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Why shouldn't capitalism be better regulated?

Those laws were racist in origin, end of the story.

First of all, even if we take your word that resources to fight drugs were misallocated across ethnic groups, you do not seem to understand it would be a fallacy to conclude racism is the cause of such misallocation. Racism is one of many possible reasons to disparate impacts.

Second of all, your interpretation runs against 150 years of history. To my knowledge, Republicans were behind the idea that crime must be punished throughout the entire 20th century. You have to look through the ranks of Democrats to find supporters of a more therapeutic view of justice. You would have us believe that the same guys who fought racism and Segregation (Republicans) twenty years prior, who lost the racist South throughout the 1960s and 1970s (yes, Nixon didn't carry the racist South and you may check that), decided they would pander to a dying breed of racists by voting in place the same tough-on-crime types of policies they supported for the past century?

You argue against the policies, you can say that the impacts were disproportionately bad for black people, that drugs should be legalized, etc., but trying to sell the idea Republicans strategically implemented racist policies in the 1980s and 1990s is just nonsense. The simplest explanation is they just kept making the same argument for decades that crime can be deterred by punishment, especially punishment whose enforcement is highly probable.
 
First of all, even if we take your word that resources to fight drugs were misallocated across ethnic groups, you do not seem to understand it would be a fallacy to conclude racism is the cause of such misallocation. Racism is one of many possible reasons to disparate impacts.

Second of all, your interpretation runs against 150 years of history. To my knowledge, Republicans were behind the idea that crime must be punished throughout the entire 20th century. You have to look through the ranks of Democrats to find supporters of a more therapeutic view of justice. You would have us believe that the same guys who fought racism and Segregation (Republicans) twenty years prior, who lost the racist South throughout the 1960s and 1970s (yes, Nixon didn't carry the racist South and you may check that), decided they would pander to a dying breed of racists by voting in place the same tough-on-crime types of policies they supported for the past century?

You argue against the policies, you can say that the impacts were disproportionately bad for black people, that drugs should be legalized, etc., but trying to sell the idea Republicans strategically implemented racist policies in the 1980s and 1990s is just nonsense. The simplest explanation is they just kept making the same argument for decades that crime can be deterred by punishment, especially punishment whose enforcement is highly probable.

Very clever rhetoric meant to blame no one especially the mindset that originated these harsh punishments selectively and knowingly to only a select group of Americans, the black, the brown and rarely their social equivalent white person. It is no mystery why marijuana was criminalized in the 30s. There is no question why crack was deemed more of a scourge then coke. Laws and punishments were not created in a vacuum. The inevitable decline of middle class black America began with zoning laws pushing them into small areas in major cities. Unionization and the public sector provided good paying jobs for these families but the New Jim Crow was relentless in it's desire to keep the black population in check. When the crime ridden streets of most urban areas started to blow up in riots, decay, white flight, drugs, guns and corruption, it was easy to see how politicians of either stripe used the fear of blackness to gain election. Nixon used it in 68, Reagan made it sound like tales from Grandpa in 1980 and the weak willed left went along for the ride. Three strikes laws, disparate sentencing guidelines and enforcement, loss of jobs due to "market forces", massive incarceration of black men for crimes white men did all the time without harm, it all ended up feeding the beast that created Trump. I can tell you truthfully that if every felony committed by boomers had been prosecuted, half the damn boomer generation would be in jail if only for drug offenses. No one is going to tell me that our current racial tensions is not due to a systematic attempt to put them in the hell holes we prefer as a society.

Ever wonder why rural America is almost devoid of black people with the exception of small pockets of the South? Go read "Warmth of Other Suns" for a good primer on why this is so.
 
Very clever rhetoric meant to blame no one (...).

Here is racism in a nutshell: your judgment or actions depends on the race of the person concerned. The only nonracist policy is to be blind to race. One yardstick for everyone, one set of rules for everyone. Now that is equality.

If someone is to blame for any remanence of racism in the United States today, nearly all of them vote blue, call themselves progressives and espouse racist policies under the guise of social justice. And you do not need to invoke intentions that we do not observe and you do not need to assume anyone needs to possess an enigma machine to translate words from English to Racist. It's written black on white in their arguments and the laws they support using the language they chose and every word is taken to have a common, public meaning that can be corroborated in any dictionary. Those people are racists. They make asinine comments about the paramount value of biological heritage and other irrelevant idiosyncrasies and they have the audacity, just like you, to project all of their own opinions on other people.

The conservative ideal is that the Founding Fathers got things pretty close to right: all human beings are equal, hence you treat all of them the same.


You can even compare how the Left and Donald Trump talks about immigration today. Trump distinguishes between people who enter legally and people who enter illegally. Among those who enter legally, he draws distinctions between areas who pose more or less serious threats to the safety of all Americans, and those who will make positive contributions and those who won't. It doesn't mention skin color or religion. You have to imagine intentions never stated and codes never revealed to call that racist because there is never any direct mapping to be made between what he says and skin color, or what he does and skin color. Contrast with Ocasio-Cortez. When she talks about immigration, how does she frame the problem? That's what I thought.

Open your damn eyes. Conservatives have been on the same side since the party was created. They like families, individual liberties, personal responsibility, and their country because it stands for those values. They dislike government schemes, regulations, unequal treatment of people, and people who are dependent on taxpayers. It has always been like that. Democrats have always stood for discriminatory policies of one form or another. They used to have content slaves as their moral stance. Now, they have content single mothers and unemployed minorities.


You can count as respectable Democrats all those who openly speak against political correctness and virulently oppose identity politics. Bill Maher is one example. He would disagree with me that Republicans aren't racists, but he routinely rips jokes at the PC police and other identitarian radicals. We agree where it matters. Pick your side. I'm on the side of Lincoln: the values expressed in the founding documents of the United States are what will kill discrimination. The ideas peddled by AOC and her ilk are antithetical to freedom and as unamerican as they get.
 
It means you have to be careful not to assume markets don't tend to work against racism (they tend to do it) and not to assume governments work against it (they sometimes work for it). It's harder to fight racism than it seems.

Absolutely!! If Black or Chinese or Asian or female workers were good and got less pay a company could hire only them and then price under the competition and drive them into bankruptcy. Capitalism is a minorities best friend.
 
I'm on the side of Lincoln: the values expressed in the founding documents of the United States are what will kill discrimination. The ideas peddled by AOC and her ilk are antithetical to freedom and as unamerican as they get.

Good point! All men are created equal. No welfare for some and not for others. All is does is create moral hazard and slow down progress.
 
Here is racism in a nutshell: your judgment or actions depends on the race of the person concerned. The only nonracist policy is to be blind to race. One yardstick for everyone, one set of rules for everyone. Now that is equality.

If someone is to blame for any remanence of racism in the United States today, nearly all of them vote blue, call themselves progressives and espouse racist policies under the guise of social justice.

Social justice warriors will obviously never stand for that. According to them, only a racist or apologist thereof could ever construe them to be racist. Further, they will call colorblindness "another form of racism" because it refuses to embrace their political agenda-driven mantra of systemic racism/oppression/white privilege and so on and so forth.

Probably the most obvious discriminatory attitude that is apparent to me is class/socioeconomic in nature, particularly as it relates to housing. As a general rule, nearly every single property owner opposes housing for people poorer than them to be built near them. People have very discriminatory attitudes about people who are poorer than them being enabled to move into affordable housing near them.

The places where the demand for affordable housing is through the roof (because of its proximity to jobs) is where it is typically the most difficult, by far, to be able to get zoned and permitted to construct affordable housing units. Homeowner opposition to condos, apartments, publicly subsidized housing, and homeless shelters is almost always extremely fierce. People don't want the poor living near them. Poverty is associated with higher rates of substance abuse, crime and other social problems. People don't want that near them. Their reasons are completely understandable and self-interested, but it creates a society that organizes itself in whatever way keeps life privileged for the already privileged and keeps living conditions undesirable for people whose living conditions are already undesirable. It results in inequality, but it doesn't have much of anything to do with race.

And there are no simple fixes to that. Wage laws don't fix it, overruling the people who elected you and building affordable housing against the will of the people and where it's most fiercely opposed is nonviable, there are just no magic policies that simple cure that problem. Everyone will always have a desire and incentive to own their home, and everyone who owns their home will always have an incentive to do whatever they can to prevent poor people with problems from being able to afford to live nearby.
 
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We have FIRE regulations for a reason, yes?
Fire can be a useful tool, because it can warm your home, forge your steel and iron, cook your food, etc.
It can also burn down entire towns if left unchecked.

Capitalism is a lot like FIRE. Left unregulated and unchecked, it can become predatory and very damaging, and it can unearth some pretty awful unintended consequences. And yet when properly harnessed, capitalism can lift entire generations out of poverty, stimulate innovation and launch entirely new industries. Capitalism has demonstrated the capability to serve as a useful and rewarding tool to serve the middle class if it operates under the right kind of regulation.

So this thread is an effort to explore suggestions and ideas on how to properly regulate capitalism to do just that.

Capitalism in America has become predatory and very damaging

Because corporations own our representatives and write the laws to their benefit not "We the People"

You can simply follow the money. That path tells the tale. Since Reagan it has all gone to the top!
 
Capitalism in America has become predatory and very damaging

Because corporations own our representatives and write the laws to their benefit not "We the People"

You can simply follow the money. That path tells the tale. Since Reagan it has all gone to the top!

And it's not because capitalism is bad.
Geez whiz, capitalism is ****ing wonderful.
It's that we've allowed ourselves to become lazy stewards of capitalism.
You can't let the greediest bullies take a dump in the cookie jar after they've taken all the cookies just so that they can have the extra thrill of spoiling the leftover crumbs.
 
Capitalism in America has become predatory and very damaging

!

sure is, everyone can now afford huge flat screen TV's!!! while billions live at $1-2/day without Republican capitalism.
 
Because corporations own our representatives and write the laws !

if true why is the silly liberal so afraid to present his best example of this??
 
Since Reagan it has all gone to the top!

not at all, it's all gone to Mexicans and to China. We elected Trump to fix what liberals did to us!!
 
not at all, it's all gone to Mexicans and to China. We elected Trump to fix what liberals did to us!!

Just a friendly reminder- Bush 1 started the NAFTA crap and Nixon opened the doors to China- Nixon also allowed, publicly, "I guess we're all Keynesian"- Keynes designed an economic plan for the British- a monarchy- top down- making borrowing easier for gov't creates a top down economy- gov't borrowing insures only those well resourced/connected get the "regulation" desired- however, we are in a Global economy, that has to be recognized- our tertiary economy (trinkets and toys) have spread the/our wealth, Globally- that's not to say it wouldn't/couldn't happen w/o gov't intervention because it most certainly could have- people get creative/innovative when they want to engage in what they fancy-
Free trade and free markets is the answer- not lip service. We have neither, therefore we have crony capitalism- if you have the money to buy a crony success is insured, legally.
 
You can't let the greediest bullies take a dump in the cookie jar after they've taken all the cookies just so that they can have the extra thrill of spoiling the leftover crumbs.

This is a version of the fixed-pie fallacy.

If you guys would ever take the time to learn that the amount of wealth in the world isn't finite, much of the nonsense you believe would go away.
 
Capitalism in America has become predatory and very damaging

Because corporations own our representatives and write the laws to their benefit not "We the People"

You can simply follow the money. That path tells the tale. Since Reagan it has all gone to the top!

So, socialism is your answer? LOL!!! Capitalism still exists and benefits most of us. It still gives opportunity for people to build their own businesses. Trump has cut regulations which helps new businesses start up. Capitalism is the reason so many other countries have seen their poverty cut way back. Americanism is fantastic as long as Democrats don't ruin it with socialism/communism.
 
Capitalism is the reason so many other countries have seen their poverty cut way back.

very true!!! China instantly eliminated 40% of the entire planets poverty when it switched to capitalism from libsocialism. Liberals turn to socialism only to show their extremely low IQ's. Sad!
 
Free trade and free markets is the answer- not lip service.

And do you think AOC/Sanders/Warren support free markets or socialism?? 1+1=2
 
I don't see the relevancy

You say you are for free markets but you don’t say who you vote for in general or specific terms?
 
very true!!! China instantly eliminated 40% of the entire planets poverty when it switched to capitalism from libsocialism. Liberals turn to socialism only to show their extremely low IQ's. Sad!

Democrats like their Democratic Socialism methods of genocide to control population by killing off the poor. They fluff them up by giving them food and stuff before slaughtering them.
 
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