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Cake day: July 16th, 2023

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  • OldWoodFrame@lemm.eetoComic Strips@lemmy.worldWater into Wine
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    5 months ago

    This is actually (spoilers for terrible movie Scales: Mermaids Are Real) the climax of the movie Scales. Mermaids can control water and their blood heals people in that movie, so hunters are trying to get their blood and then one guy tries a last ditch bad guy move and the main character pulls all the water out of his body and he horrifically melts.

    Kind of made me side with the hunters at that point it’s a horrifying power.


  • We don’t know.

    The US came back from a US president hiring private goons to spy on his political opponents.

    The US came back from a US president illegally selling weapons to Iran to fund right wing militias in South America.

    The US came back from a US cabinet member taking literal bribes from oil companies to give them oil drilling rights on federal land.

    The US came back from a US president illegally firing a cabinet member and installing his own lackey.

    But it didn’t HAVE to.

    I don’t think there’s really such a thing as a ‘point of no return’ for a Democracy. But it is possible to get to a point after which you don’t return.
















  • Why would it be more corrupt? Why do you believe Small Businesses are fine?

    It’s more concentrated power. The opportunity for more corruption. Sure, they could be philosopher kings at first but having the control means someone can have the control corruptly.

    I don’t necessarily believe all small businesses are fine, but their interests compete with each other, and they’re small, by definition. And we already have regulations that apply to all businesses, there is democratic control in some sense. So I’m not worried about how the corruption of one small business owner would warp society or national interest.

    Markets themselves inevitably result in those unregulated behemoths,

    I agree with this premise and then not the conclusion. Inevitably, all behemoths were once small businesses. But is the correct intervention to stop the small businesses from forming in the first place, or to prevent the ones that get big from utilizing that size in an asocial way? You could socialize businesses of a certain size, for example. You could set rules for worker-elected board members, or whatever.


  • What’s your issue with Central Planning, other than vibes?

    I’m not a theorist obviously, but it seems like it’s inherently going to be a limited number of decision makers who can’t possibly know everything, and they become a bottleneck to business creation at best, a corruption machine at worst. I know I wouldn’t trust the government of half (or more but my point is, Republicans) the current US states to decide what business are allowed to exist.

    I know the retort is of course that we have corruption now, but I’d think if we’re theorizing, there’s a better way to reduce extant corruption than introducing a new vector for even more corruption. And there’s a way to harness the power of people starting small businesses freely without letting those businesses become unregulated behemoths.

    Like just set the criteria you would be telling the Central Planning Authority to prioritize, and do that with regulation. Set an ownership tax so that as a business gets bigger the ownership moves away from the founder and into the public trust.


  • OldWoodFrame@lemm.eetoLefty Memes@lemmy.dbzer0.comSimple, really
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    11 months ago

    The potential for regulatory capture and corruption, as well as the inherent inefficiency of having a limited number of decision makers. I wouldn’t trust the 2028 Trump Administration to thoughtfully determine which businesses are allowed to exist for 4 years.

    It’s more democratic to let anyone start a business, rather than having a gatekeeper. But more importantly I think it makes more sense to let the capitalists take the losses if their business idea sucks, and then socializing the gains once we know it works.