MolochAlter

@MolochAlter@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How does capitalism differ from crony capitalism?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Ok, I know this will be a bit of a read, but:

  Capitalism vs Croney Capitalism

  In an ideal scenario, a “free market” is a market that may be regulated but not in such a way that the state uses its institutional powers to play favourites.

  Either a good or service can be provided on the market, which means that within the limits of the law any group or individual can provide that service, or the service is banned, meaning it won’t be allowed for anyone to provide.

  Depending on who you ask, even simple barriers such as licenses to operate and OSHA guidelines are forms of interference with the free market; the reality is that in practice perfect information does not exist and society at large prefers limiting the ability of the incompetent to do harm accidentally or through negligence, rather than having them punished after the fact.

  Croney capitalism is when these barriers are not only present but erected (typically by the government, but it could also be done by other regulatory bodies) in such a way that they deliberately privilege certain preferred entities (the aforementioned cronies) over others.

  This, much like redlining was discriminatory to black people despite mentioning them explicitly, does not have to be an explicit bias, it can be as simple as tuning requirements to make them prohibitive to companies not already established in the market to prevent new competition from coming into existence.

  The US definitely has a big issue with this at multiple scales.

  What is the best solution

  I find the best approach to markets is to look at their elasticity.

  An example of a highly elastic market could be videogames. Nobody needs videogames to survive, nobody needs a specific videogame to exist, it’s entirely driven by preference and unnecessary voluntary spending, you have full access to the entire market regardless of where you are provided you can pay the price of admission.

  Perfect field to build a market around, the client will naturally gravitate to whatever offer they find provides the best value for money, companies will read the signals and adapt, etc.

  A highly inelastic market is, for instance, emergency healthcare. Whenever you are in the market for it, you definitionally have an urgent, time sensitive, geographically limited need for the product. You can’t shop around beyond that range and failure to find the product usually means permanent consequences potentially as severe as death.

  In that case, a market is a terrible solution to the problem, as markets have no incentive to capillarise at a loss, and want to price their goods and services based on the value to the client, which in this case would be infinite.

  A market handling healthcare without a non-profit option competing with it is a recipe for disaster, while flanked by one it becomes extremely beneficial.

  Italy and France, 2 of the best healthcare systems in the world in terms of cost per capita and outcomes, are mixed systems where you can go to the state healthcare system for anything and pay a nominal amount (to deter timewasters) or you can get private insurance or pay out of pocket for private alternatives that have to follow the same standards as the public sector at minimum. This helps treating niche conditions or skipping the line on severe common conditions, meaning those who can afford private treatment will lessen the load on the public sector, reducing queues for those who can’t afford it.

  In short: The best approach is looking at each market category and making tailored solutions that best fit the kind of good/service being dealt with.

  Some markets, like security, are better left in the hands of a few strictly regulated entities, other are better served by a fully free approach (like luxury goods), most important things fall somewhere in the middle, where some state interference/mediation objectively leads to the best outcomes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ARC Raiders - anyone else looting in their sleep?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  All great mechanic driven games do this to an extent.

  I had this with Portal and Minecraft back in the day, it’s just because they’re games that force you to think with their mechanics.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Github Banned a Ton of Adult Game Developers and Won’t Explain Why⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My answer to those is always “i code for money, I don’t code in my free time”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What're your strong opinions from an aged / dead fandom?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly the idea itself, as insane and barely disguised a fetish as it is, isn’t even that bad, to me.

  It’s the planned aftermath that is pretty horrendous?

  The idea that they would need that for their relationship to evolve in a positive direction when they’re already basically a couple by Shindig is genuinely sad, if they wanted that grim a story beat they should probably place it after they’re already an established couple and Mal has gotten over his shit about companions, then there’s some good meat on the bone in terms of character dynamics to explore.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  ~ Man who never did drugs, 2025

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What're your strong opinions from an aged / dead fandom?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Right, I should’ve said “accidental byproduct of non-consensual experimentation on the population” but yeah, still beyond the pale.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What're your strong opinions from an aged / dead fandom?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  • Given how Serenity turned out, firefly’s cancellation was probably for the best, making the reavers the intentional by-product of alliance experiments completely destroyed the nuances of the factions in the war of independence.

  • Inuyasha ran out of ideas 10-15 tankobon in, and Takahashi just kept milking it for the money.

  • Every fandom that accepts the “x is for everyone” motto is accepting enshittification and casualization with open arms. Air and water are for everyone, even bread has people who dislike it, for something to be unique it necessarily will have haters. The right word is anyone.

  • Archer had a bit of a dip when Adam Reed left the writing team but it recovered and had one of the best endings possible for a series that long lived.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How come hypothetically if I make meth in my home. Knowing full well it could explode and take out my neighbors houses, why am I not charged with attempted murder?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Because it does not fit the definition.

  It would probably fit reckless endangerment, but murder requires the intent to cause death specifically.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Where are the arms bearers?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  en.wikipedia.org/…/2025_Dallas_ICE_facility_shoot…

  I dunno where the others are but they better be at the range, cause this guy did the opposite of helping.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s definitely affecting it, yes.

  For most people being sexually desired and knowing they are is a very important part of a relationship.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sony’s Concord Is Playable Again Thanks To Fan-Made Custom Servers⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For the same reason the USSR did the same shit to subvert countries all over the world?

  Power blocks are the basic concept underpinning modern multipolar foreign policy decisions, it’s not rocket science.

  The difference is liberal capitalism won eventually, and the USSR didn’t.

  Communism didn’t and never will exist in a vacuum, you know?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sony’s Concord Is Playable Again Thanks To Fan-Made Custom Servers⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure, bud, that’s why communism worked every time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sony’s Concord Is Playable Again Thanks To Fan-Made Custom Servers⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Because they’re correct, you’re just being too literal in your understanding of the statement.

  Will people occasionally work for free? Sure. For friends, family, friends of friends, hell even strangers sometimes, volunteering is a thing, sure.

  Will they work for free reliably and consistently enough that they can be built upon by other people?

  Obviously not, they sometimes don’t even do it for money.

  Society as it is today, with its insane population count and highly specialised workflows, requires an insane amount of logistics that absolutely can’t bear “random cunt #354 decided not to work this month so the boat is without a captain” levels of random disruption without heavy consequences; this is incidentally also why strikes are extremely effective.

  No society that evolved beyond subsistence did so without some obligation to work, whether through monetary incentives or straight up serfdom/slavery; and if subsistence is all you want, I’m sure you can go live in like, some tribal commune on a Pacific island somewhere.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Uh oh: Ubisoft postpones its quarterly financial report at the last minute and halts stock trading⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s not that, it’s the trade halt that points to something major (and bad for them) happening.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are physical mail generally not under surveillance? If everyone suddently ditched electronic communications and start writing letters, would governments be able to practically surveil everyone?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes but you should write that by hand on clean paper

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Did it really used to be common for guys to go to a bar every night like in Cheers or The Simpsons?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Depends, lots of churches welcome lay members of the community to the ancillary activities they organise. Catholic churches in my experience are much more embedded in their communities in southern europe regardless of the status of the people participating. My father has been lapsed for 40+ years, never shows up for church and doesn’t participate in any of the religious aspects but he still runs arts and crafts workshops in the parish buildings, for the local kids whether they’re part of the congregation or not.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Did it really used to be common for guys to go to a bar every night like in Cheers or The Simpsons?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s the fact that church comes with an actual presupposition that it isn’t optional, while de facto being optional.

  Going to church (in contexts where denomination shopping isn’t a thing at least) means going to a place where a person is not there to validate your particular perspective but instead often to tell you and everyone else in the group to do better, publicly, not because they’re better but because they appeal to higher principles whose correctness is taken for granted buly the congregation.

  See also: the absolute brain lottery winners on the internet bitching that the pope isn’t a real catholic for telling them they’re bad catholics (arguably bad christians in general, definitely bad people) for dehumanising poor people and immigrants legal and illegal.

  I’m far from a catholic (that is, I’m actually a lapsed catholic if you ask the church, but I was never a believer, just born into it) but there just isn’t a space where you’re going to participate, respect the ethics and morals, still fall short of them, be chastised, and be forgiven, that doesn’t involve some religious aspect.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do companies always need to grow?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Growth and *endless" growth are not the same.

  Obviously growing a business is positive in some circumstances, the point is that growth for growth’s sake becomes the name of the game once you go public, whereas when privately held the company can decide whether it makes sense to grow in that moment or focus on other goals in the short term to benefit a long term strategy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨do you remember a time when societies were so polarized and shifted so much to the right like today? How long did it last?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Then they collectively forgot about that last part.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do companies always need to grow?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s not “companies”, it’spublicly traded companies.

  And the answer is quite simple really: the moment you become publicly traded your stock becomes your product, and everything else becomes a means to deliver better stock prices to your investors.

  Not all companies are publicly traded, I patronise privately held companies wherever possible because as a client I’m still at the core of their business strategy, and I’m wary of the alternative.

  At the end of the day, bad strategies result in bad products and services. Vote with your wallet, it’s very possible.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you argue for a cause like affordable housing for everyone, is it necessarily hypocritical if you also own investment properties?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not really, believing there should be affordable housing for everyone doesn’t mean all housing should be affordable to anyone.

  I believe there should be different levels of density of housing and pricing in different areas, and that the state should subsidise some percent of rent based on income, possibly up to 100% up to a certain cost, if you haven’t had evictions on record; but I also own different properties I rent at market rate because it’s commensurate to the cost of living in the area, and a lower rent would not make living there any more affordable, and would open me up to possible tenant disputes if someone who can’t afford to live there were to move in.

  If the cost of living went down in the area I would also adjust accordingly, as I don’t believe in fleecing people and it’s also generally beneficial to be in line with market value to maximise client volume.

  Affordability isn’t a “rent is too high” issue only. It’s a “there is no place I can afford to live in that makes sense for the places I need to reach” issue too.

  Cost of living is a huge factor, I have friends who work in the service industry who almost had to move completely out of the city due to the 22-23 price hike, despite local laws preventing rent from following inflation.

  It’s only hypocritical if you believe no housing should be market controlled, which is a non-serious opinion, to be frank.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨After More Layoffs, Unionized IGN Workers Are Done Picking Up The Slack: "We feel greatly understaffed and undervalued"⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Noted, I didn’t even know she existed. What are some good articles she wrote for IGN that you’d recommend?

  I don’t expect IGN to keep anyone on the writing team but it’s good to know good authors.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨After More Layoffs, Unionized IGN Workers Are Done Picking Up The Slack: "We feel greatly understaffed and undervalued"⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  My bet is: you can’t reliably fire unionised workers, so you make them want to quit instead.

  The IGN newsroom is a joke, name one reputable journalist you are SURE works there without checking first, and I’ll be genuinely surprised, the only value is in the brandname, their coverage can probably be replaced by some LLM horseshit with nobody really noticing.

  The higher ups know it, the journos know it (hence why they unionised) and thus they’re at an impasse.

  Once they inevitably lose this standoff they’ll be replaced by third-worlder english speakers with chatgpt, mark my words.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How Zelda and Studio Ghibli inspire happiness and purpose⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m sure the fact that Ghibli movies and BotW are best-in-class examples of their respective mediums has absolutely nothing to do with anything.

  Looking forward to the metric shittons of open world ghibli knock-off garbage being currently greenlit by frothing execs hoping they have at last found the blueprints to the dopamine machine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What game sequel ruined a beloved franchise or character for you?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Dragon age 2, Mass effect 3

  ME3 is particularly bad cause most of the game is exactly as it should have been, and then the ending is pure unadulterated trash.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mastercard release a statement about game stores, payment processors and adult content⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  MC and Visa are not technically payment processors, that would be stuff like stripe or ayden.

  The problem is that cc companies have rules that put the onus of ensuring nothing illegal is purchased with their issued cards on the ones actually meditating the transaction, so it becomes a chilling effect because the intermediaries don’t want to risk burning a bridge with the largest cc networks in the world, and overcorrect as a result.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How would you take 'stfu' from a stranger online, provided what you said wasn't meant to be funny?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well yeah, “shut the up” is not a correct phrase… ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTuber Faces Possible Jail Time for Reviewing Gaming Handhelds⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Nintendo products have their union sale sticker on so I think they met and our guys won.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTuber Faces Possible Jail Time for Reviewing Gaming Handhelds⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The exact specifics change country by country, in Italy there are a lot of horseshit rules around it because one of the most powerful unions lobbies (our equivalent of the RIAA) for more exclusive control over media at every chance they get, to the point that you’re not allowed to distribute even your own media through physical sales without paying a cut.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is wrong with being "Black Pilled"?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Getting in shape won’t make you think you’re less ugly, you’ll just find different things to obsess over until you find something you can’t change.

  Dysmorphia is a mental illness issue.

  You can be ugly, or out of shape, or any of those things, but the idea that you are so uniquely, supremely ugly that you can’t make up for it in other ways is literally just internet idiots being idiots and not touching enough grass.

  I’ve seen men with very obvious deformities happily married with kids, I’ve seen perfectly toned bodybuilders being (correctly) snubbed for being insecure dickheads, I’ve seen perfectly average dudes dating models, looks matter but not the way you think they do.

  Get out of your head, get treatment if you truly have these feelings of immeasurable ugliness because they are a legit sign of treatable mental illness, and for the love of christ go out and make some normie friends, you clearly need them.

  Normies are happy not because they “don’t get it” but because they are typically pretty well adjusted and average, while your online friends are just like you: a bunch of toaster fuckers who met in the toaster fucker forums reinforcing eachother’s obsession with dicking down toasters.