Comment on Gold
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world 1 week agoYou know, there is nothing wrong with not knowing how investments and markets (stock, commodity, …) help direct the economy. It’s a complex topic that most people really don’t need to understand for their lives. But confidently claiming they do nothing just because you don’t know is ridiculous…
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
That’s the bad long-term decisions I’m talking about. They are currently directing the economy to end the world.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world 1 week ago
You are talking mostly nonsense. I am pretty sure what you are trying to talk about is called negative externalities. A negative externality is simply put harm that a company does to others and does not have to “pay for” itself. E.g. destroying the environment. The issue is that negative externalities don’t just apply to companies and capitalism. They are also what turns communist revolutions into authoritarian regimes. Dealing with them (or realistically minimizing their impact) is an incredibly complex subject. Trying to say we should solve it by getting rid of billionaires is like saying we should solve global worming by dropping ice cubes into the ocean.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
How do externalities turn communist revolutions into authoritarian regimes?
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world 1 week ago
This is an incredibly complex topic and depends somewhat on your exact setup of revolution and regime.
Let me give another example of negative externalities: corruption. It’s the exact same mechanism. The person receiving a bribe benefits from the bribe, but the cost (harm) is usually paid by their employer or society.
For a news agency, a negative externality may be to intentionally spread incorrect information and propaganda. So as an exercise, try to think of the incentives of a news organization in capitalism when it is privately owned and anyone with money can start a competing news agency and in communism, where some kind of political organ (elected or named by elected officials) decides the news agencies funding and if resources are allocated to create a competitor.
Economic and political systems are about incentives. The more the incentives of individual people are aligned with the incentives of society as a whole, the better the system.