Neoliberalism/"free"-market economics ideology, the cause of our problems

[David Horn]

(07-11-2022, 07:50 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(07-10-2022, 07:42 AM)David Horn Wrote: Sorry, but this is far to simplistic to stand.  Yes, capitalism is the root cause of our problems, because it is based soley on private gain.  There was a period when the concept of stakeholder capitalism had a few years in the sun, but that was destroyed by Milton Friedman.  Friedman stated in no uncertain terms that the sole reason for corporations to exist as the common bread of the capitalist model was owner profits -- any pretense of morality or ethics be damned.  Now, we're approaching a neo-Feudalism based on corproate power rather than baronies.  It was bad then; it's bad now.

Do you really believe that, given free reign to take what they want, capitalists will render a fair share to the commonweal to support the society that created corporations in the first place?  The question answers itself.

No, but imo, they only have the power to do so because of the money in politics. I think we need to make like New Zealand and just ban financial political contributions altogether (Citizens United was a friggin ridiculous ruling. RBJ was right about that). Until then, I'm not opposed to certain policies curbing the overreach of corporations. In general though, most of the regulations I support are either
1) accounting for externalities and holding instigating parties accountable
2) Just as government playing too much of a role in business is bad, so too is business playing too much of a role in government. It's okay to play the game and win big. It's not okay to rig the game and screw over everyone else in the interim.

In either even, both types of regulation will always be necessary (I'm not an anarchist), but if we can manage to ban campaign contributions, we'll need a lot less. Anyway, my main point is that the general system worked in the past, and it can work again, but it will never be sufficient to provide society a moral compass. It's just a tool to create and distribute utility. One that needs to be respected, but not taken too seriously or seen as the end all be all.

Again, you are being wilfully naïve.  Instead of ongoing back and forth, let's resort to first principles: power hates a vacuum.  That's a bit obtuse; power actually fills a vacuum.  If public power is small, private power will be large -- engopurging the space reserved for 'we the people'.  Growing private power always works overtime to degrade and lessen public power, because public power lessens the benefit of private power.  Just ask the robber barons, who fought tooth-and-nail for their positions at the tip of the hierarchy.  Hint: we're there again.  

I was old enough to appreciate the post-WWII model, where the CEO made 30 times what the workers made, and lived in a nicer house in the same town as the workers.  Today, the bias is 300-400 times, none live anywhere near the people who work for them, and the real money lives so far removed that even the CEOs are often outsiders.  In short: Feudalism.

So back to regulation: what is it for?  Answer: restraint on the extent of private power, especially private power that degrades the lives of all the rest of us.  It's not perfect and often overcompenstes, but the alternative is vastly worse.