Discussing ideas is not the same as getting my philosophy blindly from what people say on the internet.

What you worry about, being led astray by a narrow view, is precisely what I worry about in people like you. If someone is unwilling to talk about their ideas or hear others out, which is what you did, then they are less likely to hear good reason to rethink their world view.

Likewise, if you are unable to summarize your ideas in conversational form, I have low confidence in believing you understand the things you say. An expert in a scientific field is almost always able to explain more complicated theories in simpler ways that the layman can understand. If a theory can’t be explained to a layman, it’s effectively useless.

You’re also suggesting that the reason I’m here is to finally get a grasp on all these theories I’ve heard about but never learned. That’s not what’s happening, and I already told you that explicitly. I am here to talk to you about what you think. That’s normal and should be understood as normal.

No I actually just wanted to have a conversation with someone who has thoughts of their own to share. Could imagine if you asked someone what they thought about something and that just handed you an essay written by someone else? Would you have any confidence that this person has any thoughts at all?

And if you pointed that out to them, what would you think if their response was nothing but condescending?

You have not come across very well here. I was not trying to contradict or dismiss, I was looking for an honest conversation. Your constant assumptions that I am a bad faith party have directly resulted in you acting in bad faith yourself, and now you’ve proudly defended an act of pure ignorance.

You need to stop assuming you’re better than people, because you will only make yourself worse.

3 times in a row you simply linked something without typing. Do you ever think for yourself? Tell me with your own words. I want to know what you think, not what the internet thinks

Because we have limited resources, no riches can come to you without profiting from the work of others.

Why is this true, and why is this a problem?

look for yourself how rich people got their wealth and judge by yourself is that normal.

In almost all cases I can think of, a rich person became rich because they provided a product or service that others saw value in, and this generally works for the betterment of civilization.

Ford got rich off cars, the people benefitted by gaining access to transportation. JP Morgan got rich off trains, same thing, he provided a transportation service that people willfully used. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs gave us home computers, despite whatever your opinion is for each of them. Jeff Bezos got rich because he made the online marketplace so ridiculously easy to use, a service people enjoy and see value in.

This is the principle reason they got rich in all of these cases: they sold something the people wanted, at a price they were willing to.

Some moderately rich people are actually contributing positively.

Can you describe what some of these moderately rich people are doing better than the mega rich people?

But the true goal of society would be to distribute riches correctly in the first place.

Why is this the goal of society? How do you determine it’s been distributed correctly?

And how were they being exploitative?

Land value tax is simply unjustifiable, because land is the most important thing to leave in private hands. To allow for land tax is to concede that the state has a right to the land you own. The problems that has directly lead to in history are innumerable. From Rome to Russia, state control of land was at the forefront of their issues.

Why do you think reducing their wealth is a moral good? If you want to improve life for some people, your focus should not be on reducing wealth for others. The latter does not necessarily lead to the former, and it’s an inherently destructive mindset. Destroying one person’s wealth merely destroys their wealth, it does not make others lives better by default

What predatory practices?

My point of view is that the money all capitalist have is a resource that was taken from the rest of us.

Why?

you’re right we also need to figure out a plan to distribute it properly in the first place

I didn’t suggest that. Redistribution of resources doesn’t work, because people don’t easily comply with their wealth being taken away. This idea requires the assumption that it’s not theirs to begin with, so we’re back to the first question: why is a capitalist’s wealth not rightfully theirs?

Historical precedence says you’re wrong. Rockefeller, a prominent capitalist and thus commonly demonized by anti-capitalists, supported initiatives to combat hunger. His foundation provided substantial funding for soup kitchens during the great depression, and his foundation has continued to focus on public health, education, and scientific research.

JP Morgan, “the ghost of rich dudes passed”, was also philanthropic as fuck. He didn’t donate food directly, but his efforts supported educational institutions, scientific research, and the arts.

Even Elon Musk has a foundation that studies renewable energy research, space exploration, pediatric research, and more, all at cost for the betterment of the world. In fact, when it was especially popular to point out that his wealth could end poverty entirely, he started directly asking people for their metrics and potential methods. He was clearly ready to put resources into fixing a problem, but nothing ever came of it because no one actually had real metrics or methods, they just wanted a reason to dunk on Elon.

Okay so those are just some guys I already knew about, what if I just pick a random “capitalist” name I hear commonly thrown around. Carnegie, sure, not sure what he did but I know I’ve seen his name besmirched for being capitalist aaaaand yep look at that! In his older age he donated most of his wealth to the establishment of public libraries, educational institutions, and foundations aimed at promoting world peace. I literally had no idea about any details of this guy’s life, but yeah, it’s not surprising that a successful prominent capitalist lived a life of philanthropy in his later years, because that’s the more consistent pattern.

Have you ever once even tried to look into whether what you believe is true or not? Or would you just rather hate a label you’ve been told to hate?

They aren’t manufactured, you have to buy them from people second hand.

I’m not assuming that actually. None of those jobs are particularly hard. Check out baggers are not overworked.

Checkout baggers are not overworked…

The middle ages ended in 1453 with the fall of Constantinople, which coincided with the birth of the Renaissance in Italy having already taken place.

The Iroquois Confederacy was founded (most likely) in the 1500s, with the earliest record of the first capital being in 1609.

The United States itself was founded in the 1700s.

Their comment was correct, the Iroquois Confederacy was founded during the age of the Renaissance and our modern conception of America came much later

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State: State, political organization of society, or the body politic, or, more narrowly, the institutions of government.

Government: the governing body of a nation, state, or community.

Corporation:

• a company or group of people authorized to act as a single entity (legally a person) and recognized as such in law.
• specific legal form of organization of persons and material resources, chartered by the state, for the purpose of conducting business.
• Also from Britannica: “As contrasted with the other two major forms of business ownership, the sole proprietorship and the partnership, the corporation is distinguished by a number of characteristics that make it a more-flexible instrument for large-scale economic activity, particularly for the purpose of raising large sums of capital for investment. Chief among these features are: (1) limited liability, meaning that capital suppliers are not subject to losses greater than the amount of their investment; (2) transferability of shares, whereby voting and other rights in the enterprise may be transferred readily from one investor to another without reconstituting the organization under law; (3) juridical personality, meaning that the corporation itself as a fictive “person” has legal standing and may thus sue and be sued, may make contracts, and may hold property in a common name; and (4) indefinite duration, whereby the life of the corporation may extend beyond the participation of any of its incorporators. The owners of the corporation in a legal sense are the shareholders, who purchase with their investment of capital a share in the proceeds of the enterprise and who are nominally entitled to a measure of control over the financial management of the corporation.”

The definitions themselves begin to show why the relationship between corporations and the government is a lot more complicated than private companies. Corporations have to be recognized by law, and law is enforced by the state, therefor corporations only exists at the whim of the state. What’s more, is the means of trade for these stocks is also controlled by the state.

The first stock exchange to exist in the world was the Dutch East India Company. It was founded by the States General of the Netherlands, which consisted of the Dutch senate and the House of Representatives. The New York Stock exchange was founded in part by Alexander Hamilton, a statesman, founding father, and Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. In the United States, securities exchanges like the NYSE are primarily regulated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 is the key federal law that governs securities exchanges, including the NYSE.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that both of these entities enjoyed quite a bit of independence from their governments, but that independence is not complete, was granted in its establishment by the state, and has been gradually lessened with time.

That said, it would also be prudent for me to point out that corporations tend to govern themselves. NYSE is subject to its own set of rules and regulations. The exchange has its own regulatory body, the NYSE Regulation, Inc., which is responsible for overseeing compliance with the NYSE’s rules and federal securities laws. Many decisions are put to a vote by the shareholders. So, it contains a governing body and engages in internal politics? That’s a state!

Corporations are a state in and of themselves

Yes, that conclusion was properly derived just from the definitions of state, government, and corporation, however I’m not the only one to describe them as such. German sociologist Max Weber used the term “state within a state” to describe modern bureaucracy in general. One prominent thinker who discussed the concept of a corporation as a “state within a state” was R.H. Tawney, a British economic historian and social critic. In his influential work “The Acquisitive Society” (1920), Tawney critiqued the influence of large corporations and argued that they operated as powerful entities with their own interests, often independent of the interests of the broader society.

Why does this matter for credit scores?

Well, credit scores are already implemented by federal agencies:

• Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD): HUD oversees the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), which provides mortgage insurance on loans made by FHA-approved lenders. Lenders use credit scores, among other factors, to determine eligibility for FHA loans. So, the fed can reference your credit score to deny housing loans.
• Department of Defense (DoD): The DoD uses credit history as one of the factors in determining security clearances for military personnel and civilian employees. This means your fiscal credit score has influence in whether the fed considers you a security risk.

There are more but I actually don’t feel like listing them, they mostly all boil down to security clearance or financial restriction.

Here’s an important distinction: credit scores are restrictive on the individual. In other words, credit scores regulate what you’re able to do with your finances.

The American government also has a history of implementing other scores that more closely resemble a social credit score. These include but are not limited to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG). These metrics are used by the American government to impose regulations and taxation on corporations for better or for worse. You can tell it works too, because companies often increase their DEI score through their marketing, which is why you see so many corporations pushing a moral agenda rather than advertising their products.

So, the American fed uses various scoring systems to regulate both individuals and corporations.

In conclusion, these companies need to be regulated since they basically control people’s destinies through a non-democratically controlled system.

Just to quickly get this out of the way, my comment that you’re responding to already directly refuted the second half of this statement when I said “all BLK shares have voting rights, meaning that shareholders of BlackRock have a say in the company’s affairs in line with the proportion of ownership they hold in the firm.” The fact that this has not led to the results you desire doesn’t mean they aren’t democratic, they demonstrably are. It means that the democratic method was insufficient in this case.

The more important point here, is that to ask the government to regulate corporations in order to get rid of credit scores will lead to the exact opposite conclusion you want. The government already uses credit scores, and they use it to control people. Giving them the avenue to implement corporate social credit scores would be an extremely bad idea.

Also, top down regulation over a corporate body will directly result in greater control over that corporate body (regulation is control). We don’t want the government to have too much control over corporate bodies that already have control over us. We don’t want to put ourselves closer to being a nation controlled by corporations that are controlled by the state. That is called fascism.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Have a nice day :)

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Hi, Lemmy is giving me the infinite spinning wheel when I try to reply, so I’m gonna try to send it in two. Hope you don’t mind that I have a lot to say in response to your comment haha

I think you’re overlooking that they are publicly traded companies.

That has not been overlooked at all. It’s because they are publicly traded that they are publicly owned. It would be strange to conclude publicly traded -> privately owned without expanding on it at all. I will elaborate on this.

It’s a bit of a stretch to say that because they’re publicly traded that means things are a-ok with them assigning scores to people.

At no point did I say this was okay. My comment was entirely descriptive and made no prescription for scoring citizens. I actually later said that the corporate structure was vulnerable to these scores, which would imply that I think it’s a problem.

In conclusion, these companies need to be regulated since they basically control people’s destinies through a non-democratically controlled system.

To which I would say they already are regulated and this is the result.

I’ll explain everything in more detail…

Private Ownership:

• the fact of being owned by a private individual or organization, rather than by the state or a public body. (I googled “define private ownership”)
• Private companies are owned by those who establish them and those invited to invest in them. The public-at-large cannot buy shares or otherwise invest in private companies at their own discretion. Public Ownership:
• A public company is a company that has sold a portion of itself to the public via an initial public offering (IPO), meaning shareholders have a claim to part of the company’s assets and profits. (Same source)
• ownership by the government of an asset, corporation, or industry. (I googled “define public ownership”)

So, private ownership is opposed to both the state and public bodies, implying that a public body isn’t necessarily a state (according to google). This complicates things once you get into the nature of corporations and their relationship with the government (I’ll expand on this), so a better operating definition is probably the second one, which means: it is private if the general public can’t by shares.

Countless definitions refer to public ownership both as government ownership, or publicly traded. Choosing one definition does not contradict the other. Let me repeat : saying public ownership refers to government ownership does not contradict that it also refers to publicly traded ownership. This is why it’s wrong to conclude that these corporations are private. They are public traded, and are therefor public. This shouldn’t be surprising, it’s in the word. That which is public is not private, and that which is private is not public.

People get caught up on the fact that private citizens can own shares. It’s often used to conclude that the corporation they hold shares in a therefor privately owned. This is flawed logic, because private units can be a part of a public collective. When referencing a public corporation’s ownership, we are not referencing any single individual, but a collective, in the exact same way that “the public” refers to a collective of private citizens of a state. It’s also directly contradicted in the definition: “… owned by a private individual or organization.” A. Singular.

The only point I’m trying to make is that asserting these entities are private is false and leads to false conclusions. This is true.

The reason I didn’t address the government issue first is because the relationship between government and corporate is a lot more complicated than that, and the conversation almost always gets cut short by the assumption that corporations are private.

I also just finished explaining how the government does influence credit scores. If you’re so focused on this point, why did you ignore that?

Are you gonna keep ignoring the comment as a whole?

You’re the one muddying the waters, intent is not the only thing that matters. He directly said private, and that has implications that make his comment come off as frankly detached from reality.

His comment directly suggests that the government is not involved with these credit scores, which is incorrect since the white house did an executive order enforcing DEI in the federal workforce.

His comment suggests that these companies are free from the influence of the state, which is wrong because the government has full authority to and actively incentivizes ESG credit scores.

His comment suggests that independent private industry is strong-arming the government, when the reality is these very same scores they blame on private business are actively snuffing out non-corporate business, which will only make the problem worse

just private companies that decided to collect everyone’s information

This is what he said. He called them private. No, it didn’t sound like he called them private, he did call them private. It’s a distinction I consider important, so I outlined why. You’re just wrong in your characterization of what happened, straight up.

Don’t pretend he didn’t call them private. And don’t pretend it isn’t super common to think of corporations as private entities. They’re not, and this mischaracterization affects how people think. It’s not good to base your worldview on lies.

You called them private companies, and I’m disputing that.

This distinction is important, because the properties that make it non-private (being owned by a public collective) also happen to make people particularly vulnerable to spyware and data collection. That which is owned by a public corporation is owned by its shareholders collectively. Major shareholders can therefor lobby corporations to divulge data that is technically legally theirs. When you consider how many corporations Black Rock and Vanguard are invested in, there isn’t much that you can touch without generating some meta-data level evidence of what you’re doing, where, and when that they won’t have access to.

If things were truly privately controlled, nobody would be able to lobby a bank to divulge information about its clients.