15 pointsby mandevil11 hours ago3 comments
  • rendall4 hours ago
    The essay is right about the behavior but wrong about the explanation.

    It correctly observes that once companies become dominant, they stop acting like normal competitors. Instead of just building better products, they lobby regulators, buy potential rivals, and shape markets to protect their position. This pattern is real, widespread, and shows up in every industry, not just tech. That alone should hint that ideology isn’t the cause.

    Where the essay goes wrong is treating this as executive confusion or moral contradiction. Executives at dominant firms aren’t confused or especially immoral. At scale, durable dominance and real competition are incompatible. Public companies are punished for slowing down, executive pay is tied to growth and stock price, and losing dominance can end careers even if the company survives. Regulation becomes something to manage or reshape. With weak enforcement, rule-bending is the rational move.

    This doesn’t need a moral or psychological explanation. It follows directly from incentives, scale, and governance gaps.

    Coherent narrative might help. Framing the problem as bad beliefs (as this essay does), bad people, or “capitalism in general” misses the point and leads to confused demands. Policymakers are pressured by the public to punish individuals or signal virtue which are distractions from effectively funding enforcement, closing loopholes, and limiting power at scale. Meanwhile, clear, well-funded lobbying focuses their attention on their needs.

    Clearer public narratives won’t fix the problem by themselves, but they’re a minimum first step. Without a shared understanding of what is wrong and how to fix it, meaningful pressure for reform never even starts.

    • ryandvm2 hours ago
      Citizens United. It's always Citizens United.

      The insane conclusion that amoral and mostly unaccountable conglomerations have the right to direct US legislation and policy without limit is why we are in this mess. Until we sentence an entire Board of Directors to a life sentence in prison, I think I will remain unconvinced that "corporations are people".

  • azaras7 hours ago
    Communism is the alternative ideology.
  • adyashakti9 hours ago
    what seems obvious from this and other articles these days is that western materialistic atheistic capitalist culture has lost its moral compass and has become utterly corrupt—and the disease begins at, and is spread by, the powerful.
    • pjmlp8 hours ago
      Ironically, just like all religions when one does a criticial analysis of what is preached, and what most people end up doing, especially the ultra radical ones.

      Or does a comparisasion between pagan religions, and the ones officially accepted as such in modern times.

      Naturally this is heresy, as too much knowledge isn't called for when discussing religions.

    • dboreham9 hours ago
      Having no moral compass is a feature not a bug. There's supposed to be a government generally maintaining the population's long term interests as a balancing force. The USA lacks that. The capitalists got the root password.
      • 9 hours ago
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