Unlike the serf, I can go find another Lord. I can pit the lords against each other for a better deal. I can try and become my own lord. HR has a lot fewer tools than the inquisition. Fear of lawsuits reduces their toolkit even further.
> Once America became embroiled in World War II, there was great concern that rampant inflation would threaten America's military effort and undermine its domestic economy. The concern was valid, as Americans had witnessed what inflation had done to war-torn Germany, devastating its economy and giving rise to Hitler's regime.
> To combat inflation, the 1942 Stabilization Act was passed. Designed to limit employers' freedom to raise wages and thus to compete on the basis of pay for scarce workers, the actual result of the act was that employers began to offer health benefits as incentives instead.
> Suddenly, employers were in the health insurance business. Because health benefits could be considered part of compensation but did not count as income, workers did not have to pay income tax or payroll taxes on those benefits. [0]
You can also read about this in a 2017 NY Times article [1]
[0] https://www.griffinbenefits.com/blog/history-of-employer-spo...
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210109190532/https://www.nytim...
Perhaps we’re lucky or the system is already monopsonized in our area. However, sometimes you can also get the same network at your new employer (e.g. Kaiser or other HMOs).
That said it’d be a lot better with single payer and the largest risk-pool of an entire country.
It is unclear how premiums that exceed income along with deductibles that exceed rent are a freeing experience.
At least until 2017. After that it seemed a little okay to discuss the realities of the ACA.
This is kind of my point. The ACA was designed to benefit the middle class and non-vulnerable. At which point the middle class and non-vulnerable (and the press) stopped caring about who had healthcare.
To drive home that point: A few years ago I ran ACA quotes for typical income levels (typical for non-wealthy regions, 12k-32k) and found that premium cost steeply dropped for each 10k rise in income.
My primary issue isn't that this happened, it's that we weren't told. It's that ACA supporters + the entirety of press compulsively gloss over ACA realities.
> I wish the Dems could just own up to that and push for something more.
I suggest that uncovered Americans don't need something more. They need something.
> The problem is that both sides are so deep in the industry’s pockets, that I don’t think real reform is even possible.
Pols trading law/power for campaign cash is the other thing that news orgs have ~0 interest in.
For many people that isn't really true. And even if you are in a high-demand profession, and have the necessary negotiations skills, moving between jobs has a pretty high transaction cost.
- Mao Zedong
Hierarchy can work well, particularly for growing companies and making decisions.
It obviously has problems as a form of government, but the incentive structure of capitalism is a good one for work.
Even in democratic governments with elections you still have a decision hierarchy somewhere (hopefully just with some checks on their power)
The inventive structure of capitalism is good for capitalists. Why would they make it any other way?
You get that from proper incentives. Capitalism is mostly about creating an environment where people can leverage those incentives as easily as possible.
There's a deep irony that the system set up based on incentivizing and rewarding growth (and occasionally greed) has helped raise millions out of poverty while the systems based on altruism have led to the deaths of millions and massive amounts of suffering.
You do know that 850M of those live in China, right?
The cultural revolution, hundred flowers campaign, and current Uyghur genocide are some of the classic negative aspects of CCP control. Those aspects are more the standard fare communist policy.
The good that's there comes from their embrace of capitalism and market incentives. The bad comes from the standard communist one party control, it's also what eventually leads to problems.
"After Chairman Mao Zedong's death in 1976, Deng gradually rose to power and led China through a series of far-reaching market-economy reforms, which earned him the reputation as the "Architect of Modern China"." [0]
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.DDAY?locations=C...
Capitalism and Communism has suffered the same fate from the same source, and this will remain true until we move into the age of plenty from the age of want, and probably beyond.
Today we have more people starting more billion dollar companies more easily than any other time in human history. We have more freedom of movement, more wealth, etc.
There's a staggering amount of growth, a staggering amount of capital investment.
No system is its perfect ideal (and there are obvious issues today), but things are a lot better than they were in the age of a handful of national companies.
I encourage you to research Mark Blyth's work on generational wealth and check out 'Angrynomics'
https://www.gq.com/story/mark-blyth-economics-interview http://cup.columbia.edu/book/angrynomics/9781788212793
As for others that see benefit less directly: https://press.stripe.com/#stubborn-attachments
Growth (when constrained for human rights and environmental protection) is the best way to help the most the fastest.
You see it everywhere, massive reduction of global poverty, infant mortality, etc. Even just things like the ability for almost anyone to have an iPhone and use of Amazon/two day shipping are examples. Inexpensive food is another.
> Any different group with a semi-competent lord will absolutely destroy you and take your resources. You'll soon send around resumes begging for a lord to take you.
Not really. IIRC, in the French Revolutionary Wars, French troops were more effective because they were better motivated than those who were fighting for some lord.
It's probably necessary to have leaders, but that doesn't mean lords are necessary.
On this grounding all the other systems emerge like nepotism, bad leadership, fall guys... and HR
Free market democracy is not ideal system, but it offers at least some freedoms for serfs. All other systems take them all away.
Honestly, it is still jarring to see people in the US actually believe the system they are living in is some sort of "lessest evil system", not realizing how much easier they would have it in Scandinavia/Germany/France/Switzerland/Netherlands/Belgium/etc. And this is a region with comparable population and resources to the US.
I mean, just think about implementing socialized healthcare, a proper tax system which is short and understandable with few loopholes, a reasonable minimum wage and parental leave for all paid by the federal government. Those are a handful of measures that would significantly improve life for 99.5% of everyone in the US. And there is no plausible mechanism where these measures take away all your freedoms.
Sure you can argue that it's impossible to get American politicians to enact these. But that is just another point of failure of the free market democracy, that elected politicians are most interested in the outcomes for people and organizations who pay them money (literally or indirectly), and not in the people they are elected to represent.
In larger power/lordship(?) tends to accumulate. Why this is, I don't know. It would make and interesting study topic.
The major downsides of old-school feudalism were (1) Doesn't really scale to populations of 200k+ and (2) the We Cannot Get Out problem.
Corporate structure solves both those problems pretty neatly.
Really the only difference between feudalism and capitalism is the latter’s ability/freedom to fail. Shitty hierarchical structures are replaced by newly emerging better hierarchical structures. Serfs migrate easily.
All this is basically a consequence of companies & people not being defined by / tied to land (as serfdoms were - basically farms). Rising from agrarian to industrial society is what enabled this.