[praptak]

"And the principle of really existing free market theory is: free markets are fine for you, but not for me. That’s, again, near a universal. So you — whoever you may be — you have to learn responsibility, and be subjected to market discipline, it’s good for your character, it’s tough love, and so on, and so forth. But me, I need the nanny State, to protect me from market discipline, so that I’ll be able to rant and rave about the marvels of the free market, while I’m getting properly subsidized and defended by everyone else, through the nanny State."

https://chomsky.info/19960413/

[brenden2]

Private profits, public risk.

[nostromo]

First, this is nothing like 2008, to which it's being compared.

In 2008 you had misbehaving companies taking huge risks with the (correct) assumption that they were too big to fail.

But what we have now is the government forcing businesses closed. It only makes sense that the government provide some assistance to those companies.

It feels great to quote Chomsky and to feel morally pure, I've certainly done it. But the truth is you would not like the result of that purity should the government follow that advice. The Federal Government and Federal Reserve acted in a ideologically pure fashion in 1929, and it caused a depression and hurt working people the most.

Secondly, we do have assistance programs for workers that have been laid off.

[jessaustin]

...you would not like the result of that purity...

The marketing, at least, is exactly like 2008. With the benefit of hindsight, we find that we don't like the results of impurity. The logical response is to choose more purity this time.

[Proziam]

> But the truth is you would not like the result of that purity should the government follow that advice.

I would prefer companies that buy back stock, pay ridiculous salaries and bonuses to execs, have giant golden parachutes, and so forth use the capital to secure themselves for situations like these. I think bailing out companies that have demonstrated that the government bailout is their risk mitigation strategy should be allowed to die. Yes, that would suck more right now, but it would mean that from here on out companies have to act 'just a little bit more' responsibly.

[mistermann]

> First, this is nothing like 2008, to which it's being compared.

I could easily list off tens of similarities between now and 2008.

I think what you mean is this situation isn't identical to 2008?

[rubyn00bie]

God damn, I love Chomsky.

To Chomsky's point, in America we don't even have capitalism- we have "socialism for the rich," and when you propose "real capitalism" the capitalists run for their pitchforks and knives. My favorite fact about capitalism, is that in a truly free market society, there's zero economic profit. What most people consider "profit" (or as I know it "the cream") is actually a sign of market manipulation whereby those profiting are paying less than they should for their labor, rent, and/or supplies.

Recommending socialism in America is always met with resistance, but I have no idea... Workers who claim to be capitalists, and I would think want to maximize their realized revenue, don't want to be paid what their worth going against their own philosophy. They accept the market as it is as pure and perfect when that is empirically not the case. Right now "socialism" would be a market correcting force, returning a lot of power and money to labor.

I could literally go on for hours... so I'll stop here.

[zapttt]

people in this forum pretty much control if any SaaS live or die.

if we care enough we can compile a simple list of layoffs happy companies to boycott.

[onetimemanytime]

They have a gun pointed to the government, we'll lay off 12,870 employees, unless. And so on. So it's not always that easy.

[pdeuchler]

Pretty easy to call their bluff and just pay for those people's unemployment instead

[wool_gather]

But for various other reasons, that's not likely to happen in the U.S.

[mantas]

Let them do this and use money to pay job loss benefits to employees.

First rule of stopping kidnapping and blackmailing - don't pay ransom.

[vkou]

Actually, the first rule of kidnapping is to get the victim out alive.

Sometimes, the best option for that is to pay the ransom.

[pille]

In this case the victims would be the workers. So you could either buy the company out, nationalize it, or let it go bankrupt and pay the employees directly.

None of those solutions incentivize the kidnapper like a ransom payment (bailout, no strings) does, and they’re likely cheaper.

[kortilla]

That’s a straw man. Big corporations that love regulatory capture and government bailouts rarely make free market arguments. They tout things like important regulations for their industry and how closely they work with the government to ensure a safe society or whatever.

[js8]

I think Chomsky is talking about capitalists, not corporations.