Meanwhile we don’t live in free markets. We live in oligarchies — analogous to capitalist dictatorship — where your level of representation and justice is proportional to your wealth, and our “representatives” actively collude with the oligarchs to exploit, deceive, and extract wealth from the working class.
It would be true. Except this only works in a genuinely free market. We’ve not had a really free market for a long time now. The people at the top are just not competing as would be required to make an open and free market work.
A genuinely free market would be even worse. We do have various protections in the US. If we had zero, companies would be dumping waste and giving everyone super-cancer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swill_milk_scandal
I had a conversation with a coworker a while ago where he was like, “Well I just wouldn’t buy the swill milk.”
I was like, "How would you know??
The utter hubris of that kind of person thinking they’re going to like spin up a whole chemistry lab to check the quality of everything they buy. The insanity of thinking that’s a good world to envision.
The people at the top are just not competing as would be required to make an open and free market work.
Which seems to be an inevitability, unless state power is used to force the people at the top to play by the rules. But don’t most liberals consider that authoritarianism? It seems to me whenever something like that is mentioned, there is much hand wringing and clutching of pearls at the thought of such big government overreach.
It is, but when people talk about a free market preventing this. They would be right when there’s genuine competition. However at some point, there’s always going to be a better upside for those at the top to collaborate, in order to share the far far more cash they can extract from everyone below them when they do.
It’s just, it’s no longer fashionable to put on a face of decency. They’re full mask off now.
Power yields only to power, so yes, that’s one option. Ultimately it’s going to come down to “Play nice or we’re going to shoot you”, and it’s a question of how many layers of politeness soften the threat.
So. Ultimately, yes. But I think their hold on politicians all over the west has not loosened yet. But governments will need to do something at some point. Not least because if AI and robotics continues to remove the number of available roles humans are required for, and the number of humans needed for the roles that do remain we’ll reach a point where not enough tax is being paid. But in any case there is a definite feeling that while those that were middle class and above were safe until now, I would argue they’re targeting everyone who isn’t in the 1% now to try to siphon more upwards so that they can become the 0.1%.
Recall that the only trickle down economics that exists is the tax system. Those with money don’t pay tax. But they do pay the employees that pay taxes. Pretty much all the taxes. There will be a critical point where there will be too many people unemployed, or just not paid enough to be covering the cost of the benefits systems, especially those over here in Europe etc. It should be no surprise why those on the right that are seeking power and are backed by those with money, are also wanting to shut things down like the social healthcare system here in the UK as an example. Eventually these will collapse if things continue how they are.
Governments will need to collect money from those people they’ve always been happy to give a free ride. Either that, or there will be a revolution. Again, no surprise the richest people are building bunkers/otherwise finding hideaways for themselves. They know the end result of their way of life.
When talking about this, I generally say we’ve not hit the bottom yet. We’ve not reached the worst this will get yet. We have some way to go and things are likely to get pretty bad.
So in summary, yes it will be needed. Don’t hold your breath for seeing anything like that kind of action any time soon. It’ll take a lot more visible depravity before they’re forced to act.
I’m not writing a wikipedia article here[1]. Just writing a comment on what is just an internet forum.
[1] https://kbin.life/m/[email protected]/t/588402/CEO-pay-soared-in-2025-20-times-faster-than-workers/comment/7663743#entry-comment-7663743 “just a comment” posted to kbin.life, part of the threadiverse.
I’m calling bullshit on any idea suggesting there was more than 30 seconds of a “really free market” at some point in any modern countries history that could qualify the “we”
Right. I mean I don’t know how far back we’d need to go to find a truly free market, possibly before we have the concept of money. I think fair is also too subjective for me to give any real definitive article for too.
Liberal economists will say this is perfectly fine. They’ll say The Market™ has decided and it’s never wrong.
Meanwhile we don’t live in free markets. We live in oligarchies — analogous to capitalist dictatorship — where your level of representation and justice is proportional to your wealth, and our “representatives” actively collude with the oligarchs to exploit, deceive, and extract wealth from the working class.
I like to call it neo-feudalism.
What did Neo do to deserve such slander?!
He was a pawn of the Architect and Oracle.
It’s kinda funny that the hero of the human species, who could read the code and “see the matrix”, was also being played like a fiddle.
Neo-liberal maybe. But just about every economist I have heard says the wealth disparity is bad.
Neoliberal economists are liberal economists. It’s literally in the name.
Yeah, I don’t know what atomicbooks is on about… Wealth disparity is the point of liberalism
It would be true. Except this only works in a genuinely free market. We’ve not had a really free market for a long time now. The people at the top are just not competing as would be required to make an open and free market work.
A genuinely free market would be even worse. We do have various protections in the US. If we had zero, companies would be dumping waste and giving everyone super-cancer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swill_milk_scandal
I had a conversation with a coworker a while ago where he was like, “Well I just wouldn’t buy the swill milk.”
I was like, "How would you know??
The utter hubris of that kind of person thinking they’re going to like spin up a whole chemistry lab to check the quality of everything they buy. The insanity of thinking that’s a good world to envision.
Which seems to be an inevitability, unless state power is used to force the people at the top to play by the rules. But don’t most liberals consider that authoritarianism? It seems to me whenever something like that is mentioned, there is much hand wringing and clutching of pearls at the thought of such big government overreach.
It is, but when people talk about a free market preventing this. They would be right when there’s genuine competition. However at some point, there’s always going to be a better upside for those at the top to collaborate, in order to share the far far more cash they can extract from everyone below them when they do.
It’s just, it’s no longer fashionable to put on a face of decency. They’re full mask off now.
Yes, the mask is fully off. So, again, won’t state power be needed to reign these people in?
Power yields only to power, so yes, that’s one option. Ultimately it’s going to come down to “Play nice or we’re going to shoot you”, and it’s a question of how many layers of politeness soften the threat.
So. Ultimately, yes. But I think their hold on politicians all over the west has not loosened yet. But governments will need to do something at some point. Not least because if AI and robotics continues to remove the number of available roles humans are required for, and the number of humans needed for the roles that do remain we’ll reach a point where not enough tax is being paid. But in any case there is a definite feeling that while those that were middle class and above were safe until now, I would argue they’re targeting everyone who isn’t in the 1% now to try to siphon more upwards so that they can become the 0.1%.
Recall that the only trickle down economics that exists is the tax system. Those with money don’t pay tax. But they do pay the employees that pay taxes. Pretty much all the taxes. There will be a critical point where there will be too many people unemployed, or just not paid enough to be covering the cost of the benefits systems, especially those over here in Europe etc. It should be no surprise why those on the right that are seeking power and are backed by those with money, are also wanting to shut things down like the social healthcare system here in the UK as an example. Eventually these will collapse if things continue how they are.
Governments will need to collect money from those people they’ve always been happy to give a free ride. Either that, or there will be a revolution. Again, no surprise the richest people are building bunkers/otherwise finding hideaways for themselves. They know the end result of their way of life.
When talking about this, I generally say we’ve not hit the bottom yet. We’ve not reached the worst this will get yet. We have some way to go and things are likely to get pretty bad.
So in summary, yes it will be needed. Don’t hold your breath for seeing anything like that kind of action any time soon. It’ll take a lot more visible depravity before they’re forced to act.
Citation needed.
I’m not writing a wikipedia article here[1]. Just writing a comment on what is just an internet forum.
[1] https://kbin.life/m/[email protected]/t/588402/CEO-pay-soared-in-2025-20-times-faster-than-workers/comment/7663743#entry-comment-7663743 “just a comment” posted to kbin.life, part of the threadiverse.
I’m calling bullshit on any idea suggesting there was more than 30 seconds of a “really free market” at some point in any modern countries history that could qualify the “we”
Right. I mean I don’t know how far back we’d need to go to find a truly free market, possibly before we have the concept of money. I think fair is also too subjective for me to give any real definitive article for too.