Dat inequality

[CoccoBill]

This view of snake oil salesmen running off with the cash as his company dies is mostly a myth. It's not that people wouldn't try it, but that responsibilities and incentives don't align with the idea that one man can or would do this (to the degree that it's a systemic risk). Nobody at Google could do this. Nobody at Amazon, nobody at Goldman, nobody at GE. The responsibilities are way too dispersed. There are shareholders.

I didn't mean embezzlement but hiding facts from the customers. Every company is run by people, which most of the time have their own best interests first. If they're left with a choice of admitting a fault with something in their personal field of responsibilities, or hiding it and getting away with it until they've left the company, I'm pretty sure many would be tempted. Everybody at Google, Amazon and Goldman could do this, and many have. My point was, in answer to your question, that companies are run by people, and most of them couldn't care less about what their clients think when their personal ass is on the line.

Even if you scenario was true, how do you suppose regulators could regulate against it? This is more of the "perfect being the enemy of the good" thing. It's an assumption that if capitalism is flawed, government can necessarily fill the gap. That isn't true and every bit of evidence we have is that government is inherently terrible at filling these gaps. This should be an open and shut concept given the fact that there are millions of felons for smoking weed. Renton once told me that he thinks people are bred to believe in the state, so it becomes like blasphemy to suggest otherwise, and we so easily ignore colossal examples of how government destroys lives to far, far, far, far greater degrees than private enterprise ever has

What about drug laws in Colorado, the Netherlands or Portugal? I would argue that those are government regulations in place that demonstrably work well. Of course it's hard to say what would happen if all drugs were completely unregulated, maybe that could be the optimal solution. But I also don't think an issue like this can be proven one way or the other with just a single or even several case examples.

These are the assumptions, but not how it falls down. Companies "finding loopholes in their policies" is a capability given to them by government, so it's not market concern.

I meant internal company policies, such as insurance policies. We'll always have regulations, whether mandated by public or private actors. Again, the public sector policies at least in theory have the citizen's best interests in mind, the private sector aims solely for ROI.

That aside, companies trying to create more wealth is good, pretty much regardless how it's done. The reason is because there are other companies doing the same thing and consumers are choosing the winners.

Unless when the competition isn't fair, because of for example false advertizing (which again, may correct itself over time, but not as soon as it can), unethical business practices, etc. And I know, some of these may be created by government regulation, which is a case against bad regulations and lobbied governments, not against all regulations and governments. While it's easy and tempting to demonize governments, it's important to remember that at least for you in the US, your frame of reference is an overbloated lobbied caricature of one, not the "hey, I just wanna farm and get drunk, let's vote in a bunch of smart people to take care of this administrative shit for us" it was meant to be.

The last thing companies can get away with is screwing customers. Just look at how in the US (where the capitalist ideal is most held), "the customer is always right" is a thing. Restaurants exist in one of the freest markets around, and every single one of them bends over backwards to please the customer, even when the customer is wrong, because the customer really isn't "wrong" because the easiest thing in the world would be for him to go next door and help the competition

Yup, that's true. But why is that health inspections regularly find stuff like rat and poo in pizzas when the market was supposed to make them all clean? How is the market stopping someone from serving you terd pizzas for a few months, then opening with a new name in another part of town and continue doing the same after someone finding out? I would argue the cleanliness of the kitchens, effective cold storage chains and molecular consistencies of their dinners are more often revealed by official health inspections than avid customers.

As for what you said about government incentives being about public safety and stuff, that's true to a small percentage, but because there is little accountability, it becomes a burden for bureaucracies. How many videos of cops beating or killing innocent civilians in the US have you watched? How many times have you seen these cops punished? Just like with companies, in bureaucracies, the incentive is self-perpetuation. But unlike in companies, in bureaucracies, there is little accountability for results since their revenue streams are not based on results. If McDonalds was acting like the LAPD, it would be bankrupted within a month. If people try to stop the LAPD when they're hurting somebody, they get put through extensive legal trouble and usually into prison.

I feel those are more examples that are largely US specific, I think in most countries cops beating up and killing innocents is not a big issue. So again, an argument against one specific implementation of governance, not an argument against governance. And more to the point, I meant the "theoretical" incentive of a government is the citizens best interest, while for a company that is shareholder value.

The word "corruption" probably wouldn't exist except for government. Since government has little accountability, its incentives align more with fraud and coercion than with results.

You're probably right. Doesn't mean that people become corrupt when working for the government or stop being such when working for a company, just that different words are used, or at least different legal terms.

I think a lot of people from the relatively small areas where government doesn't suck nearly as much (like Scandinavia) are wrong if they are to call government a driver of the good in their societies. Those regions are healthy and unified because the populace is healthy and unified, and government was not the creator of that.

The governments are, or at least should be reflections of their populace, nothing more nothing less. If they're not, the wrong people got voted in. I'd suggest basic IQ, history and psychological testing in order to be allowed to vote.

Sorry about monsterpost.