[bermanoid]

I'm 100% in favor of capitalism, but that's not what you're standing up for. Capitalism doesn't mean you never intervene when disaster strikes, it just means that markets are the engine that drive the economy and you mostly let them function unimpeded. When something threatens the proper functioning of the market itself, a functional capitalist system should intervene (in non-market-based ways if necessary) to keep the flywheel spinning when the crisis passes.

Put another way, laissez faire capitalism might be fine when the system is operating in a normal regime, but most capitalists don't take that as a prohibition on taking action when things like wars or natural disasters strike. All of the usual arguments in favor of letting the market just do its thing break down when you're temporarily in an environment that differs hugely from business as usual, and letting the market decide for itself could end up optimizing for the wrong behavior. Specifically, we probably don't want to allow a natural selection event that cuts so deep that anyone without a 12 month cash buffer goes bust, since if every company operated to maintain that it would not be optimal behavior during the steady state.

[touktouk]

"Free markets, except when the markets do not work" is not particularly specific - I fail to think of any mainstream party in the West that do not agree with this principle. The disagreement is about 1. when do markets fail and 2. what are the acceptable policies to fix it.

For instance, environmental externalities could justify an endless list of regulations, a massive carbon tax and/or cap-and-trade policies, as well as tariffs for countries not complying with environmental regulations. Because the markets does not work. Yet this is clearly not something everyone agrees with, despite being a market drive the economy but intervene to keep them spinning until the (climate) crisis passes.

I do not mean to enagage in politics and suggest the example I gave is what we should or should not do.

My point is that most people beliefs about the economy are a lot more specific than "markets with some intervention".

[bermanoid]

Totally agree with pretty much all of this; I'm just arguing that "don't subsidize, ever" is a very extreme vision of capitalism, and doing a one year or less intervention is nowhere close to throwing away the whole system (which GP is implying very clearly elsewhere in the thread, and to be fair I probably should have responded to those specific comments instead of this one).

I agree that when and how we intervene is important to discuss, it's just important to argue the details, not "but muh capitalism" as a way to argue against every government action ever.