2,601 karma · joined March 2, 2009
Again, sample of one, so take with the grain of salt, do not draw generic conclusions, etc.
The less productive are the ones dragging their feet, coming up with excuses to stay home and hide as much as possible from peer scrutiny.
Almost like best engineers enjoy coming and working with the team, while the worst dread it.
I actually lived under both systems so at least I can speak from my experience. I learned on my own skin which one I'd "buy". I am willing to bet you've never lived in any of those socialist paradises you admire. Give it a try please and then come back and give us economy lessons.
Which country exactly? Oil-rich Norway has about 5 million people and is basically a democratic Saudi Arabia. Sweden has more billionaires per capita than the USA - quite far from the egalitarian society socialists dream about. And they all have strong capitalist economies, with multinational corporations and such.
> China
China enjoyed unprecedented growth when they decided to allow capitalism and free markets. Conversely that growth slowed and problems starting to appear when scared of the entrepreneurs success, Xi decided to reign them in.
Other A/B tests abound: Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, etc. My favorite is where I live, Eastern Europe. We were starving until we got rid of our socialist economies in the 90s and how we enjoy what is basically a luxury lifestyle: flights, cars, iPhones, city breaks and vacations in Greece.
> planet is burning
Do you think communist countries cared about the environment? They polluted even more. Read up on the Aral sea sometimes. Mao killed all the sparrows to such an extent they had to import new ones. Caring about nature is a luxury only rich people can afford. And only under capitalism people are allowed to create value and enrich themselves.
Investors will redirect their funds to friendlier jurisdictions. And entrepreneurs will go there too.
One the reasons European entrepreneurs go to the USA to start startups is exactly because the USA did not try this kind of shenanigans, while their native countries did.
As Margaret Thatcher said: “The problem with socialism is that at some point you run out of other people's money”.
Excuse me?! Cheating on your taxes is illegal. Minimizing your taxes is what everyone of us does - it is perfectly normal and justified behavior.
And the discussion was not about that - companies are paying their taxes just fine. The discussion was about governments colluding to form a cartel to uniformly raise taxes. That is not OK.
Even if the stated purpose is somehow justifiable, government collusion is not good for the people. By definition governments are natural monopolies, they don't have internal competition. The only competition keeping them in check is external. And it comes in two forms: destructive (wars) and constructive (free trade). Without competition democracy alone cannot keep governments in check - just witness the decay towards populism and autocracy together with the raise of left and right extremism of the Western governments during the last few years. We need alternatives. We, the people, need to be able to pack our bags and go to a place with values and laws better aligned to ours. Otherwise we will end up prisoners behind barbed wire on the borders like the Eastern Europe the Cold War or facing fines and exit taxes like certain countries already impose on their citizens today.
In a world of bigger and bigger governments, with larger and larger budgets and deficits but smaller and crappier results, inter-national competition is the only recourse we have left. For example, the EU would be supremely satisfied with itself right now if USA's economic performance didn't point out that the Emperor is naked.
> argue that if Apple doesn't pay taxes, all those gains are passed on to us
Yes, smaller costs for Apple directly translate in cheaper products for us or larger profits for its shareholders - which is also us. On the other hand, that money going to the tax man will fund millions of fat bureaucrat jobs and countless wasteful government programs out of which an extremely tiny part will actually benefit us.
> democratic governments (us)
Even if you think democratic governments represent us (a debatable idea at best, then logically you should want competition for them. Because like us, without competition, they go lazy, wasteful and abusive.
If companies did that - it's illegal. If government politicians do it - their populism brings them votes.
I definitely don't, especially pertaining to the actual question I asked:
>> participants are appraised based on the value they provide to the society
>How do you measure that? And who decides?
I wasn't talking about "pure free markets", I am not interested about philosophizing and talking politics - just concrete, real, actionable points.
LE: I live in the EU and saying Western European countries offer more economic freedom than the US is joke. The actual reality proves it: European economy has fallen badly behind the US. Reasons include overregulation, anti-business and anti-corporation climate.
But the "cheaper models" are still more expensive than what is Apple's Top Model. Which excels at my main usage scenario (being a smartwatch) and also superbly supports various secondary activities (like diving).
And, by the way, having to decide from all those models is not exactly a selling point. I am not primarily a diver, a skier, a runner, a hiker or a biker - but I occasionally do all of those.
With superb integration in the Apple ecosystem, apps for everything and cheaper prices for top hardware, Apple watch is the perfect default choice. It's Garmin's burden to convince me to switch and they are not succeeding.
> market where the people with the biggest guns can coerce
That is not a free market - free markets require rule of law to function.
> governing body only allow a single person to treat ill people
That is a heavily regulated market. Indeed, the less regulation on a market, the better it works.
Not idea what all this has to do with "fair" or what "fair markets" are.
Free markets on the other hand have already devised pretty effective ways to measure value and allocate resources.
How do you measure that? And who decides?
I get my groceries from a tiny neighbor market here in Eastern Europe. Usually from women of surrounding villages. Their main worries are in this order: raising market space fees (these go to the city) and new checks and rules they need to follow.
The closing of the small grocery store and producer can be mostly attributed to regulation.
Otherwise we’d have plenty of boutique retailers and producers charging more for better quality produce optimized for different factors.
Those chains must serve very large number of customers so they must focus on produce that is easy to pick, store and sell. Looks good and survives (even gets ripe during) transit. Taste is often secondary.
You wanna fight that? Fight all regulations for small and local producers, even if it sounds like it’s well intended (hygiene, quality standards, subventions). Talk to your representative about it too. Finally, buy local and from smallest producer you can find.
Then you would in effect discourage investing. Investing, which creates jobs and promotes innovation. Is as simple as that.
Except the people doing the actual paying, with their own money, voted twice to do it.
For example, consider IP addresses as PII. (This is of course not clearly specified by the GDPR). Then analytics processing them needs consent. Thus cookie popup.
Anything else is interpretation unproven in court.
A bad law, an ambiguous law compels you to be defensive and take precautions. Cookie banners are one of many such defenses and everybody seems to be doing it, validating our strategy.
Thanks for your advice, but unless you are willing to defend me in court and put your money where your mouth is, with all due respect, I will consider its value to be exactly how much I paid for it.
Their position was simple: my team uses 3rd party analytics tools (no ads or anything) so IPs will be passed and cookies will be stored. We don’t control them, we don’t know what kind, if they can be considered personal info or not (GDPR is intentionally vague - classic bad law). So we need to be extra careful since our regulator is not a sane one like the UK’s. Thus: follow the common practice - cookie banner. End of story.