[lapcat]

The alternative would be to actually enforce antitrust laws and ensure that companies don't become as big and powerful as countries.

The basis of capitalism is competition. The theory depends on no single company having the power to move the whole market, but this theory is getting decimated by the empirical reality of consolidation and monopolization.

We all forget, because 9/11 happened literally a few days after it was announced, but the new Bush administration decided to give a wrist slap to Microsoft instead of breaking it up, which was the proposal of the Clinton administration. That's essentially when antitrust laws ceased to exist, and in the wake of the failure to do anything about Microsoft, mega-corporations and monopolies have thrived.

[jacknews]

The basis of capitalism is private ownership of production, by definition.

The basis for why this is at all acceptable as a system to organize society is that competition, government restrictions, etc, whittle down private power to somewhat tolerable levels. There must surely be a better system which we haven't thought of yet though.

[iForgotMyPW]

do you think capitalism would still be the base of that system?

[jacknews]

It's complicated, but I think, no.

Many people, especially Americans seem to confuse capitalism with 'trade', 'competition', 'markets', etc, whereas I mean it as the private ownership of production, the profit from other people's work, etc. That seems fundamentally immoral in some ways from the very start.

Eg, I read an article about working with Elon Musk recently (https://www.businessinsider.com/working-for-elon-musk-spacex...), where they said "If there are employees not aligned with that vision, he will chew them out and he will do it in a vicious way, which is his right as owner.". I mean, no, we really should not be enshrining that, or even really tolerating it, in a decent society.

The question then is how should we allocate resources (capital), how should we incentivize risk, innovation, hard work, etc, What kinds of ownership are moral, etc.

I suspect we'll be stuck with some form of capitalism for a while though - like democracy, it's the worst system, except for all the others, for now.

[iForgotMyPW]

interesting