[logicchains]

What other alternatives are there? Socialism? There are plenty of socialist countries, but I'm not aware of any that would prevent Apple from buying a relatively small company like that behind Foundation.

Economic freedom is a scale. On one side, there's 100% freedom of exchange/ownership, pure propertarian capitalism, which doesn't exist on Earth right now. On the other side, there's pure communal communism, which also doesn't exist on Earth right now. If neither extreme nor minimal economic freedom would address the issue, how could some intermediate level do any better?

[microtonal]

If neither extreme nor minimal economic freedom would address the issue, how could some intermediate level do any better?

Simple. Both extremes concentrate power eventually (in the state or in megacorps). Somewhere in the middle, you have an open and capitalist market, but the government keeps large cooperations in check, and the population keeps the government in check.

It can be argued that the EU strives to follow this model (although imperfectly). E.g. by enforcing net neutrality, being relatively active at breaking down cartels, regulating roaming costs (since the industry kept them artificially high), etc.

Of course, it's never perfect, because the circumstances are never perfect. So, you have to finetune and adapt.

[logicchains]

>Both extremes concentrate power eventually (in the state or in megacorps). Somewhere in the middle, you have an open and capitalist market, but the government keeps large cooperations in check, and the population keeps the government in check.

What in this middle ground would prevent Apple from buying FoundationDB? I can't see this happening in any middle-ground countries like Europe.

[TheOtherHobbes]

That's not an ideal question because it assumes that Apple and FDB already exist as technology owning/creating entities.

What if there were no large corporations at all? What if IP and status/cash-flow were set up as the property of individuals and/or small teams who collaborated on a per-project basis?

You could have a system where IP was still shared in a completely open way, remaining free for non-commercial use, but commercial use would require a per-use payment, and commercial modification would attract a revenue share of its own if it was useful to a market.

This might not be ideal - it doesn't solve the problem of actually making stuff, for example. (There are possible answers to that, but they're even weirder.)

But it shows it's at least possible to begin to think about systems that don't have dinosaur corporations stomping around the ecosystem predating anyone and anything who's small and interesting.

And it specifically solves the problem of useful IP being removed or suppressed just because it can be.

[jsankey]

The post you responded to pointed to a problem with capitalism, but it hardly follows that this means they'd advocate for communism. More rationally you might suppose that there is some other way to curb failures of capitalism without jumping to other extreme. It is a scale, yes, but there is no reason to expect the best solution is at either end.

Let alone the fact that we are only talking about economic freedom now, which is only one of many interacting facets of politics that can't really be isolated.

[logicchains]

Whether or not a company is allowed to buy another company is a matter of economic freedom. All other things being equal, the more freedom companies have to buy others, the greatest the level of economic freedom, as freedom to buy is a component of economic freedom.

Allowing companies to buy any companies has issues. Not allowing companies to buy other companies also has issues. So how could any intermediate situation not have issues? If it forbids in some cases, it will have some of the problems associated with forbidding. If it allows in some cases, it will have some of the problems associated with lenience.

[microtonal]

Allowing companies to buy any companies has issues. Not allowing companies to buy other companies also has issues.

You seem to reason in really absolutist terms. You can have an open economy, where a government can still intervene if the current market situation has an extremely negative effect on society.

E.g. breaking cartels, monopolies or oligopolies where they seriously hurt a population does not throw away all the benefits of capitalism.

The disadvantage of one extreme is that you cannot have free enterprise, the other extreme is that you might end up with a few megacorps who control the market and ultimately society. In the middle you have a situation where there is free enterprise, but as a cooperation you also have to play by the rules that were set up to maintain fair competition and avoid centralisation of power.

[logicchains]

>In the middle you have a situation where there is free enterprise, but as a cooperation you also have to play by the rules that were set up to maintain fair competition and avoid centralisation of power.

The middle situation faces the potential of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture. This state-enforced monopoly is a small-scale manifestation of the complete state monopoly associated with 100% state ownership. The only way to completely avoid regulatory capture is to have no regulatory agencies, but this of course brings troubles of its own. There's no perfect middle.

[microtonal]

Sure. First of all, in all systems averse effects can happen. Secondly, regulatory capture is countered by democracy and transparency. If politicians become corrupted, you vote them away. In capitalism without regulation, there is no good way for citizens to intervene (except through violence).

[logicchains]

How's voting the corrupt politicians away working in practice in the US? From what I hear, not very well.

[jsankey]

Your argument now amounts to "there will always be issues", which is correct but not useful. What matters is what those issues are, how important, and how severe at each point on the scale. We're now talking at such an abstract level that it's not really meaningful...

[logicchains]

>Your argument now amounts to "there will always be issues", which is correct but not useful.

The argument I responded to was essentially asserting the existence of a non-capitalist solution that would have prevented Apple from buying FoundationDB without negative consequences. If I successfully argue that there are no perfect solutions, than that undermines the argument to which I was replying, and forces the poster to engage with the issue in more detail than just "capitalism is bad".