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lieber-tot-als-rot

lieber-tot-als-rot:

You know what annoys me?

When Europeans act like Americans are idiots for not knowing where a European city is, or a figure or event in history.

But then if you ask them “where’s South Carolina” or “what was bleeding Kansas” or “who was McCarthy” and they’re like “???? Idk, why would I need to know that”

It’s not that Americans are idiots or uneducated, it’s that we have had a different education and know different things

We don’t know where x city is, when y happened or who z is, for the same reason you don’t know where Idaho is, when the Mexican American war was, and who Woodrow Wilson is.

tiffanarchy

tiffanarchy:

chrisray-the-lariat-king:

tiffanarchy:

chrisray-the-lariat-king:

tiffanarchy:

The struggle between my love affair with the market and my vehement opposition to corporatism and congested corporate bureaucracy is giving me a headache

Part of the reason I like markets is that they shake things up so much for entrenched interests.  It’s okay to be down with a company making tractors without supporting John Deere’s patent fuckery

Markets are beautiful, organic, and inevitable. At the very base-level, the very core, markets are just people interacting with each other to mutual benefit. That’s why the arise, that’s why they flourish, that’s why they persist.

While there exist undeniable indicators of mutual benefit between the corporate employee and their employer, and while some level of material inequality may very well be a natural byproduct of a (free) market, economic power is not ultimately in the hands of the individual. I think a lot of market enthusiasts and otherwise decent ancaps/voluntarist types are doing themselves and market ideology a disservice to blatantly ignore that in their defense.

In the sense that many market enthusiasts often don’t focus on failures of firms and companies in the market I think that is true, but when you start going into the history of all the companies that were once seemingly invincible that tanked in the long run you find that groups of individuals acting for all manner of personal reasons have had a huge hand in wielding immense economic power.  That Circuit City went out of business was a group effort, organized by a huge degree of spontaneous order as it were, same goes for Radioshack.  

Are you saying that people should focus more on how one person simply doesn’t have the power to harm Apple’s goofy ass by themselves, or are you thinking more along the lines that millions of individuals couldn’t harm Apple’s bottom line if they didn’t buy the new shitty iPhone?  

Are you only talking purely private interactions in the market here, or are you also including companies that gain economic power through government edicts?  Like, when I think bloated corporatist bureacracy, I immediately think of companies that do everything they can to insulate themselves from competition through political power.  I’m just trying to pinpoint the disservice here

I’m thinking on the micro-level, which is admittedly the bulk of my economic education and understanding, and where I derive most of my opinions and critiques. This is not to say I know absolutely nothing in regard to macro econ, but my understanding there is weaker.

Depending on where you live geographically (let’s stay within the US for now), and depending on a wide variety of other circumstances, some inside and some outside your control, your opportunities for making a decent living that supports a happy, fulfilled life may be slim to none. Self-determination, drive, and entrepreneurial innovation can only take a person so far before they are, for lack of a better word, forced to accept employment below their capabilities that pays below what they could potentially make should their value be recognized. And even for those who are highly skilled, highly driven, and adequately paid, they still find themselves often beholden to an artificially imposed hierarchy (described as “overhead”) that thwarts progress, innovation, and improvement. 

You are right to point out that much corporatist bureaucracy exists largely for the purpose of acquiring and maintaining political clout, however there seems to be this acceptance among market supporters that once the state is simply plucked from the market, surgically extracted from all economic interaction, the massive, bloated corporations existing today will slim down a bit, but ultimately continue operating business as usual. I reject that idea not only as an unrealistic and naive one  but as horrifying and repulsive in concept.

I guess what I really want is to see more enthusiasm for the dissolution and abolition of the corporation and powerful business conglomerates for the sake of the market and the freedom of the individual. I want to see more discussion of alternative business models that defy the expectations set by the cluster fuck of market predecessors. And I want to see more open-mindedness in the face of market critiques, even if the conclusions of those critiques is faulty or misguided. Just because someone has a bad understanding of economics in general doesn’t mean they are unable to identify real problems in the real world that deserve a discussion of real solutions.