Italy was initially very laissez-faire, then turned protectionist (at the behest of business owners), then started to seize companies
And, by the way, how is that different from the American left? Democrats favor private property rights, have been very laissez-faire at times (in the sense of Italy), have protected banks and corporations from domestic and foreign competition, and have nationalized businesses. In what specific way were Mussolini's policies different from the American left then?
My point remains: companies don't always make money by hindering competition instead of improving quality, they do so only if government passes laws that makes hindering competition more profitable than improving quality.
If we had been discussing this and using that definition, you would have mentioned this definition at some point earlier in the conversation, with your reference.
I did: Historically, the left-right distinction was simply one between revolutionaries vs reactionaries, and later between people who wanted social change and progress vs people who wanted to protect private property and free markets. I also said that Your view, that it is about power, is the view of neo-Marxism and critical theory; that's not a mainstream view, and more importantly, it's not a tenable view because the (neo-)Marxist analysis in terms of power is not internally consistent or consistent with reality."
More importantly though, this tells me that you're not listening to, or even paying attention to, anything that I'm saying.
I have listened to what you said, and I have responded to it: it's standard leftist drivel, in particular of the neo-Marxist variety. Unlike a neo-Marxist intellectual, you can't even give sources or justify it.
I know I said that people should fight against extremism, but that doesn't mean I enjoy doing this.
No doubt as a fool for neo-Marxists, you hate having to punch yourself in the face.
I suggested tying corporate income tax rates to corporate net operating profits so that huge-margin price gougers end up paying high taxes and low-margin corporations pay very little.
Funny, that's how corporate tax works. How did you think it worked?
Note that the auto industry has a net margin of about 2% and the auto parts industry has a net margin of about 5%, placing them below average among US industry sectors.
This is a monopoly in action and it works only because of copyright and patent laws.
I agree, but those were created by governments supposedly for the benefit of society. You're saying you don't think they are for the benefit of society after all, and I tend to agree.
But you said:
It's never about quality. It's always about hindering competition.
It is only about "hindering competition" because government made it about hindering competition. Don't blame companies or markets for bad government incentives.
That is all good and well, buty most people are unable to do so
Seriously? "Most people" can't be bothered to look at expected repair costs or to find a well-reviewed independent repair shop on Yelp?
And I could go to some non-brand garage, but I have no idea if they are ripping me off either. Do I actually NEED that oil change? I have no idea. So aftermarket parts is a no-go for me.
So you value your own time more than the money you could save by being a more informed buyer.
I am sure that if I where to try and change my own oil, let alone do an actual repair, I would need to buy a new car.
And why should I pay for your choice to remain ignorant?
Charging because people do not understand what you do and/or why should be forbidden, no matter what.
Quite the opposite: that is the essence of a free market. Information itself is expensive. If we did what you say you want to do, government would have to set prices and enforce them, which is costly, inefficient, and usually corrupt. It is far better that buyers actually get a choice: you can spend the time informing yourself, or you can pay a premium for overpriced parts.
I dunno, look at how little effort Apple puts in to Siri or Apple Maps. Compared to what Google have done with Assistant and Maps, or what Amazon has done with Alexa...
Apple is trying desperately to catch up on AI, buying startups and trying to hire like crazy, they're just not succeeding.
"Community" semantically and historically includes a notion of "fellowship" and "association". Your dictionary entry gives examples of communities but misses the essence of what they are. The dictionary.com definition is better:
community
noun, plural communities.
a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage. a locality inhabited by such a group. a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists (usually preceded by the):
Already did and you still didn't get it. I'll try one more time. A huge pile of cash lets you buy your way out of almost any threat to your company including but not limited to 1) Buying your competition, 2) Buying into a new industry, 3) Buying your way out of massive strategy blunders, 4) Buying technology to keep their market position.
They are already doing all of that, since their "cash" is likely largely invested in the stock market. When Apple management believes that their special expertise in some technology area gives them a larger return on investment by investing that money more selectively, they'll do that, regardless of whether they blundered or not.
Apple and Microsoft and Google and Facebook have cash hoards large enough to stave off nearly any threat aside from either weapons grade incompetence (which they have shown little of) or the very unlikely prospect of government intervention.
And again, so what? Apple displayed $250 billion of "weapons grade competence", so they are allowed $250 billion of "weapons grade incompetence".
What I "don't get" is why you think any of this is remarkable. This is how companies and markets are supposed to operate.
A portion of the developer community has opposed the move, with some already leaving the platform for alternative service.
A bunch of people doing the same thing, or even having the same interests, is not a "community", so let's stop putting "community" after every group. What you're trying to say is simple: Some open source developers have opposed the move, with some already leaving the platform for alternative service.
Do you seriously think either of those companies is not well aware of that? What exactly is your point?
I think the real question is: what was your point. You listed a bunch of irrelevant half-truths in response to an article about "OMG they are killing teh startups". In reality, you are simply seeing a competitive market in action. For some reason that seems to bother you.
Do I really have to explain to you that having enough cash to completely abandon your original business and enter a new one is a big deal?
Yes, apparently you do.
Let's say the iPhone killer comes out tomorrow from MythicalTech Inc and Apple has no response to it. Does that mean Apple is dead? No. They could simply buy General Motors and become a car company tomorrow if they wanted to. That is a big deal.
If Apple's business fails and only cash remains, then Apple shareholders are simply shareholders in cash. If Apple management decides to spend that cash to buy GM, then Apple shareholders become GM shareholders and existing GM shareholders get cashed out at market price; if they want to continue to be in GM's business, they can simply turn around and buy Apple shares with the cash they get, in place of the GM shares they used to own. The names on a bunch of stock certificates change. So what's the "big deal"?
It's never about quality. It's always about hindering competition.
That's how free markets are supposed to operate: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."
Companies are always trying to grab market share. But even if Dolby were to succeed at this as much as they like, they'd simply temporarily dominate the market, not monopolize it. You can bet that soon thereafter, if the feature mattered, some big company or an industry consortium would come out with some better, open source alternative.
Companies that are too big to fail and that lose money are a dangerous combination, people have warned about GitHub becoming as large as it did as problematic because it concentrates too much of the power to make or break the open source world in a single entity,
How does Microsoft owning GitHub "break the open source world"? Even if Microsoft were to do something nefarious (like make unacceptable changes to the TOS), there are dozens of similar services around, or you can simply run GitLab as a hosted or containerized application.
Google developed Android strictly as a defensive play
Google didn't develop Android at all, they bought it. And Android development predates iPhone. Microsoft, Blackberry, Nokia, and Palm fumbled and lost the market, while Android and iOS won because they were better. But regardless of this history, that leaves the question: so what? You can get extremely powerful phones with excellent software from two companies now.
In this they succeeded wildly and it will be very hard to displace them.
If Google or Apple fail to invest heavily in Android/iOS development, their platform will fail within a few years, just like all the previous mobile platforms. In fact, with the rise of AI, Android/iOS may start looking as cumbersome and obsolete to customers as Symbian OS did when it fell from grace.
They could easily buy most companies that present a threat to them or buy their way into entirely new industries if they wanted
The wariness comes from seeing what happens to startups when they enter the kill-zone, either deliberately or accidentally.... SnapChat... a live video-streaming app... group video chats
I don't see what the problem is. If your startup consists of offering trivial technology, you get lots of competitors, including from established players. These companies weren't even the companies that were the first to commercialize their idea, they were simply companies that happened to make a name for themselves.
There are tons of startups that companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple have not been able to clone.
You really seem to be a little obsessed with the economic angle here, bending over backwards to try and turn apathy into opposition. Tell me then: why is socialism the right word? Why are you so focused on claiming that it's economics which equates these two,
We're discussing the left-right distinction between ideologies. The definition we are using is "The Left seeks social justice through redistributive social and economic policies, while the Right defends private property and capitalism." Along this spectrum, political ideologies fall in various places. Now, the question is: was the stated ideology of fascism more that of private property and free markets, or was it more that of redistribution and social justice? Based on statements from Strasser, Hitler, and Mussolini, it's pretty clear that it was the latter.
You are correct that fascism didn't put its stated ideology into practice. But the same is true for socialism: socialism in practice frequently tolerates private property and market mechanisms, and socialism frequently results in massive inequality and injustice.
It is completely unreasonable to say that socialism, an economic system, is actually about politics.
That's absurd; there are socialist political movements, socialist parties, and entire socialist states; it's obviously about politics. And in Marxism, socialism is not just an economic system, it's a state of society between democracy and communism; hence it isn't just about economics. But the imprecision in Marxist terminology is deliberate: it lets propagandist tweak their message to their audience. Another example is the term "capitalism", which sometimes refers to free markets, and at other times some kind of corporatism, industrialism, or the stock market.
But the issue is not that Italy and Germany were consistently anti-Capitalist, while perusing different alternatives. The issue is that they were inconsistent.
You need to separate theoretical ideology from what followers of that ideology do; you are comparing what fascists did with theoretical socialist ideology.
Fascists and socialists both stated that they were anti-capitalist (by which they meant that they were against free markets and equity markets). Neither fascists nor socialists have implemented their anti-capitalism consistently because they can't: they would alienate supporters and ruin their economies. So, fascists and socialists were anti-capitalist in the same way: in theory, but not consistently in practice.
If you want to address any of the other commonalities between fascism and leftism, please feel free to do so.
Look, if you want to include "crony capitalism" as a kind of capitalism, then, fine, capitalism doesn't serve Russia. Of course, if you believe that crony capitalism is a kind of capitalism, then socialism is a kind of capitalism as well, since socialism is pretty much the ultimate in crony, state capitalism.
I defend free markets, private property, and small government. Those are the factors that help countries succeed. Socialism makes countries fail.
Under current systems if you start earning money you lose benefits (because they're not universal) so you end up worse off than if you didn't work.
As you can see from the CBO graph., when you earn no money, you receive about $16000 in benefits and you don't "lose benefits if you start earning money". There are some small discontinuities at higher incomes, but they are pretty easy to fix. Why do you feel compelled to chime in on US policies when you don't know how things work in the US?
The idea with UBI is you get it whether or not you work so working will always leave you better off.
The real way to incentivize people to work is to give people who are capable of working but choose not to no welfare benefits at all, the exact opposite of a UBI.
“The current welfare system provides such a high level of benefits that it acts as a disincentive for work,” Tanner and Hughes write in their new paper. “Welfare currently pays more than a minimum-wage job in 35 states, even after accounting for the Earned Income Tax Credit,” which offers extra subsidies to low-income workers who take work. “In 13 states [welfare] pays more than $15 per hour.”
You would also do better to keep your claims about communism rather than socialism. They still wouldn't be true, but at least communism has a political aspect.
Socialism is the correct term: it refers to many political and economic systems that involve state control of the means of production. It encompasses many related leftist ideologies other than Marxism (and predates Marx). The USSR called itself the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" because it was socialist. Communism refers to a society in which scarcity has been eliminated and both class and the state disappear. The reason parties call themselves "communist" is because that's the ideal they are striving for; the political system within which they want to accomplish that is socialism.
Now, back to the question of whether fascism is anti-capitalist. You quote from Wikipedia:
Hitler and the Nazis held a very strong idealist conception of history, which held that human events are guided by small numbers of exceptional individuals following a higher ideal. They believed that all economic concerns, being purely material, were unworthy of their consideration.
And how are those beliefs incompatible with being anti-capitalist? Many people (even today) oppose capitalism precisely because they claim that "economic concerns, being purely material, [are] unworthy of their consideration".
Hitler called his political party "National Socialist", but he was clear to point out that his interpretation of socialism "has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism", saying that "Marxism is anti-property; true Socialism is not".
So he is saying he is a socialist but not a Marxist, a view shared by many socialists at the time, and many socialists today.
At another point, Hitler said in private that "I absolutely insist on protecting private property... we must encourage private initiative"
Yes, we already agreed that fascists encouraged limited private property but imposed government control over it. It's even in the NSDAP party program. Fascism and socialism have different ideologies and different economic systems but are both anti-capitalist.
You want to claim that socialism and fascism are both anti-capitalist? Even though fascism has no consistent economic policy? Uh huh.
Yes, that is what I want to claim. By analogy, people who are anti-Christian have no consistent religion. People who are anti-Windows have no consistent operating system (many of them even use Windows). People who are anti-sugar have no consistent sweetener. And nations that are anti-capitalist have no consistent economic policy between them. On top of that, many individuals who are politically anti-capitalist have obtained their money and power through capitalism.
I have said nothing about how I view politics,
You have said a lot about how you view politics, even if you don't realize it.
Slashdot Mirror
Incidentally, returning to an earlier point:
And, by the way, how is that different from the American left? Democrats favor private property rights, have been very laissez-faire at times (in the sense of Italy), have protected banks and corporations from domestic and foreign competition, and have nationalized businesses. In what specific way were Mussolini's policies different from the American left then?
Well, how utterly neutral of you.
My point remains: companies don't always make money by hindering competition instead of improving quality, they do so only if government passes laws that makes hindering competition more profitable than improving quality.
Well, I'm glad that you have looked up the facts now and agree that what you wanted already is the law of the land.
I did: Historically, the left-right distinction was simply one between revolutionaries vs reactionaries, and later between people who wanted social change and progress vs people who wanted to protect private property and free markets. I also said that Your view, that it is about power, is the view of neo-Marxism and critical theory; that's not a mainstream view, and more importantly, it's not a tenable view because the (neo-)Marxist analysis in terms of power is not internally consistent or consistent with reality."
I have listened to what you said, and I have responded to it: it's standard leftist drivel, in particular of the neo-Marxist variety. Unlike a neo-Marxist intellectual, you can't even give sources or justify it.
No doubt as a fool for neo-Marxists, you hate having to punch yourself in the face.
Funny, that's how corporate tax works. How did you think it worked?
Note that the auto industry has a net margin of about 2% and the auto parts industry has a net margin of about 5%, placing them below average among US industry sectors.
I agree, but those were created by governments supposedly for the benefit of society. You're saying you don't think they are for the benefit of society after all, and I tend to agree.
But you said:
It is only about "hindering competition" because government made it about hindering competition. Don't blame companies or markets for bad government incentives.
Seriously? "Most people" can't be bothered to look at expected repair costs or to find a well-reviewed independent repair shop on Yelp?
So you value your own time more than the money you could save by being a more informed buyer.
And why should I pay for your choice to remain ignorant?
Quite the opposite: that is the essence of a free market. Information itself is expensive. If we did what you say you want to do, government would have to set prices and enforce them, which is costly, inefficient, and usually corrupt. It is far better that buyers actually get a choice: you can spend the time informing yourself, or you can pay a premium for overpriced parts.
Because they are so cheap? Honda is one of the least expensive brands to maintain. Expected maintenance costs are the product of failure rate and parts cost.
Many people don't care about maintenance costs anyway; obviously, those people don't need to look.
This is why you look at car repair cost estimates before you buy your car, and use aftermarket parts when you can.
Apple is trying desperately to catch up on AI, buying startups and trying to hire like crazy, they're just not succeeding.
And not doing so well.
"Community" semantically and historically includes a notion of "fellowship" and "association". Your dictionary entry gives examples of communities but misses the essence of what they are. The dictionary.com definition is better:
community
noun, plural communities.
a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.
a locality inhabited by such a group.
a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists (usually preceded by the):
They are already doing all of that, since their "cash" is likely largely invested in the stock market. When Apple management believes that their special expertise in some technology area gives them a larger return on investment by investing that money more selectively, they'll do that, regardless of whether they blundered or not.
And again, so what? Apple displayed $250 billion of "weapons grade competence", so they are allowed $250 billion of "weapons grade incompetence".
What I "don't get" is why you think any of this is remarkable. This is how companies and markets are supposed to operate.
A bunch of people doing the same thing, or even having the same interests, is not a "community", so let's stop putting "community" after every group. What you're trying to say is simple: Some open source developers have opposed the move, with some already leaving the platform for alternative service.
I think the real question is: what was your point. You listed a bunch of irrelevant half-truths in response to an article about "OMG they are killing teh startups". In reality, you are simply seeing a competitive market in action. For some reason that seems to bother you.
Yes, apparently you do.
If Apple's business fails and only cash remains, then Apple shareholders are simply shareholders in cash. If Apple management decides to spend that cash to buy GM, then Apple shareholders become GM shareholders and existing GM shareholders get cashed out at market price; if they want to continue to be in GM's business, they can simply turn around and buy Apple shares with the cash they get, in place of the GM shares they used to own. The names on a bunch of stock certificates change. So what's the "big deal"?
That's how free markets are supposed to operate: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."
Companies are always trying to grab market share. But even if Dolby were to succeed at this as much as they like, they'd simply temporarily dominate the market, not monopolize it. You can bet that soon thereafter, if the feature mattered, some big company or an industry consortium would come out with some better, open source alternative.
How does Microsoft owning GitHub "break the open source world"? Even if Microsoft were to do something nefarious (like make unacceptable changes to the TOS), there are dozens of similar services around, or you can simply run GitLab as a hosted or containerized application.
Google didn't develop Android at all, they bought it. And Android development predates iPhone. Microsoft, Blackberry, Nokia, and Palm fumbled and lost the market, while Android and iOS won because they were better. But regardless of this history, that leaves the question: so what? You can get extremely powerful phones with excellent software from two companies now.
If Google or Apple fail to invest heavily in Android/iOS development, their platform will fail within a few years, just like all the previous mobile platforms. In fact, with the rise of AI, Android/iOS may start looking as cumbersome and obsolete to customers as Symbian OS did when it fell from grace.
So what?
I don't see what the problem is. If your startup consists of offering trivial technology, you get lots of competitors, including from established players. These companies weren't even the companies that were the first to commercialize their idea, they were simply companies that happened to make a name for themselves.
There are tons of startups that companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple have not been able to clone.
The definition comes from here (and is sourced there). It's reasonable and corresponds to common usage.
Yours is the laugh of an idiot. Yes, we're done here: rot in hell where evil pricks like you belong.
We're discussing the left-right distinction between ideologies. The definition we are using is "The Left seeks social justice through redistributive social and economic policies, while the Right defends private property and capitalism." Along this spectrum, political ideologies fall in various places. Now, the question is: was the stated ideology of fascism more that of private property and free markets, or was it more that of redistribution and social justice? Based on statements from Strasser, Hitler, and Mussolini, it's pretty clear that it was the latter.
You are correct that fascism didn't put its stated ideology into practice. But the same is true for socialism: socialism in practice frequently tolerates private property and market mechanisms, and socialism frequently results in massive inequality and injustice.
That's absurd; there are socialist political movements, socialist parties, and entire socialist states; it's obviously about politics. And in Marxism, socialism is not just an economic system, it's a state of society between democracy and communism; hence it isn't just about economics. But the imprecision in Marxist terminology is deliberate: it lets propagandist tweak their message to their audience. Another example is the term "capitalism", which sometimes refers to free markets, and at other times some kind of corporatism, industrialism, or the stock market.
You need to separate theoretical ideology from what followers of that ideology do; you are comparing what fascists did with theoretical socialist ideology.
Fascists and socialists both stated that they were anti-capitalist (by which they meant that they were against free markets and equity markets). Neither fascists nor socialists have implemented their anti-capitalism consistently because they can't: they would alienate supporters and ruin their economies. So, fascists and socialists were anti-capitalist in the same way: in theory, but not consistently in practice.
If you want to address any of the other commonalities between fascism and leftism, please feel free to do so.
Look, if you want to include "crony capitalism" as a kind of capitalism, then, fine, capitalism doesn't serve Russia. Of course, if you believe that crony capitalism is a kind of capitalism, then socialism is a kind of capitalism as well, since socialism is pretty much the ultimate in crony, state capitalism.
I defend free markets, private property, and small government. Those are the factors that help countries succeed. Socialism makes countries fail.
As you can see from the CBO graph., when you earn no money, you receive about $16000 in benefits and you don't "lose benefits if you start earning money". There are some small discontinuities at higher incomes, but they are pretty easy to fix. Why do you feel compelled to chime in on US policies when you don't know how things work in the US?
The real way to incentivize people to work is to give people who are capable of working but choose not to no welfare benefits at all, the exact opposite of a UBI.
Between its numerous welfare programs, the US already effectively has a "UBI":
Socialism is the correct term: it refers to many political and economic systems that involve state control of the means of production. It encompasses many related leftist ideologies other than Marxism (and predates Marx). The USSR called itself the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" because it was socialist. Communism refers to a society in which scarcity has been eliminated and both class and the state disappear. The reason parties call themselves "communist" is because that's the ideal they are striving for; the political system within which they want to accomplish that is socialism.
Now, back to the question of whether fascism is anti-capitalist. You quote from Wikipedia:
And how are those beliefs incompatible with being anti-capitalist? Many people (even today) oppose capitalism precisely because they claim that "economic concerns, being purely material, [are] unworthy of their consideration".
So he is saying he is a socialist but not a Marxist, a view shared by many socialists at the time, and many socialists today.
Yes, we already agreed that fascists encouraged limited private property but imposed government control over it. It's even in the NSDAP party program. Fascism and socialism have different ideologies and different economic systems but are both anti-capitalist.
Yes, that is what I want to claim. By analogy, people who are anti-Christian have no consistent religion. People who are anti-Windows have no consistent operating system (many of them even use Windows). People who are anti-sugar have no consistent sweetener. And nations that are anti-capitalist have no consistent economic policy between them. On top of that, many individuals who are politically anti-capitalist have obtained their money and power through capitalism.
You have said a lot about how you view politics, even if you don't realize it.