If (in some hypothetical way) businesses were capped at e.g. 15 staff - innovation would be slower, but it would be:

- More sustainable

- More locally adapted

- The supply chain ecosystem as a whole would be more resilient

- Damaging decisions by a few huge businesses would not outweigh good decisions from the other 99% of businesses, as happens today.

What we really mean when we say “capitalism” is just people freely engaging in agreements together. In such a free society, people will hurt and trample on each other. The right move is to rely on the Republic to represent our interests and prevent that trampling from crossing red lines that we all decide on.

You don’t need to stop people from freely making agreements and transacting together; you just need to have a functioning system of laws. Whether or not we have one is an exercise left to the reader.

Every billionaire is a policy failure.

"More poems, faster, cheaper!"

Endless endless endless corporate consolidation. All creative energies and impulses just get swept back up into the very large companies. There's a vital energy that's just missing from the market, a competition for labor that's empty, a competition for serving the world well/competing on value that's all just... gone.

And yet fascist leaders don't serve workers any better, they serve work. I suspect the descent into facism is not because of the workers' sentiment about democracy, but because of the forces that are severing the service too.

1. Everything is great. You either own a lot of capital or you think you will one day. You're fully in support of the current system;

2. There are problems but they can be fixed with a nicer, kinder capitalism, more regulation and so on. This essentially makes you a social democrat. This is still a pro-capitalist position, ultimately. You might also call yourself progressive; and

3. You believe that capitalism is fundamentally flawed and the problems of the current system, such as ever-widening wealth inequality, are an inveitable consequence of capitalism. This is the anti-capitalist position and makes you a leftist. You can't be a leftist and not be anti-capitalist.

Last century and going back to even the 2000s, tech companies and their founders were upstarts, rebels and often counter-cultural. That era is long gone. Some here might decry how often politics creeps into HN but all that's happened is that tech companies have gotten so large that they have become tools of the state. You can't be a rebel and a trillion dollar company. To maintain your status, you end up moving in lockstep with US domestic and foreign policy.

My point is there is no making this system more humane without overthrowing the US government, essentially. Imperialism is the highest form of capitalism and there is no true opposition to American imperialism in the mainstream US political system. Like, at all.

There will never be a just-a-little-exploitation capitalism coming from the bougies or their academic henchmen. They have to chase profit, that’s the game. A just-a-little-exploitation capitalism can only come from the working class fighting back. Then when that happens the bougies try to win their fair-share back and again and so we go back and forth, but only a few times not that many because of ecological breakdown.

The MSM has been pushing hard for establishment Rs and most Ds, and tech oligarchs were sinking money in D areas like Zuckerberg in WI in 2020. (A "maga" election, per the articles comment)

I agree that tech oligarchy shouldn't be influencing politics so much, but i dont think this makes Dems or anyone else 'fascist' necessarily.

That means this inherent inequality gives one group tremendous power over the other.

What we really need is a system that doesn't automatically promote psychopaths and sociopaths to the top, the more ruthless, the more money you make, despite the human cost. We need a system that doesn't value money/capital as much, but other outcomes.

And we especially don't need Billionaire Philanthropists. Pay the damn taxes. Yet, this is the site for the Temporary Embarrassed Billionaires, so I know how this will go over...