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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)L
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  • Public vs private ownership of companies is a case by case basis. Many “capitalist” countries have many publicly owned companies. We used to have even more before Thatcher and Reagan. Now we have moved into a more public private partnership idea, which is a compromise.

    Monopolies are able to extract monopoly rents through market power. This is one of the problems of rentier capitalism. That is why we have antitrust laws. We also need a system that prevents political rents from lobbyism for example by making it illegal for politicians to have stocks or to take campaign money from donors. We also have land rents from private land ownership. Singapore has a public land lease model, but a land value tax would achieve the exact same outcome.

    In economics you talk about natural monopolies which is when initial investment costs are too high for competitors to exist or when physics or other constraints prevent competition (think of a railway line between two cities). There are many ways to argue that these types of companies should be publicly owned within a capitalist framework.

    So yes, there is an in-between. And it depends exactly how much business is left to the government and how much is left to companies. This balance is defined by politics.

  • I’m getting a bit tired of seeing the communism/capitalism dichotomy. Guys let’s be pluralistic or at least see these two as a scale. There are a lot of solutions in between. Government failures exist just as much as market failures. Let’s focus on the actual root causes of our problems: externalities, rent seeking, private land ownership, too long patents, public good provision, overly complex legal system, information asymmetries in labor markets. We need unions, free health care, cheaper education, carbon taxes, land value taxes, simplified legal system that can’t be taken advantage of. Stop this capitalism vs communism bullshit. That’s not the cause of all this. Your real enemy is “rentier capitalism”.

  • How does this help “creative dressers”? And what trans overreach are you referring to?

  • For profit housing is not why the housing market is unaffordable. The housing market is unaffordable because of mortgage subsidies, overly restrictive zoning laws, and the fact that we tax buildings instead of land.

  • Yeah I also had to read the first title a few times before I realized they were saying the same thing. The change in word order makes you think the object and subject reversed.

  • Boycut companies with too much market power. They just happen to be quite concentrated in the US.

  • Fascism is not the same as capitalism. For capitalism to work properly, it is required that market power is minimized and that companies cannot influence politics. The fact that they have been able to do so is not capitalism.

    Milton Friedman – In Capitalism and Freedom (1962), he argues that government intervention should be minimal and that businesses should focus on profit rather than lobbying for special advantages. While he doesn’t explicitly state that capitalism requires private companies to stay out of politics, he warns against corporate influence leading to cronyism.

    Adam Smith – In The Wealth of Nations (1776), he warns against “the merchants and manufacturers” using their influence to gain monopolies and special privileges, which distort free competition. He emphasizes that capitalism works best when businesses do not manipulate laws in their favor.

    James Buchanan (Public Choice Theory) – Buchanan and other public choice theorists (like Gordon Tullock) argue that when businesses influence politics, they engage in rent-seeking, which distorts market efficiency. They emphasize that government should limit corporate lobbying to prevent economic inefficiencies.

    Luigi Zingales – A more recent economist, Zingales argues in A Capitalism for the People (2012) that corporate political influence undermines free markets and leads to a system of “crony capitalism,” where economic power translates into political power.