In the big picture this contributes to stuff that may well work out to being some kind of slippery slope. In the specific case, and indeed most specific cases in this sort of domain, none of the politicians care if it works or ever will work. They just care that nobody can claim they voted against protecting children; whether the measure would actually do that, or have any effect whatsoever, is irrelevant--the only thing that matters is how their political opponents could frame it.

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Quoting: eggrole

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThe modern "free market" is a market that actively promotes rentiers. Smith would have hated it.

Yes, that is what I was saying. I don't like to argue semantics as people call things capitalist and socialist (or any other -ism or -ists these days) when they have little understanding of the roots of the words. I argue that we don't have capitalism today in the USA (or the west in general) and we have a system much closer to socialism.

Well, I feel I can't avoid semantics here. I've seen a lot of claims that what we have today is bad, but that's because it's somehow not capitalism, or not "real" capitalism, and if only we had the real thing all would be well. The addition that, since it's not capitalism, and some of the redistribution upwards is aided by government action, that must make it socialism is not something I've seen before but given the basic rationale it sort of follows. But the whole idea is very much a "no true Scotsman" argument. There has never been capitalism that didn't involve government action to privatize profits and socialize loss, so if we're going to say that kind of thing disqualifies a system as capitalism then there has never been any such thing as capitalism and we should never bother using the word again. Capitalism involved major government intervention from its very beginnings in England--the very workforce for capitalists was provided by the Enclosure movement, which drove masses of small farmers off their land, and passed a lot of draconian laws making it illegal for the resulting masses of poor people to either hunt or gather ("poaching") or hang around doing nothing ("loitering"); thus, they had to take paid employment. It was the first major wage work force. Government action has been a big part of capitalism ever since. ECON 101 and so on generally pretend, or at least talk as if, capitalist economics was just something that happened naturally by some sort of laws of nature, but it's a socially created thing like any other part of society--no more and no less than socialism or feudalism or whatever.

So I really think that calling what we have not capitalism because big boys get bailouts is a pretty strained bit of semantics, which leads to problems in calling anything capitalism. Big boys have almost always gotten bailouts throughout the history of capitalism.

As to socialism, the US has a really weird bit of semantics around that. For decades, anyone calling for government action of any kind in the US has been called a socialist, even though they clearly weren't. This would put them on the defensive, claiming not to be one and often backtracking from their positions. Then Bernie Sanders, doing some brilliant semantics, decided to just short-circuit the process and just own the label; he agreed to the US creeping redefinition of socialism as any kind of government action for the benefit of the people and just claimed to be one and challenged anyone to say why that was bad. So now in the US, the word "socialism" is used to describe what everyone else calls "social democracy" and the US used to call "New Deal liberalism". But that isn't what socialism actually is, certainly not what it's rooted in. And just "any use of government to benefit anybody" most definitely isn't socialism.

Socialism is a system in which the workers, either directly or through the government, own and control the means of production, rather than it being owned by private individuals. In theory, but not necessarily in practice, the goal of production under socialism is to improve the common good rather than to create profit. That's it, that's historically what socialism is that makes it not capitalism. The current system shows no trace of anything like that--to the contrary, stuff that used to be public keeps getting privatized.

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Quoting: eggroleI DO blame over consumption. Those people that get ultra wealthy (on top of the corruption, which should be public enemy #1) got there because millions of "little people" gave them their hard earned money. Maybe you could argue that people will only buy what they think will improve their lives, but I think that comes back to a branch of corruption. The media portrays a lifestyle of luxury that will make you happy. They sell their wares with beautiful people and promises of fulfillment, but it is all hollow. Not long after you purchase something, the newness wears off and you are back to longing for the next thing. If you're interested check out Propganda by Bernays for a really easy read and a good look at how this works.

There's a few things about that. The fundamental thing about capitalists is that their job is to invest capital, so that they can produce something (goods, services . . . what Marx called "commodities") to sell, and to do it in such a way as to earn a profit which they can then reinvest. The name of the game is to maximize profit.

OK, so to make a profit that way, people need to buy the stuff. Capitalists long ago realized that they need to create demand if there isn't enough. They do that in various ways--advertising and PR to make people think they need whatever stuff, planned obsolescence so people have to buy the same stuff again, credit so people can buy the stuff even if they don't have the money. So, consumerism is an inevitable facet of capitalism; it's a way of increasing demand so more stuff can be sold and more profits made.

Another thing is the weird collective action problem capitalists run into. Collectively, they depend on the workers having effective demand--being able to buy products. But individually, they're trying to maximize profit, and there are two basic ways to do that--maximizing revenue, and minimizing expenses. Probably the biggest component of minimizing expenses is not paying workers more than you absolutely have to. Doesn't matter if it's by producing with less labour or paying the labour less, each capitalist is trying to reduce the amount of money going to workers. But if they ain't got no money, they're not buying much of what the capitalists are collectively producing. Again, one big solution to this is credit, but that has limits--the credit is not interest free, which means in the medium term payments on all the debt end up reducing what people can afford to buy. These are reasons why despite claims of being all about growth, places that reduce the bargaining power of labour by crushing unions, creating gig economies and so on, actually show lower growth.

Currently, most of the biggest capitalists don't seem to care about any of this; they seem fine with shrinking the pie as long as they own and control more of it. And the economy has gotten sufficiently deregulated that it is often more lucrative to make profit through fraud than by creating actual commodities, let alone valuable ones that increase society's wealth. I think this is an inevitable trajectory. As capitalists gain wealth making real things, they look for ways to increase profits, and they notice that changing the rules is a very profitable way. As they get involved in politics to change the rules, they gain more power to change the rules more. As the rules change, the playing field shifts and rewards different behaviours, less connected to doing useful things. In the end you have an economy controlled largely by grifters.

This stage leads to instability, which may give you fascism or, if you're lucky, some kind of leftward pendulum swing, maybe to social democracy or "new deal" capitalism with much more regulation and less concentration of wealth and power. But that is just starting the process again if the capitalists are still in place with the same objectives.

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Quoting: eggrolebut (at least here) we don't have anything close to what Smith or Ricardo described in their seminole works.

One thing to keep in mind about the old school guys, Adam Smith et al., is that when they said "free market" they meant something very different from what modern free marketeers mean when they say "free market". In some ways the two concepts are directly opposed.

So when modern free market guys talk about "free" markets, they mean completely unregulated markets, in which capital gets to make money however it wants--constraints are bad because markets are magic and inherently efficient as long as you don't interfere. And, just to be clear, this is not true. The theory of efficient markets is rubbish if you look at it for more than ten seconds, and the practice makes clear that unregulated markets are fraudulent markets.

But that is most definitely not what Smith was talking about. When the classical economists talked about "free" markets, they meant free of economic rent. That is, they meant markets where there were no monopolies, no barriers to entry, in general no way for capitalists to extract windfall profits. Markets, in short, where capitalists were forced to do things like compete on price, thus allowing Smith's "invisible hand" to operate. Getting markets to be remotely like this requires strong regulation. And Smith knew it, and was well aware that tradesmen and captains of industry were constantly scheming to get around such issues the better to extract money from the public.

The modern "free market" is a market that actively promotes rentiers. Smith would have hated it.

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Quoting: fabertaweInteresting, I find you can never have enough guitars 😄

It's not just guitars. I have a friend who's a self-described sax maniac.

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Quoting: Molton Brownfingers crossed they can get the younger sibling out this year at a decent price.

Here's an odd question: Is the Steam Machine a younger sibling? Or is it an older sibling that died and is being resurrected?

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All these people talking Swedish, Finnish, EU solutions . . . don't you non-North Americans realize that doing verification without letting Palantir et al. spy on you is socialism?!

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"failed at our most basic job: clearly explaining what we're doing and why".

Really? That's their most basic job? I might have thought making the software good would be their most basic job, but apparently that's just me.

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Wishlisted. Even though, for a moment I thought it said "Frogpiercer" which would have been icky.

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Quoting: Axel Ekholm I like the art style. Waiting for reviews 🙂

Not surprising. The "moomin" art style has been widely beloved for decades. I have the books on my shelf from when I was a kid, must have got them like 50 years ago. I should really have another look.

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