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Twitter loses World Bank ads over pro-Nazi content placement
(boingboing.net)
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this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2024
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Capitalism: free markets are the only way if you dont like Nazi shit go somewhere else librulz
Also capitalism: Its literally illegal to not give us money and if you take your money elsewhere we'll sue you!
Twitter isn't capitalism, nor is Elon Musk. He says "I love capitalism" in the same way as Emperor Palpatine says "I love democracy!"
It is though - this is what capitalism invariably becomes. Musky Twitter is a symptom of late stage capitalism. This is why so many people say capitalism is bad and doesn't work as advertised.
The golden age of classical liberalism, when capitalism actually worked, the 1700-1800's, more closely resembles what we would today call market socialism.
Once the agglomerations of capital became large enough to impose irresistible anti-competitive force, the days of capitalism's beneficial functionality ended. They say "the freer the market the freer the people", but an unregulated market isn't free - it invariably trends toward monopoly and irrationally assigned concentrations of wealth and power, eg Musk, Bezos, DuPont, Sackler, etc...
Capitalism supports, rather than resists, the anti-competitive influence of capital. A truly free market requires the intervention of powers other than capital - eg, democratic governance imposing something akin to Market Socialism against the wishes of those anti-competitive agglomerations of capital.
I don't think that's a valid historical claim. 1700s and 1800s were largely influenced by Adam Smith, with a limited level of governmental intervention and high amount of private liberties.
What western countries currently have is much more like market socialism than classical liberalism. If we take Elon Musk as an example, a large part of his success comes from governmental corruption: direct financial assistance (multiple billions of dollars), tax breaks and subsidies, and several government contracts. Even fucking Ayn Rand would call him a parasite.
I think the proper fix would be to return to actual classical liberalism and reject or at least limit the amount of market socialism. No idea how that could be done now that the problem has become so bad. A neoliberal revolution? lol.
The market didn't need regulations to maintain its freeness back then because the vast majority of transactions were made with small businesses. The limited technological capabilities in transport and communication also decreased the need for government regulation by decreasing the ability of the largest concentrations of capital to succeed at implementing global anti-competitive strategies.
To achieve the same degree of market freedom today, in the era of omni-national mega-corporations wielding monopoly influence, requires utilizing levers of power outside of the market those mega-corps dominate. The intervention of democratic governments to enforce anti-monopoly laws and prohibit other kinds of anti-competitive behavior is a necessary component of any plan to transform today's marketplace into one that looks more similar to the market of Adam Smith's day.
More liberalism would just create more corruption especially with the current amount megacorpos, external government intervention & its existing corruption to start.
What is needed is less corruption & a destruction of large corporations. Removing corruption requires the current corruption to be stopped by legislation & public pressure.