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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/19046336
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Thing is…there is no real free market with proper competition, anyway. If there was such a thing, my groceries wouldn’t cost double now from what they were a mere five years ago (or quadruple, if looking at soda like Coke and Pepsi products). There is rampant collusion and price-fixing going on and not a damn government official seems to be doing anything about it. And yeah, the “but but the pandemic” excuse runs pretty thin as the years of this gouging continues.
Is the pandemic really the main claimed reason in the US? Here in central Europe it seems that since February of 2022, all products have been coming exclusively from Ukraine, so that is why they just had to become more expensive you know…
Many businesses in the US still cling to that trope, yes. We all understood that it was to a be a temporary issue in 2020 and 2021, but businesses took that to mean they could just never drop their prices now that people were willing, at the time, to pay for it. I’m not talking luxury goods either, I’m talking about staples to maintain life, such as meat, vegetables, and even water prices have risen. This is untenable for many, many people.
That joke was good, but it’s old now. Everyone should understand that it was due to the peak of oil/gas prices due to the Ukraine war, that had cascade effects on the price of transportation, fertilizer, energy, groceries…which then compounded into general inflation with some price gouging too to keep it from going back as quickly.
If you want to keep that from happening again, gradually reduce your dependence on fossil fuels for your security, not just to “be green”.
Funnily enough, not even neoliberals believe in the free market regardless of how much they spout its nonsense.
Thatcher was one of such neoliberals, she would always talk about how people should become self-sufficient and governments shouldn’t interfere in the free market for it to truly work and so on, but during her rule she was spending billions in subsidies for corporations (aka government interference in the free market). Of course, they weren’t called subsidies in the paperwork but some other bullshit like “public investment”, but their effect was still the same.
The truth is, a real market is never actually truly competitive. In an unregulated market, competing firms always collude with each other to set prices and wages for the industry. “Free market” ideology is based on nonsense, they’ve proven this over and over.
In an unregulated market
There’s no such thing. All markets are regulated. Even ones dominated by cartels. Markets do not meaningfully exist without regulation. The only question is how they’re regulated.
In a free market, aren’t you free to collude with your competitors in order to fix prices?
In a Hayekian free market, yes. Most (all?) actual free markets prohibit cartels, though.
“Free market” ideology is based on nonsense, they’ve proven this over and over.
The theoretical model of the free market relies on perfectly rational actors acting on perfect information. If those are given, then resource allocation indeed is perfect.
Those conditions of course don’t exist in the real world, best we can do is to regulate away market failures to approach the theoretical ideal. That’s the kind of thing ordoliberalism argues for, and it can indeed work very well in practice. Random example: You want companies to use packaging with less environmental impact. You could have a packaging ministry that decides which company uses what packaging for what, creating tons of state bureaucracy – or you could say “producers, you’re now paying for the disposal of packaging yourself”. What previously was an externality for those companies suddenly appears on their balance sheet and they self-regulate to use way more cardboard, easily recyclable plastics, whatnot.
or you could say “producers, you’re now paying for the disposal of packaging yourself”
Definitely wouldn’t solve the problem as they’d just find the cheapest method of disposal to match the letter of the law and go about their day.
Corporations don’t self-regulate. They regulate the regulators. They work and then later buy the refs.
Definitely wouldn’t solve the problem as they’d just find the cheapest method of disposal to match the letter of the law and go about their day.
Those are illegal. Already were before. I’m not talking about a hypothetical, here, the policy is over 30 years old.
Corporations don’t self-regulate. They regulate the regulators. They work and then later buy the refs.
Yeah if they do that were you are then maybe elect better politicians. They sure as hell try it over here but it’s not nearly as much as an issue as e.g. in the US.
I dunno if I were in Germany I wouldn’t be so smug about electing politicians that prevent a slide into fascism.
Are you actually trying to make a point or did you simply want to be hostile.
My point is that it’s not as simple as setting “common sense” neoliberal rules when the corporations actively evade them. The problem in the US is also more complicated than you’re making it, here we need to basically redo a court which is full of people on lifetime appointments in order to roll back their ruling that political corruption is basically free speech.
The theoretical model of the free market relies on perfectly rational actors acting on perfect information. If those are given, then resource allocation indeed is perfect.
That’s not even remotely true. Natural monopolies exist because of how natural resources work, and oligopolies or undercutting of prices to destroy weak competition can happen with perfect knowledge by sellers and buyers.
weak competition can happen with perfect knowledge by sellers and buyers.
It can’t happen given perfect rationality as it’s not in the rational interest of the majority to allow a minority their monopolies.
It’s a fucking theoretical model. The maths check out, that’s not the issue the issue is that it’s theory, with very glaring limitations.
In the USA, the FTC is actually taking grocery store chains to court over collusion and price fixing, presumably will target specific brands once more data gets released via the court proceedings.
So there are government officials doing things about it, but nobody ever seems to give them any fucking credit and every few years we vote in new politicians who gut the agency.
The best bureaucrat we have is Lina Khan and all the wealthy donors on both sides want her gone.
This is news to me! You got a link to a credible source? I’d love to read it so I can hopefully change my opinion some.
EDIT>> Found it on my own, and it’s the FTC, not the FCC.
And this was posted one day ago, so I would think I could be forgiven for that :)(Seems it’s been in the works since March, at least) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/grocery-cost-inflation-investigation-b2594782.htmlThanks! That’s definitely more than I found. I didn’t know it goes back to March. Much appreciated.
Well you can find various FCC lawsuits going back decades but nobody ever talks about any of that stuff.
I think you mean FTC, but I’ll research to learn more. Thanks!
FTC oversees securities exchanges, primarily. Things like the stock market.
Thanks Reagan
*Milton Friedman
And every president since Reagan, including him.
if you want to implement unpopular policies, authoritarian regime is the way
The market is authoritarian.
The depressing thing is that fascists are popular enough to gain power. The populist pose, some scapegoating of minorities, and a dash of lying about their goals, is enough to win over many voters, and in a first-past-the-post system it doesn’t matter if the majority of the people don’t like them.
Pretty much sums up the UK since 2010.
Sums up many places, unfortunately.
That’s not necessarily true, many supposedly democratic regimes consistently pass unpopular policy and don’t pass popular policy. E.g. welfare state cuts to expenditure in education, healthcare and pensions in post-2008 EU, or the lack of progressive policy in USA healthcare.
It’s precisely this ignoring of the popular will that turns people to fascism
Bullshit. Fascists have been around for millenia longer than our peaceful mindsets. Back then it was more useful to be but recent advances in technology has made their usefulness nothing more than a nostalgic yearning for past and passed glories
I’m not entirely sure about millennia, but capitalism has been around for at least as long as currency has. That too has changed names but the idea of whoever is born with the most gets to steal the most is older than all existing civilizations.
capitalism superceded mercantilism about 2 centuries ago. it’s nowhere near as old as currency
Eh, you’re both wrong. Fascism is an invention of the 20th century and capitalism is mostly an invention of the 19th century (although The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776). Both ideologies have very deep roots that you’re conflating with their dominant modern expressions. Capitalism is specific ideology built around market economics, but markets alone are not capitalism. Likewise fascism is a specific authoritarian ideology, but authoritarianism is not in itself fascism.
What you’re saying is at best debatable, and it’s definitely not consensus in academia. Feudalism is substantially and fundamentally different from capitalism. Serfs worked the land not based on free contracts for a wage selling their labour as a commodity, but rather legally bound to their lord’s land. Access to consumer goods wasn’t through purchase as commodities in a free market, but through self-production and barter/debt within small communities. Peasants worked the land with their own means of production and made their own tools with their own means of production, and generally people weren’t hired working other people’s means of production.
Class struggle has existed for millennia, but capitalism is just the current predominant system of class struggle because through industrial development it overpowers preexisting systems that weren’t capitalist.
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Man has been around for thousands of years athis current sociointelligent level. It is not hard to extrapolate the current fascist mentalities back through the ages all the way through our barbarous past.
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Italy was not first. There was the mongols, the greeks, the spartans and probably many more that only rated a blurb in the history books
You are conflating monarchy with fascism for some reason.
The Mongols were governed by the Khan, who was an emperor.
The Greeks had multiple kings of the various polises (aside from Athens for a while), until they were united under Alexander the Great, who was an emperor.
The Spartans were Greek, so it’s weird you listed them separately.
Fascism and monarchy are both authoritarian, but authoritarianism is not fascism.
Max Weber would argue different.
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One of Weber’s main intellectual concerns was in understanding the processes of rationalisation, secularisation, and disenchantment. He formulated a thesis arguing that such processes were associated with the rise of capitalism and modernity. Weber also argued that the Protestant work ethic influenced the creation of capitalism in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It was the earliest part in his broader consideration of the world religions, as he later examined the religions of China, India, and ancient Judaism. Source
Weber died in 1920. Fascism had literally only existed by name for a year before he died. He was not arguing about fascism, hence fascism never being mentioned on that Wikipedia page.
Fascism was an outgrowth of capitalism that’s barely a century old.
This was what I was responding to, and the way it’s worded it seemed (to me at least) they were saying capitalism is barely a century old.
Oh, I see. My mistake.
Were they? That parses as “fascism, an outgrowth of capitalism, is a century old”.
In other news, meteorologist says the sky is blue.
Well of course it has, fascism is the end result of capitalism. Some would say it’s natural conclusion.
fascism is the end result of capitalism
I wonder what sort of echo chamber you must live in, in order to believe this
Late stage capitalism?
Fascist regimes generally came into existence in times of crisis, when economic elites, landowners and business owners feared that a revolution or uprising was imminent. Fascists allied themselves with the economic elites, promising to protect their social status and to suppress any potential socialist revolution.. Then Fascists allied themselves with the economic elites, promising to protect their social status and to suppress any potential socialist revolution. There’s more specifics here if you want them.
Fascist regimes generally came into existence in times of crisis
Too bad that modern capitalism produces wealth like no other system - the supposed resurgence of fascism never happened despite EU running capitalism for 79 years since the World War 2.
the supposed resurgence of fascism never happened
hahhahahahhahahahahhahahahhahahahahahhahaha
hahahahah ’ hahahahaha
hahaahahahahahahahahahaha
What a lemmy moment.
hahhahahahhahahahahhahahahhahahahahahhahaha
hahahahah ’ hahahahaha
hahaahahahahahahahahahaha
10/10 argument. You lost
Just to be clear, your argument was Checks notes “Too bad that modern capitalism produces wealth like no other system” had the proof “the supposed resurgence of fascism never happened despite EU running capitalism for 79 years since the World War 2.” was truly a masterclass.
It’s like you had this well thought out idea, and really just made sure everyone understood that yo-
sorry, hahahahhahaha i just cant, every time I read it I laugh again, hahahahah thank you so much this made my day.
Enjoy being ratio’d though, the view is incredible from up here.
You live in your own little world, aren’t you?
being ratio’d
By people as misguided as you.
No, you just made a likely bad faith argument he couldn’t be bothered to engage with.
There has been a rise in far-right parties in many countries, many of which don’t officially label themselves as fascist for plausible deniability, while spouting clearly fascist rhetoric. Their current scapegoats of choice include (but are not limited to) immigrants and lgbtq people.
But if you’re not being disingenuous, what do you think fascism is?
There has been a rise in far-right parties
Extremist organizations exist always and everywhere - what both of you fail to understand is that they’re very small (although sometimes loud) minorities.
what do you think fascism is?
A totalitarian movement in pre ww2 Italy, that killed a lot of people.
What do you think it is?
Nah. This is all on you.
the supposed resurgence of fascism never happened despite EU running capitalism for 79 years since the World War 2.
If you took 5 minutes to look into elections in Europe and in US, you’d see that far-right are becoming more dominant in elections, white nationalists and neo-nazis are openly having marches on streets and attacking the “enemy” (like immigrants or muslims), Russia is pretty much an unofficial fascist state right now and so on.
You’re right, resurgence of fascism never happened, but it is happening right now.
happening right now
No, you’re just one of radicals on the opposite side of political spectrum. Everyone with the wrong opinion is called fascist these days.
Bait used to be believable
This isn’t a bait. I tried once explaining the differences between fascism and nazism and guess what? Got acussed of being fascist. The only reason was because others didn’t like my argument.
What, you think Stiglitz is some kind of dangerous tankie now? Jfc, talk about muddying the waters. The forces that motivated the germans to “seek shelter” from markets with the nazis are the same pushing people to vote for Le Pen, AfD today.
Even Orban’s little dictatorship is a product of the sovereign debt crisis of the EU in 2014. If neoliberals are so blind that they lose touch with their people, voters will seek shelter from market forces either to the left or to the far-right, depending on how they understand what is happening.
producesextracts wealthextracts wealth
Produces. Wealth comes from efficient allocation of resources - capitalist free markets are really good at it.
Efficiency under capitalism?
We waste tremendous amounts of food but people go hungry.
We produce absurd levels of clothing, much of which is destroyed and sent to landfills without being worn, but there are people who need it.
We have more houses than unhoused by a huge factor.
Capitalism optimizes for profit and profit only. Sometimes that leads to good outcomes, sometimes it leads to bad outcomes.
It’s not “efficient” in terms of taking care of people’s needs. It’s only efficient in terms of producing profits for the owner and investor classes.
We waste tremendous amounts of food but people go hungry.
This waste may look big in absolute numbers, but probably isn’t meaningful as percentage of total economy - we’re wealthy so many of us can afford to be a little wasteful.
Capitalism optimizes for profit and profit only. Sometimes that leads to good outcomes, sometimes it leads to bad outcomes.
Usually bad outcomes are the corner cases - I’m perfectly aware that they exist (harmful monopolies, CO2, ect.) But it’s the role of solid legal framework to deal with these issues.
On the other hand you have at best no idea what sort of pathologies can arise in alternatives to capitalism, and at worst it can be repeat of the of USSR or North Korea.
Yep, nothing inefficient about an intern commuting via plane from South Carolina to New York everyday because it’s much cheaper than living in New York. /s 🙄
Oh my sweet summer child.
Exactly, capitalist markets are really good at extracting resources from the land and labour from the people to make a profit, they just don’t know where to stop until it’s too late, unless they are regulated.
extracting resources from the land and labour
You’re trying to paint production in a negative way, while in reality competitive markets converge to most fair prices
Law of supply and demand dictates that too low wage will fail to attract workers, while too high wage will result in product that is too expensive and won’t attract customers willing to buy.
It’s a beautiful, self regulating communication network that pays well for stuff that is in demand and pays little for things nobody wants
They’re also getting increasingly more efficient at funneling profits to the top, rather to the greatest value producers: labourers. This is wage theft. Get it all the way to 100% and you have slavery.
Though important to note that slavery does not just meant you don’t get paid. Though I don’t think anyone needs a splainer on that.
Fascism was maintained in several European countries way beyond 1940s, such as my homeland Spain. There were also fascist regimes after WW2 outside Europe, such as in Chile or arguably in South Korea and Taiwan.
I would argue that it was not capitalist benevolence that kept social peace for 80 years, it was partly the existence of the USSR that forced capitalist governments to make concessions to the social state to prevent communist influence from expanding westwards, flawed as it was.
capitalist benevolence
Capitalism is neither benevolent nor malevolent - it just happens it has most aligned incentives between egoistic actors
forced capitalist governments to make concessions
Really, really not. People were escaping from socialist USSR republics to western countries. This is why USSR decided to build a wall - their disfunctional system couldn’t compete
The New Deal is an example of capitalists understanding that you need to make some concessions to keep the peace, I’d call that sorta benevolent.
About the USSR: yes, people escaped it, but there was a chance that democracies would flip communist if you squeezed the population too much, so there was a political incentive to creating social policies to control capitalist forces. Without fear of the USSR agitators and backing, they had less incentive to compromise a.k.a. TINA.
The real world.
lemmy.ml isn’t the real world
You dont have to be a tankie to understand that the neverending capitalist search for growth leads to exploitation and eventually backlash.
Marxism and socialism are not the answer to the ills of capitalism, though. People don’t necessarily want to be responsible for organizing production, and group dynamics which plague capitalist societies will crop up again, leading to unequal distribution of resources, and again fascism.
Such anti-social group dynamics are almost always resultant from the natural levels of greed and self-preservation which people possess, like favoring people from their religion or culture over others.
Capitalism needs to be controlled and made reasonable via high tax rates to reduce funding for lobbying. Under prepared and ill informed masses do not need to be given controls over production. There are also many who want people to give up individual liberties to live in communes. Fuck off with that, no one wants to live in your fucking commune with you.
I disagree, something has to be born out of capitalism. Shits on life support right now.
I think a gift economy would be best but, if we keep thinking behaviors like greed can’t be legistlated, we’ll never get ahead.
Could you tell me what you believe socialism to mean?
As long as we keep antiquated monetary based economic and political systems there will be no emancipation of all. We don’t need money and things to dictate who gets what. (shelter, food, water, love, community, education…) those should be already granted to everyone because we have the resource, knowledge, and capabilities to do so. We have people going without essentials only because the rich and powerful want it that way.
I agree to an extent. What do you suppose would replace money? Labor vouchers? Moreover, there needs to be a transitionary period to phase out money.
My point being, the changes we need have to be reformational. Expedited reform is the only sensible path forward.
Ya I don’t think it’ll be something that happens fast or within our lifetime. But there’s no rational reason for us to not starting to provide some essential needs today. The US throws out enough food to feed everyone in our country now. But it’s preferred to over produce so shelves look full and then throw out whatever doesn’t sale. Literally insanity when millions of Americans go to sleep hungery
Nothing in this article is about Marxism or socialism.
I mean maybe you won’t join my cult on day one, but soon…
So, TL;DR: copy Europe?
Parts of it, sure. But not all of it. Europe hasn’t been immune to the current rise in fascism. But there are clearly some countries in Europe that are fairing better than others.
There is one big flaw with socialism: socialist governance seems to require concentrating an extraordinary amount of power in elite government decision makers; this tends to produce a new ruling class, the widespread deprivation of political rights for everyone else, and crippling poverty.
Nothing in this article is about socialism.
The elimination of private property and the shifting of ownership from the rich to the people doesn’t change the power required to regulate/administer anything. Either way the same amount of regulation is needed, and the same amount of administration is needed. Capitalism is just dictatorship in the workplace, and it needs to end yesterday.
To put it another way, compare two cities.
City A:
- Has 100,000 mouths to feed
- Needs and maintains 1000 high density apartment buildings, 1000 medium density apartment buildings, and 1000 low density residential buildings
- Has 100km of transportation network to maintain
- The means of production is owned by the rich
City B has the exact same population, infrastructure requirements, etc. It is basically a carbon copy of city A. However in city B the means of production is democratically controlled (and therefore owned).
Both cities have the same food requirements, the same amount of concrete needed, the same amount of everything is needed identically between them. The implementation of socialism doesn’t change the amount of political power needed to keep things running. It has however, shifted the political power away from the dictatorship of the CEOs and company board members to the vote of the people. Here in the U.S. we (on paper) wouldn’t tolerate a dictatorship in the government. So why the fuck do we tolerate it in the workplace? The workplace should be a democracy too (and not the shitty failed kind of democracy that is the U.S. government).
A lot of economists don’t listen to anything Joseph Stiglitz says, because he’s not from the Chicago school. Economics is so stupid.
dismal, even
Except “dismal science” wasn’t meant as a critique.
YoU dOn’T kNoW wHaT lIBeRaL mEaNs
This feels like an appeal to authority. He’s an economist, not a political scientist. His Nobel prize was in contributions around screening, which is important but has jack shit to do with fascism. And he’s held some opinions before that were highly controversial to say the least, like advocating for the breakup of the eurozone. Just because he says it and he has a shiny prize doesn’t mean it’s right.
Doesn’t mean he’s wrong either.
I can see many pathways from neolib capitalism to oligarchy to fascism.
I think you may just be anti-intellectual and looking for any hook to discredit the discussion.
First, the definition of appeal to authority, since it’s one of the most misunderstood fallacies. Citing someone based on their area of expertise is not appeal to authority. The problem is when you cite the stated opinion of someone, but their area of expertise is not directly relevant to that opinion. I’m a software developer, I could give you an expert opinion on various topics in that area. But outside of topics I am an export on, appeal to authority.
I didn’t say he’s necessarily wrong. But at the same time, he got his Nobel prize by being an economist who made a substantial contribution to economics. He is not an expert on fascism. His expert opinions in economics often run counter to many other credible expert economists, so you should consider those other expert opinions as well and not just listen to the person who tells you want you want to hear. That’s certainly not anti-intellectual.
Experts and intellectuals should absolutely be considered to better understand a subject, but they’re not some infallible oracle of truth. They contradict each other, are often limited by an ivory tower environment, and operating in the same societal context as everyone else.
Anti-intellectualism is a hallmark of fascism too :)
Right, because orthodox economists are so good at listening to what political scientists are saying.
The scholars outside economics have been screaming about it for years.
But it seems it takes one of their own for them to maybe potentially consider the possibility that there might exist some specific corner case in which they might need to ponder the necessity to listen. And even then, economics reductionists will still pretend it’s suspect.
“People who are barely surviving have extremely limited freedom,” he writes.
"All their time and energy go into earning enough money to pay for groceries, shelter, and transportation to jobs … a good society would do something about the deprivations, or reductions in freedom, for people with low incomes.
ABC News Australia - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for ABC News Australia:
MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - Australia
Wikipedia about this sourceSearch topics on Ground.News
no shit, Sherlock. Still, glad to see it in the news.
