The experiment that keeps Appalachia poor, sick, and stuck on coal

qz.com

13 points·aaronbrethorst··3 comments

"For much of the hundred-plus years of its existence, the industry has been on a kind of artificial life support, as state and federal governments have, directly and indirectly, subsidized coal companies to keep the industry afloat."

That is not capitalistic as the article claims.

"A deeply cynical capitalist experiment has taken place, in which coal companies are kept profitable by passing on the costs they incur to the public."

This is corporate welfare. I hate how this sort of thing is being labelled capitalistic, most who support capitalism hate this sort of thing.

The deep mutual dependency between firms and governments in capitalism and the distorting effect that had on policy is a feature observed by Marx and other contemporary critics who coined the term “capitalism” for the then-dominant system in the developed West.

Whatever the fantasy system you have in mind that lacks this feature is, it's not capitalism, that name's already been taken for the system in which this is a central problem.

> Whatever the fantasy system you have in mind that lacks this feature is, it's not capitalism, that name's already been taken for the system in which this is a central problem.

Anymore, the vast majority of times people say "capitalist system", I believe they mean "market economy". Because of this, although I would agree that the letter of what OP was false (capitalism [a term coined by Marx] does not include corporate/government corruption), his intent is true as soon as you replace "capitalism" with "market economy", and because of this, discrediting his point that people bash market economies based on the corruption that ought to be excluded from them seems intellectually disingenuous.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com