If we spent half as much money helping people with recovery as we spend incarcerating them, there would be a lot of improvement. There are addicts that are tired of being addicts but can’t get help. I’m talking about in patient treatment plans where they can be monitored and assisted with various methods to deal with withdrawal.
Free market capitalism only works when there is competition. Big companies buying out the competition to limit consumer choices and effectively stall innovation is exactly the things the government should be protecting against to keep the ‘free market’ thriving.
Wish I'd known that it was difficult to become homeless back when I was. It seemed really easy at the time, all you had to do was get evicted. Not sure how it could be easier now.
I think what they meant was that it's easier than ever to be homeless.
In many places you can't be thrown in jail for being homeless anymore. Many cities have more housing and shelters and free kitchens than ever before. Some places even give you a smartphone and basic plan. Etc.
I think they literally just use React as a templating language, basically. You write React components and this service renders them down to email-friend HTML. Like SSR but for email.
A part of me still routinely wants Jon Stewart to move to Tennessee and run for the Turtle’s Congressional seat, on a platform of veteran and emergency worker welfare if nothing else.
You can derail any discussion by asking for definitions. Human languages is magical in the sense that we can't rigorously define anything (try "Love", "Excitement", "Emancipation" or anything else, really) yet we still seem to be able to have meaningful discussions.
So just because we can't define it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
It's not a derail, it's an attempt to understand the other person. If I say Thing is bad and you say Thing is good but we haven't actually defined Thing, then we could be talking past each other and not actually be in disagreement. Text over the Internet is such a limited medium.
There is more than one usage described in that article.
This is the relevant one in this particular thread:
> Among American conservatives, woke has come to be used primarily as an insult.[4][29][42] Members of the Republican Party have been increasingly using the term to criticize members of the Democratic Party,
If the two options are a) everybody except the rich get hurt and b) everybody including the rich get hurt, then I think the majority of Americans would go with b.
B is definitely where we're at. Many Americans are tired of watching the rich get bailed out with socialism-for-the-rich-not-for-the-poor. Meanwhile the not-rich continue to struggle in every aspect of life, from food to housing. And blame is placed squarely on the rich, who have a greater voice in the elected government.
No. That is called crony capitalism. True capitalism would let these banks burn and allow those who saved or have capital buy them up. No gov intervention allowed.
No, it's just called "capitalism". The thing you call cronyism is a core feature, not a bug: under capitalism, the capitalist class advances its own interests.
Please stop trying to redefine basic terminology to suit your agenda.
Yes, but we're disagreeing about the specific meaning of words. Capitalism describes an economy where capital is the mechanism through which goods and services are allocated. It is not the partnership of public and private entities, as you suggest. That would be crony capitalism.
That page describes how "crony capitalism" is used colloquially. Dictionaries are not a great source for determining canonical meaning of complex political terminology.
I argue that usage of the term "crony capitalism" is itself a form of capitalist ideology.
The socio-economic system where social relations are based on commodities for exchange, in particular private ownership of the means of production and on the exploitation of wage labour.
Wage labour is the labour process in capitalist society: the owners of the means of production (the bourgeoisie) buy the labour power of those who do not own the means of production (the proletariat), and use it to increase the value of their property (capital). In pre-capitalist societies, the labour of the producers was rendered to the ruling class by traditional obligations or sheer force, rather than as a “free” act of purchase and sale as in capitalist society.
Value is increased through the appropriation of surplus value from wage labour. In societies which produce beyond the necessary level of subsistence, there is a social surplus, i.e. people produce more than they need for immediate reproduction. In capitalism, surplus value is appropriated by the capitalist class by extending the working day beyond necessary labour time. That extra labour is used by the capitalist for profit; used in whatever ways they choose.
The main classes under capitalism are the proletariat (the sellers of labour power) and the bourgeoisie (the buyers of labour power). The value of every product is divided between wages and profit, and there is an irreconcilable class struggle over the division of this product.
It probably doesn't need to be said, but it's pretty obvious the bias in that definition.
There is no singular definition of capitalism, but many others would differ on the distinction you've drawn from earlier posts. E.g., a system based on the reinvestment of excess profits does not necessarily equate to crony-capitalism. It seems your issue is with the person using the word "socialism" to describe a social ill of crony capitalism. But there is a distinction there that is being muddled in the conversation.
Can you coherently define "crony capitalism" and explain how it's not a fallacious no-true-Scotsman defense of "real capitalism" (or whatever term you prefer)?
Capitalism disallows private and public collusion beyond what is necessary to ensure public goods, defined by those gods which are nonexcludable and nonrivalous.
How does capitalism "disallow" any of that? Where is your evidence that disallowing this is a stated goal under capitalism?
I think you're confusing "free market" USAmerican right-Libertarian ideology with capitalism itself.
Capitalism, simply put, is defined as private ownership over the means of production, and the people who have that ownership are called the capitalist class. None of that precludes any sort of collusion.
Such collusion (and other things, such as child labor) was commonplace in the Western world recently and is still commonplace elsewhere — capitalists still wail and cry foul when legislation, no matter how toothless or perfunctory, is introduced to curtail such behavior.
You’re confusing what is a central tenet and what may occur as an outcome of a poorly executed version of the principle. By that same logic, tyrannical despots could be argued as a stated goal of socialism.
>You’re confusing what is a central tenet and what may occur as an outcome of a poorly executed version of the principle.
Where does capitalism define "non cronyism" as a central tenet? Can you point to a working example of "non-crony" capitalism?
>By that same logic, tyrannical despots could be argued as a stated goal of socialism.
A central tenet of socialism is that is rejects despotism and tyranny. Supporters of socialism explicitly reject tyrannical behavior and seek to root it out if it appears.
On the other hand, capitalists cheer every time they wield state power to enrich themselves and excuse it as "just business".
Competition is a central tenet of capitalism. Collusion, particularly collusion between govt and private enterprise, aims to modify the system to reduce competition. So it follows that such collusion is a perversion that goes against the central tenets of capitalism. Which is why is gets a separate name, like crony capitalism, to differentiate it.
It’s no different than saying “dictatorial socialism”. The fact that a rather simple distinction has to be explained multiple times by multiple people becomes a chore and a Sisyphean task when it is clear someone doesn’t want to acknowledge the difference.
I don't think those are the only two options though. b) The rich now have less billions but still billions and everyone else now has to budget even harder.
If you think about what some of these events are it makes sense because the human population continues to grow and having more people and more money means we are constantly setting new high scores.
