No relation to the sports channel.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Thing is, the economists are right about free markets being a good idea; and free markets depend on a certain kind of regulation to exist. The trouble with capitalism is that it’s never been a reliable ally of freedom of any sort; going back to the origins of capitalism in the private funding of colonial slaver monopolies. The association of capitalism with free markets is largely propaganda; capitalism started with colonial slaver monopolies like the VOC; to a first approximation every firm wants to be a monopoly, and a great way of doing that is political corruption; see today’s USA.

    But there’s a reason every government since ever — from empires to democracies — has done things like standardize weights & measures, build public goods like roads to enable trade, and establish courts of law to enforce contracts and fair dealing. Those things are really good ideas! And I’m not sure I can credit the left-anarchist proposals to replace them any more than I can credit the anarcho-capitalist ones.

    Mutualism sure has some nice ideas though.