[abvdasker]

> socialism in disguise

I really dislike this kind of rhetoric. This has nothing to do with socialism. Corporations profiting from externalities and pushing costs onto regular workers is just capitalism. If you have a problem with it, maybe you have a problem with the inevitable concentrations of wealth and power which result from capitalism.

[littlecranky67]

Well, what if the corporations would pay the bills - then they would increase the price of the product so the people would pay for it again. Now you can say that you do not use Metas or Googles products, but their business models is ads - and you DO pay the products advertised for.

[abvdasker]

In scenario 1, a corporation externalizes some of its costs. Those costs are then paid by people who may or may not actually use the corporation's product — people who never chose to be part of any transaction. This is coercive because the people paying for the corporation's externalities are forced to: they may not use the product, or do so to different degrees not proportional to the price they pay for the externality.

In scenario 2, the corporation does not externalize costs and raises their prices, offsetting costs by passing them on to their customers. The people paying the additional cost are those who know the price of what they are buying and willingly engage in the transaction for the good or service.

Do you understand why scenario 2 is bad and scenario 1 is less bad?

[littlecranky67]

That is just a very simplified and incomplete model. I never owned a car, so should I advocate to stop all fundings for streets? Well I consume products build by other people that use cars to go to work. Now, if I don't consume drinks of the Coca Cola Company, what if my cleaning lady enjoys those in her break? Direct vs. Indirect is not a good measure of value, PRICE is.

[abvdasker]

> I never owned a car, so should I advocate to stop all fundings for streets?

Streets are generally paid for by taxes, which are categorically different than corporate profits. In theory taxes are under democratic control. If you don't want to pay for streets you don't use, you can vote for a politician who passes that law. You have no control over the governance of a private corporation, but it can still pass its costs on to you via externalities (in the absence of regulations preventing it from doing so).

> Now, if I don't consume drinks of the Coca Cola Company, what if my cleaning lady enjoys those in her break?

What are you even talking about? What is the externality here? The wages you presumably pay your cleaning lady are hers to do with as she wishes.

[littlecranky67]

> don't want to pay for streets you don't use, you can vote for a politician who passes that law

Just as you can build your own power plant (solar, wind) if you don't like the electricity prices of your provider... That works in theory, in practice you will have to pay...

[jimbokun]

That's a strange definition of capitalism you're using.

Most people use capitalism to describe a system where people trade goods and services with as little interference from government as possible.

In this case, the government has written laws in a way that indirectly transfers wealth from consumers to large corporations.

Saying that such laws are "inevitable" in any conceivable capitalist system is unfalsifiable and adds little to the discussion.

I think calling it "crony capitalism" to make it clear that it's the undue influence of capital on government specifically causing the problem here lends more clarity to the discussion.

[abvdasker]

> Most people use capitalism to describe a system where people trade goods and services with as little interference from government as possible.

This is not a real definition. Saying "most people" use the term to mean what you want it to mean in this argument is ridiculous.

Capitalism is a system of private ownership of capital. We live under that system. Anything you see that happens now is the result of that system because it's the one that exists.

There is no such thing as "crony capitalism". What came before crony capitalism? Was it regular capitalism? Did regular capitalism turn into crony capitalism? Or — more likely — is it all one continuous process and system of accumulation?

[dragonwriter]

> Most people use capitalism to describe a system where people trade goods and services with as little interference from government as possible.

“Capitalism” is a term coined for the dominant system of the industrialized West in the mid-19th Century and is defined by the specific orientation of property rights in that system around the private and marketable ownership of the non-financial means of production (the “capital” in “capitalism”), and the way in which the system was fundamentally structured around—and institutions within it, including government, invariably served the interests of—the owners of that capital, who formed its ruling class, displacing the landed hereditary aristocracy of the preceding systems.

While the dominant politico-economic systems of the developed world have evolved somewhat since then, with modern mixed economies having structures in place mitigate some of the adverse impacts the original system for which thr label “capitalism” was created for has on the vast majority of the population that is not major capital owners, it retains the basic property structure and resulting class heirarchy of the original “capitalism”, and neither it nor the original tended tof eatite annabsence of regulation of commerce.

> I think calling it "crony capitalism" to make it clear that it's the undue influence of capital on government specifically causing the problem here lends more clarity to the discussion.

The commanding and undue influence of capital on all of society, government and otherwise, is literally the feature for which critics of the then-dominant system coined the term “capitalism” to refer to that system. It doesn’t need an extra qualifier for that.