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> The US constantly beats the capitalism drum, and that's fine. But it seem hypocritical to beat the capitalism drum with one hand, while with the other quietly subverting capitalism by giving certain favored entities tips and advantages.

For many of us, "capitalism" involves precisely this -- the wealthy using their wealth and power to cement their position.

capitalism, if you're not cheating you're not trying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism

Fair enough.

But let me ask you this: Why is the government helping large corporations to cheat more than small or medium companies? Even if we decide cheating is acceptable, shouldn't everyone be on an even footing in terms of this type of help?

Seems like the ultimate result is the big get bigger while the small get smaller.

The large corporations give more campaign donations (bribes) to the individuals who make up the political class, which gives the large corporations massive preference when their interests are addressed. Large donations equals political preferences made into reality. Our reality is a result of this going on for almost a century. It is this simple.

I agree, but I can't help thinking that the sheer scale/shamelessness of corporate bribery is a recent phenomenon.

Never mind that anyone in office can trade on info gleamed while there without being slapped for insider trading, iirc...

This is true. They removed the exception of insider trading for Congress a few years ago, but put it right back in a year or two later. It's disgusting.

The correct definition is "cronyism", not "capitalism".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism

Leninism/Stalinism/those fucking Trots/Maoism isn't true Communism.

It isn't. It is state capitalism. It is still capitalism.

If pure capitalism isn't robust enough that it won't devolve into cronyism then it's just as worthless an ideology as "communism", and for much the same reason. It's not enough that something sounds good and works in theory - humans have to be able to implement it too.

For many of us, "capitalism" involves precisely this

That's not capitalism at all. That's just corruption / cronyism and it can live "on top of" any economic system.

The lines between national interests, immigration restrictions, inherited wealth and cronyism are very blurry though, and not just empirically or historically.

>or worse passing on "tips" to US-based private companies so they can gain an advantage during negotiations/bidding.

>But it seem hypocritical to beat the capitalism drum with one hand, while with the other quietly subverting capitalism by giving certain favored entities tips and advantages.

Do you have any sources for this? I am genuinely curious.

If there was anything in any of the leaked Snowden slides detailing any US companies they give info to that would be greatly appreciated.

There are more, but this is the best known instance, because Boeing lost a lot of money as a result.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/20/us-boeing-brazil-i...

"Snowden's documents, many of which were published by Brazil-based U.S. journalist Glenn Greenwald, revealed that Washington had spied on Rousseff's personal communications, those of state-run oil company Petrobras - which Rousseff once chaired - and countless Brazilian citizens".

And what information was provided to US companies? That's an article about a US company losing business, not an article about a US company benefiting from NSA provided secrets.

Yes, about a company losing business, but also about surveillance of foreign business entities (Brazil in this case)

Also France (below), and yes, the information was shared:

From http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/29/new-wikileaks-documents-rev...

"According to an economic espionage order, the NSA intercepted all French corporate contracts and negotiations valued at more than $200 million in many different industries, such as telecommunications, electrical generation, gas, oil, nuclear and renewable energy, and environmental and healthcare technologies.

A second economic espionage order called “France: Economic Developments” shows that information was then shared with other U.S. agencies and secretaries, including the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Commerce, the Federal Reserve and the Secretary of Treasury. Eventually, this data could have been used to help sign export deals."

> shared with other U.S. agencies and secretaries, including the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Commerce, the Federal Reserve and the Secretary of Treasury.

None of those are US companies. This is like every Snowden thread ever. A specific claim was made: the NSA provides private companies with tips. A citation was requested. Instead of evidence for the claim that was made, we get this, that, and the other thing, but never the requested citation.

Look, if there's no evidence that the NSA provided a company with tips, then just say "Sorry, I misspoke. I conflated spying activity A with spying activity B."

True, you have a point, there is no evidence that I am aware of - of this information dissipating to _private_ companies.

Just like phone call records were improperly used to spy on unfaithful spouses (which was not disclosed by Snowden docs), it is highly likely it was the case with business intelligence.

Your point stands, though - we'll need another Snowden to leak more docs to know for sure :-)

There is nothing about the NSA giving information to Boeing.

You mean to say a spy agency spied on a foreign president, color me shocked. The article is about blowback from the Snowden leaks. Nothing about the government supplying private companies with information.

Look further down the article. It talks about spying on Petrobras. There is other evidence of spying on French and German companies (see my other post in this thread).

I did misspeak on who the information was shared with. It was dissipated among several government agencies. I am not aware of any evidence about sharing it with private companies in the US.

The irony here is that the European Union states are famously among the worst industrial espionage offenders, particularly between Germany and France. This isn't a "US and China" thing.

> it seems hypocritical to beat the capitalism drum with one hand, while with the other quietly subverting capitalism by giving certain favored entities tips and advantages

Capitalism is a regulatory and economic framework that allows for the private ownership of capital and assets and is driven by selfish profit motives.

In a purely capitalistic system, we wouldn't even have a government to redistribute wealth and provide oversight, or in this case - to spy on other countries and provide information to a few select corporations. The socialistic thing for the government to do would be to distribute these secrets evenly among all US businesses.

So government favoring big business is actually another triumph of capitalism.

I believe you mean "cronyism"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism

Given that there is no perfectly capitalist society, and in practice, all capitalist structures degenerate into crony-capitalist structures without strong government regulations, I would say there is no difference.

You sound exactly like people who insist that communism has never "really" been tried.

Look, if a framework for running a society and an economy is so fragile that it immediately devolves into something else, then it's worthless. It doesn't matter if you can point to all the mistakes that were made along the way - if humans can't implement it and make it work, and if there are countless examples of them trying and failing to do this, then it's broken.

Its really all just a show. Our economy runs purely on the perceived confidence built through illusion and leveraging the immense natural resources we have.

Doesn't spying indicate a de facto lack of trust?

Doesn't it indicate a lack of trust to have an agency like the NSA in the first place?

(And, really, why would the US government and its agency trust some Germans overseas, when it doesn't trust its own people at home?)

No. We don't trust each other. But if we all know we're all spying on each other we're a lot less likely to act up fearing that someone else will find out.

It's not a super friendly close relationship like you might have with a sibling or your lifelong best friend. But it's "I know you're not doing anything bad. You know I'm not doing anything bad. So until one of us does something bad, we can 'trust' each other and continue business like usual."

That's not trust, that's just continual observation.

Trust means something different in every context. I don't trust my wife the same way I trust Digicert, but I "trust" both. This is what it means for nations to trust each other.

You trust your understanding of the math underlying Digicert. I don't see how we trust germany at all if we are spying on them.

It's one thing to collect signal intelligence within bounds, and it's quite another to continually exploit an ally's vulnerabilities to your own advantage. What about the trust we have for our government? I don't recall anyone justifying the NSA's existence with anything other than the threat of soviets (and then... terrorists, which has frustratingly increased dramatically domestically since the beginning of this practice.)

I trust the math behind RSA in general, but I also trust Digicert specifically in the sense that DigiCert Global Root CA is in my Trusted Root Certification Authorities store whereas, say, Hellenic Academic and Research Institutions RootCA is not.

The NSA has overreached their authority in many ways, but this isn't one of them. Not spying on Germany, especially their intelligence service, would be negligent.

How would that be negligent? What's the nightmare scenario here, rise of the fourth Reich? Yay, we can get rich off another European war!

Don't be ridiculous, spying has very little value except to the paranoid and Machiavellian

I'm sure the nightmare scenario is beyond the imagining of decent people like you or I. But considering Germany has been the aggressor of the two largest conflicts of the previous century, do you honestly believe it's prudent to say "just let them do whatever. I'm sure they've learned their lesson this time"?

I'd expect my Government to spy on other Governments. We have a need to. Any American who objects to this is short-sighted.

What we shouldn't do is spy on American citizens within our borders as a routine practice.

Agree that American citizens are not legitimate targets in and of themselves, but they will routinely communicate with people other than American citizens and those communications mean that citizens will be spied on. That's globalization for ya.

I don't understand what you mean when you say "spy on American citizens" do you mean court order/warrant approved surveillance? Even your local police can do that, its generally how criminal investigations are conducted.

This story doesn't work to berate the US so move the goalposts. Maybe submit a story you have?