But the anarcho-capitalists told me that market will fix it all on its own if only we let corporations do whatever they want and not burden them with regulations!
It's honestly shocking to me how many anarcho-capitalists there are, especially here on HN. I get the aversion to taxation on a primal level, but surely nobody with any work and life experience can believe in that, right?
Allow me to be surprised by your surprise - take a look at this site's domain name!
This is a web site that originated from (and which still has deep roots in) the American tech startup scene - so of course many users are of the "move fast and break things" mindset. Regulation is anathema to this culture as it slows down tech progress / profits.
All that anarcho-capitalism hubris faltered when SVB went under, and suddenly libertarians were begging daddy government to make them whole.
"Free market"? You can find it in the dictionary, somewhere in between "Bullshit" and "Hypocrisy".
A tiny amount of people who claim to have some libertarian conservative leanings maybe changed their minds, but overwhelmingly those were just politicians who talked libertarianism to get some gun fans to vote for them.
All I can say is that in most online forums that I saw, the overwhelming majority libertarians are against such bank rescue operations.
Because HN is full of 'temporarily embarrassed billionaires'[1]. A lot of people here are either vested in big tech or see themselves creating the next big-tech in the future hoping to become the next Steve Jobs.
They saw how the likes of Meta, Apple, Google and Microsoft got super rich through exploiting various legal and market loopholes, so they see these upcoming regulations as a threat to their own enrichment. Kind of like technological NIMBYism.
It's difficult to have unbiased discussions on big-tech regulations when many here have built their wealth or careers on big-tech being deregulated and exploiting every trick in the book, and now suddenly get to watch as the ladder is pulled from under them shuddering at the though that SW engineering will be paid like other professions (like in Europe) instead of being a professional get-rich quick ticket it was/still is for now.
[1] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/temporarily_embarrassed_mil...
I read a lot of these discussion and I almost never come across any anarcho-capitalists. Are maybe mixing this up with people who like markets in general? In terms of this debate about charging points and software updates it hardly makes a difference.
Also, its totally disingenuous to only talk about one side of this from an actual market perspective. These big companies make massive use of the legal system to protect themselves, protection that they wouldn't have.
ARM couldn't protect its ISA, any company could make chips. You could reverse engineer the specific Apple chip and build it exactly the same. You could make the device and sell it with Apple software on it. Apple couldn't project its proprietary charger with patent and copyright law for example.
Apple depends on a global system of agree on laws and enforced copy right and patent protection along with many other such aspects legal systems and the modern world. Apple would require and extremely complex arrangement of trade secrets to get even close to what they have now.
Look at how much the Soviets simply took over and copied, or China during its rise. Its a fundamentally different game if you are not required to follow the law of the place where the cooperation is from.
You would but 100% of the burden on the devices protecting themselves, something that is only recently becoming routine and still isn't a thing for chargers for example.
You can't just look at the current world, imagine it as fundamentally the same and then change one thing. The whole way modern cooperation's are design simply wouldn't be possible in the same way.
Such system are therefore fundamentally theoretical, so arguing about such system is quite difficult. Legal and economic systems can't just be pulled from nothing, there needs to be some historical and institutional development that backs it up. Different visions of how such a system would work and would be structured have been considered.
A more interesting question is in the current system we actually have. The government should get involved in these things. You can just make that argument for that specifically instead of saying 'checkmate anarcho-capitalists and patting yourself on the back'. Just like its idiotic for people to say 'checkmate communist' anytime any publicly owned train company makes some insanely idiotic decision.
> I get the aversion to taxation on a primal level, but surely nobody with any work and life experience can believe in that, right?
The US government in the last 25 years got involved in many wars killing millions of people. Its also using a lot of its power to prevent housing construction that leads a massive housing shortage. And uses its power to systematically deprive the people of Iran from basic goods.
I think its unfair to paint anybody who thinks about these ideas as 'simply doesn't like taxes' as if that is the only reason why anybody would consider forms of anarchism.
But I grant you that most people are less interested in a fundamental argument and its intellectual underpinnings, if you try to have broad libertarian movement just screaming 'no guns laws, legal weed and no taxes' seems more effective. And why such movements end up not being intellectually 'pure'. Communist history know a thing or to about easy slogans and trying to build a 'pure' political base.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_Arab_Emi...
All good, just burning the planet, nothing to see here, move along.
https://condenaststore.com/featured/the-planet-got-destroyed...
Also, LOL:
> As of 2020, foreigners represent 88.1% of the population.
+
> UAE law does not allow trade unions to exist. The right to collective bargaining and the right to strike are not recognised, and the Ministry of Labour has the power to force workers to go back to work. Migrant workers who participate in a strike can have their work permits cancelled and be deported. Consequently, there are very few anti-discrimination laws in relation to labour issues, with Emiratis – and other GCC Arabs – getting preference in public sector jobs despite lesser credentials than competitors and lower motivation. In fact, just over eighty per cent of Emirati workers hold government posts, with many of the rest taking part in state-owned enterprises such as Emirates airlines and Dubai Properties. Western states, including the United Kingdom, were also warned by the Emirati Trade Minister, Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi to keep politics separate from trade and the economy, as it dilutes the agreements' main objectives. In 2023, Al Zeyoudi indicated that these countries should "tone down" the human and workers' rights provisions in the trade deals, in order to gain greater market access and business opportunities.
So, yeah...
When your workforce is disposable and cash squirts out of the ground, yeah, yay capitalism!!! if you're the right category of person, I guess.
Is the government giving extremely generous allowances to its citizens based on profits from finite natural resources "capitalism" now?
https://u.ae/en/information-and-services/social-affairs/soci...