place following any socialist reasoning.

 

There is no ultimate definition of democracy, and it has been changing throughout the years.

I agree. But most of the time democracy means the same thing for everyone, the different concepts of democracy are usually specifically preceded by some other concept: The US is a democratic republic and so is portugal. Fidel Castro always insisted Cuba was some other form of democracy, I forgot which.

 

The social role of the state as trying to level inequalities between citizens is completely normal thing, and has been for a long time. It translates to many things. On the most basic level, we don't kill / abandon cripples or people with disabilities (e.g. Stephen Hawking would have died in his 20s in your model of the state). Public schools give people chance not only to escape poverty. They can be more more equal in knowledge about how state works. In other words, they are better, more demanding voters, choosing better politicians, etc. Unfortunately, today's politicians know this, and degradation of education sector and playing on voters emotions works in their favor. Although it also made neo-fasist rise, so I hope they see it wasn't worth it.

What tells you Stephen Hawking didn't actually get unequal perks for being Stephen Hawking?

 

But your concern there is rather moot. It depends on what the ministry of education decides should be taught about the state, doesn't it? One can only hope that government doesn't approach the far left or the far right enough that public schools are turned into indoctrination camps.

 

And that agenda that governments are super corrupt and seeking to make our lives miserable is as silly as thinking that all corporations of the world are bent on destroying it. Most people want to live in peace and undisturbed, and they obey the law like everyone else. But it's the will of the few power-hungry higher-ups that sets the course.

 

It's not an agenda. There's nothing in it for me. It's not altruism either. Somehow I still care because I, like most, would like to live in a better world.

 

It takes a huge amount of effort to build something good. Like a house of cards. Yet to destroy it, that's easy. You just nudge the table. It's not that governments are out to get you, it's that systems of power inherently attract power hungry people (one would think that's a given). It doesn't matter how great the intentions were of the people who built that system, if it can be exploited, it will be. The reason why you don't live under a tyrannical state is because democratic nations have limited the powers of gov to the extent that it prevents that, but none of them has limited the possibility of getting voted back into tyranny.

 

I don't believe for a second you've never encountered plenty of news about corruption in your own gov. There's no place on earth where that can happen.

 

But the thing is, even if everyone in gov was well intentioned, that doesn't mean they'll favor your freedoms and your interests. The primary motivation of communism is compassion. The primary motivation of fascists who want to forbid you from having good things, is good will: they believe it's the best thing for you.

 

By the way, here are good corporations improving their communities by paying taxes:

https://inews.co.uk/news/ed-sheeran-paid-more-tax-starbucks-amazon/

Not sure what's your point there. Ed Sheeran isn't a corporation, and the corporations in the article are paying less taxes than him. Which is in line with what I've been saying all along.

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Well, "power corrupts" is something we can agree upon (at least in most cases; there may be very few people with enough integrity to not let it happen, but this is negligible). The problem is: people will always find loopholes in any system and use it to their advantage. And it is one job of the government to find these loopholes and close them.

 

That's pretty much what I'm saying. However I'm also saying that it's not in the interest of many politicians to close loopholes, but to open even more loopholes. I'm not ready to dismiss government as stupid and all regulations as harmful and unnecessary, but there's an absurd of amount of it that is doing more harm than good, getting in the way of people's economic growth at the same time they're paying for it, and feeding the vicious cycle of breeding entitlement and dependency in people, which also inflates gov, gov spending and gov power.

 

EDIT: the implications of "people will always find loopholes in any system and use it to their advantage" are also a whole new discussion in themselves, and usually a very hard pill to swallow.

 

Licensing is a way of protecting intelectual property. The purpose is that the loads of money and years of time spent on research is not "stolen" from you just by anyone. Thus, the licensing is actaully meant to protect the owner of the intelectual property. In this case, this was the only licence there was for the medicine, which resulted in a monopoly for Shkreli. With that monopoly he had the power to lieterally force people to pay or die. So, the system meant to protect the intelectual property was abused to create a monopoly. Still, abolishing the licencing system would result in firms abandoning research, because any results they create could (and would) be taken by their competition.

 

The way you say it, it sounds like you think that the state wants to create monopolies, while the exact opposite is the case.

That actually depends on who's driving what. Hardcore socialists would want to nationalize everything. But it's not just them. The British gov took the chance to nationalize some banks during the 2008 crisis, for example. I heard Bush bailed out some. Google&Friends have had plenty of financial perks. There's a huge history of gov enforced monopolies. (There's two kinds, those where gov outright forbids competition (postal service, electrical companies, etc) and those where the gov aids them and/or hinders their competitors.)

 

But ultimately it doesn't matter at all what the gov wants, what matters is what the gov is doing, and what is the trajectory the points on the graph are showing you.

 

Also, what that licencing thing means in that case is that gov gets in the way of medical advancements. There should be no such thing as intellectual property in research, much less in medical research.

You're also telling me it further backs up my points. Gov intervention was the problem there, not deregulated markets, as the implications were that I was responding to.

 

Unmarketable is anything that creates stuff without much revenue. It is true that art, philosphy, history, etc have been practiced, but almost never have they been privatised. Simply because you cannot make money from history or philosphical ideas. As a consequence they are not really part of any market and more often than not only funded by states.

I know what unmarketable is, but it wasn't in conformity to what I was reading. Art has been marketed all along since after feudalism, and gov hardly allocates any funds to it. Were universities always financed by government? Because that's the main places that would hire philosophers and historians. Also museums, for the latter.

 

But there's a more important point I didn't make before: even if something isn't being profited from, doesn't mean it can't be. It just means no one yet figured out how to do it. That includes fighfighters, courts, etc. (And don't confuse this with an Argument From Ignorance. Milton Friedman stated he never figured out a way to privatize the army, and sadly no one seemed to remind him about the existence of the Foreign Legion.)

 

Finally, I want to comment on public transportation. It may be that they have been privatised (it has been the same in Germany for a long time). Still, they are heavily subsidised by the government (in part even the EU). If they were not, they would be bankrupt in a matter of months. If public transportation would actually charge what they have to without subsidy, no regular person could afford them. The result is, noone would use them and that would be the end. How do you think they can afford to cater to a little cul-de-sac neighbourhood like you describe? How many people use the hourly bus (especially during non-commute hours)? These are losses for the firm that would be the first to be cut if they would not get money from somewhere else. The result would be that only one or two busses would drive during hours with a lot of traffic, as this would be the only time the firm would actually make a profit. Any other time, you would have to find a way on your own.

That's actually true, at least for the railroads here, afaik; I'm not sure about buses, I'd have to find out somehow. But that's a natural consequence, unfortunately, of it having been public, rather than having been built from the ground up privately. You can't turn titanic 180 without an absurd amount of resistance. I'm not sure it's even possible in this case. Time will tell. Perhaps the only solution is actually to let it sink, and let new buyers try new things. Maybe even having more buyers getting smaller parts of it would be more viable.

Edited by Skaruts

My FMs: By The Cookbook

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Ok, thought so too. You were just not specific in context that it was precisely The French Foreign Legion because there is only one. I thought you used that as a reference to migrants getting asylum or something.

 

Courts of law ab initio cannot be market driven because justice should not and cannot be bought or sold unless it is a mafia state/captured state.

 

Firefighting except the government funded services can also be alternatively as a voluntary activity. For example it is common to be so in Argentina. Without any wages whatsoever.

Yea, in my country I think they're both voluntary and state funded too.

And yes, I meant French Foreign Legion. I had forgotten it was french lol.

 

As for courts, it's the same thing I just told Destined, you can't predict when someone will find a way to make it profitable, or, now that I think about it, ways to make something profitable around it that finances it.

 

Who would've thought in the 90s that you could profit from developing free software.

 

EDIT: when I was thinking about it some time ago, one concern I found was that corporate interests might be a problem from privatized courts or police. But then, at the level of the state you still encounter political interests, which may be worse, since they're tied to a system of power. Although maybe there's something about the private equivalent that I'm missing that cancels that out.

Edited by Skaruts

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As for courts, it's the same thing I just told Destined, you can't predict when someone will find a way to make it profitable, or, now that I think about it, ways to make something profitable around it that finances it.

 

 

 

EDIT: when I was thinking about it some time ago, one concern I found was that corporate interests might be a problem from privatized courts or police. But then, at the level of the state you still encounter political interests, which may be worse, since they're tied to a system of power. Although maybe there's something about the private equivalent that I'm missing that cancels that out.

 

The only ”private” courts in existence are National Arbitration Tribunals. But they are not courts. They are only used though for private contractual dealings and the International ones are state funded anyway because the Conventions are between states.

So, in a very limited sense you can have that too if the national judges have a good reputation because these things are by choice. If you do not like them you can just opt in for a standard court.

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"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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To me, it's pretty hard to understand how you'd want to exchange function of government and even think that the corporate counterpart could be in any way better. Sure, governments have their flaws, but ultimately, they consist of people with different backgrounds, political affiliations etc. While corporate environments are very careful to direct funds only in one way, theirs, and to "converge" all the operations to benefit them only. That's not what democracy is about. The relative chaos that comes from trying to represent all citizens from all social groups is a normal thing, and that diversity guarantees that at least in some imperfect way, everyone will get something from their taxes. There's no such thing in corporations, which try to be above law, they pay as little tax as possible, and they fund only initiatives only they deem interesting. There's no public interest in private sector, even if PR tries to present it in different light.

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https://thebulletin.org/sites/default/files/2018%20Doomsday%20Clock%20Statement.pdf

(just love spamming this on the internet)

 

have this song with it...

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