I'd say that's a bug not a feature of capitalism.

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I think it’s a feature. I enjoy air conditioning and heating and food. It seems quite silly to feel guilt or shame for any of those.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Drew should have just said he was having an existential crisis because that's what he's having.

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Agreed. That I can relate to.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

See, you're arguing against nobody. Did he argue for communism or socialism? The counter example Margary used in his piece was Denmark. They're also a capitalist economy albeit with large taxes and an equally large social safety net.

No, he didn’t, and that was precisely why i found the article ridiculous. He’s passively admitting it’s the best system known to date to lift up poor people and he’s still bitching about it.

Some folks just aren’t happy unless they are bitching about something.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

My man Bernie has entered the fray

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Never forget

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if that was their sports thoughts, then perhaps they shouldn't have stuck to sports

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

PFT, who had friends at Deadspin, offers a different perspective.

I guess it's nice that Barstool allows other opinons. I doubt Deadspin would allow any pro-Barstool piece on their site.

https://www.barstoolsports.com/newyork/ ... both-sites

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

Interesting. At least the writer is pretty self aware.

I always love the comparisons of the United States to some small country. There is a massive free rider advantage that the world uses based off of our system. Some examples:

-Medical innovations, mainly pharma products but also technological leaps are largely developed by U.S. companies and funded in our capital markets because we have unregulated drug prices. The developers of those innovations can recover the risk of investment in our markets, while the balance of the world gets to cap those prices below the cost of development,
-We spend a massive percentage of our GDP on the military. That benefits the global order and allows our friends at NATO to under invest in theirs not even getting to the 2% target imposed by NATO in many cases.
-The entire global financial system is built on our currency and regulation of fund flows.
-Our consumers suck up manufactured goods resulting a huge trade deficit.

Our free market system also produces ample excess food supplies, globally recognized entertainment (Hollywood et al), tech innovations (software, chips, etc). These are funded by the deep pool of capital in our system.

Denmark would be fine without us. But there is no doubt they benefit from the free rider concept that our system affords the world.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

But you can't run a global empire where the colonies have it better than the metropole. People are eventually going to ask why we have to stack opioid-soaked corpses like cordwood throughout Ohio and Michigan so that everyone in all the other developed nations can, I dunno, not die of despair like Americans increasingly do (and ever increasingly will).

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I have as many grievances with our system as you do. But to this point, our flawed system has created the greatest level of wealth and innovation that the world has ever seen. The biggest trade off is that it has also created vast inequality with a call option type lottery of wealth.

However, the U.S. has highest per capita GDP among major economies. It is well ahead of those social democracies that everyone loves to cite. The problem is our political system has allocated that wealth for a lot of unproductive uses, the military most notably. But also dumb stuff like ethanol subsidies. We have also borrowed heavily against our future, and not just the on balance sheet debt, but the hidden unfunded liabilities of entitlement programs.

The worst of it all is the tatters of our primary and secondary education system that shows us well near the bottom of major countries.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

An immense deal of our innovation was government-funded one way or another, pace however many stories we tell ourselves about Great Men and their garages. I'm sure we can still have medical advances while we take care of our own sick the way everyone else does.

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What are you, some kind of Trumpet?

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Ecclesiastes 5:8

Capitalism has raised far more people out of poverty than any other economic system ever. There's a certain irony in arguing against Capitalism while using tools that only exist because of Capitalism. There is no winning and losing with Capitalism long-term. Long-term, we are all winners. Many poor people today own hand-held computers that are infinitely faster than computers only wealthy people owned and were the size of rooms in the 1970s. The reason for modern wealth disparity and cronyism is because of barriers to entry and regulations that kill most people's chances of coming up with a new idea or selling a product or service. Every industry is heavily favored toward gigantic corporations, and the primary reason is because of government regulation, not in spite of it.

All true.

There are definitely losers. But the share of winners greatly outnumber the losers. Your point with government regulation is a fair one. Capitalism requires the presence of regulation to excel. However, the relationship between industry and government has evolved into coziness and corruption.

I think he is saying capitalism spurs investment and innovation. Those innovations trickle down to all.

If you lose an incentive many people find key to putting in effort, there will be less progress and therefore less to trickle down.

Who knows what would not have been invented if people knew there was no money to be made off of it. Why bother?

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

I agree with some minimal regulation. Currently, however, companies do well, grow big, and then write the rules for their industry by buying lawmakers. Fuck the little guy.

I'm fine with regulations, but all things equal, fewer is better. They usually aren't written with good intentions.

It doesn't just apply to small business either. My ex-wife's brother is a social worker who has had to move around recently due to his wife's medical condition (closer to medical facilities). It was almost impossible for him to acquire the necessary licensing in a new state, yet the state has a shortage of social workers.

Right but the author isn't arguing for communism or another economic model. FavreFan misread the whole point of Margary's article. No one is this thread is arguing against capitalism. Margary relishes the benefits of capitalism and recognizes its superiority. But he's drawn towards a presidential candidate that supports a market economy more in line with European countries rather than the current US model

I didn't misread a single thing about the article. He states multiple times that he feels guilty from benefiting off of capitalism. That is literally the thesis of the article.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Capitalism in its current form.

https://deadspin.com/transactions-nov-1 ... in_twitter

This is pretty weird

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

I wish they had taken her access away 2 days ago. McKenna was an entertaining dude. Diana Moskowitz has always been useless.

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It seems like some people for some reason could resign immediately and others needed to give two weeks notice. Management seems to be fine with them all just doing what they want until security escorts them out.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

seems like a great time to bring back Second Hand News for Bernsie's show, since he can't crib from Deadspin anymore...

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

Capitalism in its current form is mainly crony capitalism with government, lobbyists and high level businesses taking care of themselves. It evolves here and there and the players change but it’s basically been like this since the late 1800s?

Anyway, there is some odd guilt or shame that FF points out is nonsensical. Yes there are many problems in our system but so many in the world would trade places with us and our most poor very quickly.

Our “poor” live better than many imagined possible in 1890 for example. What this seems to stem from is the political manipulation of feelings of the term income inequality and the like.

News update: basically since the beginning of this country and until way past our deaths the wealthy will have way more than the poor. By definition the different levels of middle will settle, well, somewhere in the middle.

It basically works and the fighting over the tiniest of changes is meaningless in the long term.

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Elections have consequences.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

PittMike, is that your picture in the story?

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Hawaii (fuck) You