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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 16th, 2023

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  • Why would it be more corrupt? Why do you believe Small Businesses are fine?

    It's more concentrated power. The opportunity for more corruption. Sure, they could be philosopher kings at first but having the control means someone can have the control corruptly.

    I don't necessarily believe all small businesses are fine, but their interests compete with each other, and they're small, by definition. And we already have regulations that apply to all businesses, there is democratic control in some sense. So I'm not worried about how the corruption of one small business owner would warp society or national interest.

    Markets themselves inevitably result in those unregulated behemoths,

    I agree with this premise and then not the conclusion. Inevitably, all behemoths were once small businesses. But is the correct intervention to stop the small businesses from forming in the first place, or to prevent the ones that get big from utilizing that size in an asocial way? You could socialize businesses of a certain size, for example. You could set rules for worker-elected board members, or whatever.


  • What's your issue with Central Planning, other than vibes?

    I'm not a theorist obviously, but it seems like it's inherently going to be a limited number of decision makers who can't possibly know everything, and they become a bottleneck to business creation at best, a corruption machine at worst. I know I wouldn't trust the government of half (or more but my point is, Republicans) the current US states to decide what business are allowed to exist.

    I know the retort is of course that we have corruption now, but I'd think if we're theorizing, there's a better way to reduce extant corruption than introducing a new vector for even more corruption. And there's a way to harness the power of people starting small businesses freely without letting those businesses become unregulated behemoths.

    Like just set the criteria you would be telling the Central Planning Authority to prioritize, and do that with regulation. Set an ownership tax so that as a business gets bigger the ownership moves away from the founder and into the public trust.


  • The potential for regulatory capture and corruption, as well as the inherent inefficiency of having a limited number of decision makers. I wouldn't trust the 2028 Trump Administration to thoughtfully determine which businesses are allowed to exist for 4 years.

    It's more democratic to let anyone start a business, rather than having a gatekeeper. But more importantly I think it makes more sense to let the capitalists take the losses if their business idea sucks, and then socializing the gains once we know it works.


  • Is a planned economy an inherent part of socialism? That seems like the biggest red flag (lol) in this comic. All sorts of incentive mismatches there.

    "Democracy at work, too" is like the biggest pitch for socialism, "government deciding what businesses can exist" is the biggest pitch against. A tightrope to walk, for sure.



  • I always wonder why they don't build parking garages near these things. It must be way more expensive but you could combine with a mall like the NFL Patriots did, or even share parking lots with a college like the Bills do.

    These acres of parking lots only used 8x/year are keeping a huge area ugly and terrible.