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Just imagine what we will find the day where the truth will leak about who and why things like "Chat Control" are pushed down our throat despite going against citizens will.
By amarcheschi 2025-12-0511:302 reply There's really not much else to leak, a lot was already being published. I've prepared a uni exam of ethics in it about chat control and I was so angry and felt so disempowered when writing it
https://www.ftm.eu/articles/ashton-kutchers-non-profit-start...
https://www.ftm.eu/articles/ashton-kutcher-s-anti-childabuse...
https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the...
https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/29/europol-sought-unlimite...
https://balkaninsight.com/2024/10/11/europol-revising-confli...
I might be wrong, but I think that what these articles are showing is just the tip of the Iceberg.
Like that "children protection" associations would vouch for such a ruling or something like that would look like a no-brainer. But the real question is who lead them, who created or fund them, who is driving the coordination in the back.
If we compare with the current "US polluters" case, if you were the target of their lobbying, you would just see a big number of different groups lobbying you (in one case it will be Total, another time "small startups" that appears unconnected together, another time an economic celebrity or rich person, another time that would be the topics at conference you attend, ...). It will look like that it is a global trend of disconnected entities.
But, in the back, there is a single interest group that is pulling strings in the shadow in an unified way. Same as what Russia is often doing at big scale to try to shape opinion in its favor.
It's tempting to believe in that kind of a conspiracy—the kind where there's a single person or group pulling the strings, a single entity to blame, and possibly to eliminate, in order to solve many of the world's woes—but the truth is, it's unlikely to actually be something like that.
A conspiracy isn't necessary when the incentives align such that a group of similar people have reason to work toward such a goal independently. And because the problem is those incentives, not the individuals involved, even if you were to somehow change the mind of, imprison, or assassinate everyone pushing for these things today, more would spring up soon after.
The only way to stop this from happening is to remove the power base that those entities use to make these pushes, and remove the mechanisms that allow them to do so legally. Make it impossible to amass that much wealth. Make the worst kinds of lobbying illegal. Ruthlessly enforce antitrust laws, preventing hyperconsolidation like we see today. Make the very idea of a multibillionaire impossible.
I'm not into conspiracy usually, but regarding everything that was exposed in recent years, I would easily see a conspiracy there.
I'm not necessarily say that it is just a single person or company, but that it is likely that a group of entities is working together on this for a hidden interest.
Just look what happened with the "vote" of the council, each time it became too public that a vote was coming and that some countries would publicly be against due to public pressure, they preferred to "withdraw" the proposal instead of going to the public vote that could have been a strong "no". And they did that multiple times. And it was obvious that the reason to not go to the vote is to be able to try to pass it again. Then, at least the representatives of the countries involved "plotted" against us in a conspiracy, to have the discussion and the decision voted in secret in order to be sure that it will pass. And eventually that no country like Germany could be pointed as individually have voted "yes" despite its population will.
I think it's more comforting for people to believe that there are a handful of evil, mustache-twirling villains, sitting in a smokey room, plotting and directing their henchmen to carry out a conspiracy. "There are only a few bad guys, and the rest of us are just doing what we can," they can say to feel good about the world.
It's a lot more scary to admit that there is no evil puppet master running things, and it's simply that the vast majority of people in leadership positions are just awful people, acting independently, but aligned with the rest of the awful people, intent on doing whatever it takes to make line go up and to the right.
Honestly, I wouldn't even couch it as the majority of leaders being evil: it's that the systems they lead, and that we all operate within, are poorly constructed, broken, or outright corrupt, and need a concerted effort on all our parts to fix them so that they actually work for everyone, rather than funneling wealth and power to the already-wealthy and already-powerful by default.
And that's genuinely hard! Just by the nature of things, it is much, much easier to create a system that reinforces existing power structures than a system that works to subvert them and give more power to those who have little.
By spwa4 2025-12-0614:32 Why not take the simple result from economics? The bigger the economic union, the bigger the inequality. Transforming small European countries, without even harmonizing minimum pay laws and social rules, into the EU, was always going to concentrate wealth to an enormous extent.
One might even say that given the EU's history as an organization, this has always been the intent of creating it in the first place, not an accident.
By hyghjiyhu 2025-12-0516:28 The mature perspective is that there isn't one big conspiracy. There are many small conspiracies.
By danaris 2025-12-0516:07 It sounds like what you're talking about is fairly ordinary political maneuvering of an already-extant official group?
Like, the fact that it's a "council" means that they're already meeting regularly and talking to each other, about these specific things.
When a group like that decides not to advance a proposal because they think it will be voted down, that's not a conspiracy; it may be a highly undesirable behavior, and something we should try to prevent with changes in the structure or rules, but "conspiracy" isn't just a word for every group of people who does things we don't like.
By amarcheschi 2025-12-0512:27 Let's say I have no evidence, but I wouldn't be surprised
By tanepiper 2025-12-0512:46 Damn, I did not have "Ashton Kutcher destroys European liberty" on my bingo card
By reactordev 2025-12-0512:52 Every piece of anti-consumer, anti-user, moat carving policy - has been a result of lobbyists getting to grease the skids of aspiring politicians whose traditional fund raising strategies have run dry.
Be wary of any politician that does not have the mob of the people on their side.
By philipallstar 2025-12-0510:5112 reply This article is written as though lobbying is some sort of unstoppable force.
EU regulators are paid out of EU taxpayers' money, taken by an actual unstoppable force, on the sole promise that they will do a good job of writing some words down on paper.
If they can't even do that then you need to blame them. Not people who talk to them.
I don't agree with this. I think the article does a good job at pointing out the problematic aspects of this particular lobbying campaign, and even how/why to stop it.
A lot of people view lobbyism as basically exchangeable with nepotism and bribery (strictly negative), but this is not the case.
The "happy path" with lobbyism is that local industry gives input on new laws/regulation to prevent unintended negative side-effects. Politicians have typically a much more cursory understanding of how a new law is going to affect any particular industry than people in that industry (obviously).
If you lock down any mechanism like this, you are invariably going to end up with numerous laws that are highly detrimental to local industry in a way that achieves very little (compared to laws designed with input from lobbies).
The article points out exactly how this fossil lobbying case deviated from this ideal (foreign influence instead of domestic, obfuscation and lack of transparency on originators/funding, use of methods to directly affect/manipulate the outputs of lawmaking instead of providing inputs).
By philipallstar 2025-12-0514:081 reply I'm not saying they're being straightforward. I'm saying that the regulator needs to be expert enough to not screw this up even if someone does that.
By myrmidon 2025-12-0516:09 In this case the biggest failure was that ExxonMobil et al were capable of subverting EU lawmaking via external pressure (via US diplomatic channels/trade negotiation) and indirect influence by targetting individual countries.
This seems difficult to systematically prevent to me, and the fact that they went for an approach like that is IMO actually a good sign that its not trivial and cost effective to direct such efforts at EU regulators themselves.
What we actually need to prevent cases like this in my opinion is to hold companies accountable for damages when they sabotage legislation or research in that sector.
A really good historical example is leaded gas: Industry knowingly hobbled research (discredited researchers, paid shills, etc.) and legislation for decades, but there were zero consequences after everything came to light. If there was a credible threat of company leadership going straight to prison and shareholders losing everything in extreme cases like that, companies would be MUCH more circumspect when messing with law/science.
"Another three meetings the Roundtable held were not found in the EU Transparency Register(opens in new window) at all."
That's illegal behavior by foreign interests.
And yes, in practice, lobbying is kind of an unstoppable force.
Those companies have people that its only work is to influence the people in charge. They have personal relationship with those people and they are all friends. It's a good thing to have friends, you never know where you will find yourself when your politics work finish.
If something doesn't work, they will try again next week or next year. It's their work, after all.
By philipallstar 2025-12-1612:12 > Those companies have people that its only work is to influence the people in charge
Taxpayers and companies have some of the fruits of their work taken by force to fund the people in charge, regardless of performance. So the people in charge do not perform.
By IsTom 2025-12-0512:30 That kind of sounds like they should be put in jail to stop this.
> This article is written as though lobbying is some sort of unstoppable force.
The issue here is that the line between lobbying and corruption is very thin and blurry. For instance, the relation between Nellie Kroes and Uber is not an easy one to classify in a judicial context. Who officially pays you has little value in corruption cases. Whether the main culprit is the bribing corporation or the bribed official is also not very interesting.
And while lobbying from corporations is not an unstoppable force, it has certainly shown to be overwhelmingly strong when compared to the lobbying power of individual citizens or non-profit citizen groups.
> And while lobbying from corporations is not an unstoppable force, it has certainly shown to be overwhelmingly strong when compared to the lobbying power of individual citizens or non-profit citizen groups.
That has less to do with corporations and more to do with the fact that nonprofits and citizens avoid lobbying because they see lobbying as an unstoppable evil force, which becomes self fulfilling. Civil Rights was won when people took lobbying seriously. Louis Rossman started an organization that lobbied for Right to Repair legislation in states and you can see real changes in companies like Apple. Sure Rossman didn't get everything he wanted, but neither do corporations.
https://apnews.com/article/nonprofits-lobbying-less-survey-1...
By pyrale 2025-12-0514:11 > nonprofits and citizens avoid lobbying because they see lobbying as an unstoppable evil force
Nonprofits do a lot of lobbying. The only difference is that this lobbying is not backed by cash, unless these nonprofits are backed by corporations.
Unfortunately, money is the best lubricant for lobbyists, and access to money is the main difference between corporations and individuals or citizen associations.
By freehorse 2025-12-0513:26 Civil movements always were about putting pressure to politicians etc. It is just not usually called "lobbying" in this context. Some bigger non-profits and others do call it lobbying though.
By philipallstar 2025-12-0512:121 reply > And while lobbying from corporations is not an unstoppable force, it has certainly shown to be overwhelmingly strong when compared to the lobbying power of individual citizens or non-profit citizen groups.
That's what I'm saying. Why is that?
For example: nepotists hire family members over other people. Would you describe that as "And while being a family member is not an unstoppable force, it has certainly shown to be overwhelmingly strong when compared to the hiring chances of other people." Or would you say "nepotist bad"? And doubly so when you're forced by law to fund the nepotist's salary?
By pyrale 2025-12-0512:35 > Why is that?
Well, if I'm very motivated, I might write a letter to my MP once or twice in my life. I could do more, but I simply have other stuff to do with my life, including my own work.
A corporation, on the other hand, may hire people to pester my MP eight hours a day. These people may have enough money to treat my MP to a lunch, etc. And when my MP stops being elected, that corporation may offer them a job.
Why isn't really an enigma here.
By ninalanyon 2025-12-0512:511 reply The line is not thin, it doesn't exist. All lobbying is corruption. If it were not none of the parties would object to all of the proceedings and data being public.
By philipallstar 2025-12-0514:18 > All lobbying is corruption
Not all of the parties do object to that, so, no, not all lobbying is corruption. Writing to your representative is lobbying.
By philipallstar 2025-12-0514:101 reply > Whether the main culprit is the bribing corporation or the bribed official is also not very interesting.
This is just an opinion of yours, and not in itself interesting either.
It's also a bad idea: if you mis-assign blame away from the regulator who is getting paid out of hard-earned taxes to be misinformed and corrupt, and to the lobbyist, which seems to happen all the time in this topic, then you're never going to fix the problem.
By pyrale 2025-12-0514:20 > if you mis-assign blame [...]
Despite many other people dissenting, you persist in thinking that responsibility is an either/or situation. My point is that both are guilty. In that context, discussing whether one is more morally reprehensible than the other is a diversion at best.
The issue isn't the virtue of the corruptor or the virtue of the corrupted. The issue is corruption, and it must be fought at both ends of the bargain.
By torginus 2025-12-0512:19 It is an unstoppable force in the sense that it never goes away - they've been trying to pass Chat Control (or equivalent stuff) since forever - they rejected Chat Control 1.0 and 2.0 was back bills later and is looking to pass.
They have infinite patience and tenacity, and vary their approaches, and strongarm/pay off politicians that effectively the most organized, engaged and effective popular activism can only delay their ability to pass legislation - and by the looks of it, that doesn't work too well, either.
By otikik 2025-12-0510:58 I can blame both. I have a big heart.
By cwillu 2025-12-0511:29 We can blame both the people who seek to buy power and those who can be bought.
By maxglute 2025-12-0512:34 >EU regulators are paid out of EU taxpayers
As stepping stone to well paid jobs (i.e. think thanks) funded by atlanticist influenced lobbyist. Blame captured regulators all you want, they know where their bread is actually going to be buttered, and the more you don't blame the source the more intractble the problem is.
By cess11 2025-12-0511:34 With the EU it kind of is, lobbying is institutionally embedded under the guise of regulating it.
Being the group that first makes a move or at least moves early and sets the 'frame' usually has a massive influence on the outcome. Which is by design since the early EEC days.
See e.g. https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A168... .
I remember reading that one of the issue regarding the EU and it’s institutions' exposure to lobbyists was that a big part of the population is uninterested in the EU and EU elections.
Which may or may not be true, maybe only partially true at that, and is perhaps simplistic, but does kind of make sense. EU elections do have a particularly low turnout, and if people themselves don’t care enough, then who will?
By hopelite 2025-12-0513:29 [flagged]
By ryanmcbride 2025-12-0514:19 I think we can blame both and I think it's weird that you think we shouldn't.
By expedition32 2025-12-0512:192 reply America has been funding right wing Christians for decades and guess what? Dutch people voted for a gay guy from a liberal party.
It is true that the US wants to destroy our way of life but we are not defenceless.
By tgv 2025-12-0512:32 > Dutch people voted for a gay guy from a liberal party.
16.94% did.
By nephihaha 2025-12-0512:54 I remember going to Rotterdam as a small child in the 1980s and seeing VHS tapes on open display in a shop window promoting bestiality and incest. In fact, well into the 1990s, bestiality was legal and the Dutch age of consent was only twelve, so they had no qualms about public display of such things. I'm aware this has since changed within the last generation... When sex has to be between consenting adult humans (preferably not closely related.)
It doesn't sound like right wing Christians are dictating your way of life much even in areas which are downright questionable and unhygienic.
Qatargate, Mogherinigate, there is no shortage of palms wanting to be greased in Brussels.
They are just less blatant about it than Trump or Witkoff.
I just wish for once that the palms were being greased to do something net positive. There is a lot of money to be made actually solving climate, energy, and housing problems. It would easily be a net economic benefit with many profits being made along the way, with benefits for affordable housing.
I blame an international right that is more intent on looking backwards than forwards, and a left that sees only the real problems, but tends to proscribe surface level direct fixes while eschews grabbing the more indirect budget and financial levers that the right happily throws around.
By potato3732842 2025-12-0511:29 > There is a lot of money to be made actually solving climate, energy, and housing problems.
Yeah. That's the problem. These sleaze-bags get the laws and the rules and the theoretically optional best practices that aren't actually optional crafted so that their buddies or the industries they represent get work and money shoveled at them.
I can't put up solar panels, without a goddamn government fee, the fee is nominal, it's a pretext to force me to have an electrician do it or pay him to sign off on my work. And the useful idiots eat that shit right up because "what if your house burns down" as if the positive of the solar panels isn't a difference between a 1/1mil and a 2/1mil chance of that.
That's just one example. Examples abound in every industry. It's not about the climate or the environment or safety or any other one of the "public goods" that gets half the population to turn their already malfunctioning brain off. Those are just bullshit pretexts because they know that people care about those things on surface level so if you can make legalized graft sail under that flag then people will support it.
I'm atheist, yet the behavior of Big Oil over these past decades is strong evidence that demonic possession may in fact be real.
By 0dayz 2025-12-0511:54 The bible uses demons more as metaphors of the saying: power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely.
(evil spirit however is a real thing).
So you're not wrong.
By marcosdumay 2025-12-0514:561 reply It's amazing how as soon as fast communication became available, how cartoonish villainous the powerful people turned out to be.
Cartoon villains are that way for absurdist comedy purposes, they weren't supposed to reflect reality.
By rolandog 2025-12-0518:42 Or worse, they weren't meant to be portrayed as edgy and misunderstood to lure lonely people into cults of hate.
NB: from what I understand, some cult members joined because they felt part of a community; so, to them, it has a high cost of leaving it because they feel like the other members are friends (kind of like FB/Meta).
By juujian 2025-12-0513:14 Funny enough, the video game Doom is actually making this exact point I discovered somewhat recently.
By nahuel0x 2025-12-0513:20 There’s something profound behind that funny observation. God is a creation of the human mind, yet humanity forgets that it created God. The idea then appears as something external, becoming an independent power that shapes and controls human consciousness. Humans become alienated from what they themselves produced.
This was Feuerbach’s insight, and Marx extended it: just as humanity creates God and then treats him as an autonomous force, it also creates Capital. But Capital comes to operate as if it were an external, self-moving—almost “demonic”—power. People end up acting not according to human needs, but according to the logic of Capital itself.
From this perspective, the Marxist project is not merely a struggle against the bourgeoisie; it is an effort to overcome humanity’s alienation from its own creations—to reclaim power from the human-made “demon” that has come to dominate social life.
If you want an humourous take based on this notion, read the Laundry Files book series by Charles Stross
By RGamma 2025-12-0514:27 Heh, I think that notion came from watching Nefarious, the 2023 movie by Solomon and Konzelman, where a psychiatrist tries to clarify whether an insane (or possessed?) death row inmate is fit to be executed (they talk about how humanity thinks they've won, while evil is quietly everywhere). The middling review scores don't do it justice.
Yet another thing on my reading list, I guess.
By astrobe_ 2025-12-0512:44 Nope. That's the divine invisible hand of the market.
By fnordsensei 2025-12-0511:124 reply Planned economies don’t work great beyond small scopes.
The market does work, but it’s a giant paper clip AI and needs regulation in order to not turn everything into paper clips.
By anonymous908213 2025-12-0512:054 reply > Planned economies don’t work great beyond small scopes.
This is a categorically false statement. The Soviets turned the Russian empire from an agricultural backwater with a minority literate populace, into an advanced industrialised state, scientific leader and economic superpower that was on par with the US for decades, a transformation that took place within a span of merely 20~30 years. Planned economies have been demonstrated to have extremely strong potential. Of course, a planned economy is only as good as its planning, and humans are fallible; we have yet to work out a solution to that particular issue.
The USSR was never economically or scientifically on par with the US. They managed to be relatively competitive in some endeavours by concentrated massive percentages of their national people and resources on certain endeavours (industrialization, space, the military), often with brutal violence. The US was militarily competitive, often with more advanced equipment, at a fraction the economic resources - and did it at the same time as having one of the highest living standards in the world (and often had the positive results of military tech bleeding into the civilian sector, like computers).
Magnitogorsk, a massive soviet city built around a steel mill, was essentially built with American expertise (this whole documentary is extremely fascinating on how central planning got to sophisticated and how the USSR ground to a halt): https://youtu.be/h3gwyHNo7MI?t=1023
This is not to say that any planning is bad, but having a central state trying to control everything from how many belt buckles to make down to how far cab drivers should drive each year, and you're going to become a bureaucratic nightmare. Central planning everything becomes a logarithmic planning nightmare, especially when trying to innovate at the same time. You can't plan around output of innovation because the planners are often far removed from everything. A planner would probably try and "plan" on how to breed a faster horse instead of a car, for example.
I'm reminded of an interview I once saw with Gorbachev. He was talking about how he was just promoted into the central committee, essentially the highest ring of the Soviet state. He had just made it to the top and one of his first meetings was having dealing with the issue of persistent shortages of women's panty hose. He was flabbergasted that he was at the top rung of a country that can blast people into space, but can't deal with basic consumer goods availability.
Also, many countries have industrialized just as fast without central planning, particularly several asian ones. True, then did centrally set goals and use various carrot and stick initiatives, but otherwise let the market dictate most of the rest.
By anonymous908213 2025-12-0513:151 reply > The USSR was never economically or scientifically on par with the US
We can call it solidly #2 if you prefer, but going from a failed empire to #2 in the world is still a real achievement. To be clear, I was not making a statement on whether I think central planning is superior; I was merely contesting the claim that it can not work at scale, which I find to be clearly untrue. Whether it's inferior or not, we have an impressive example indicating that success is at least possible. I would also expect the modern era to offer a better opportunity for central planning than in the past if any nation wanted to give it another go because significantly more well-informed decisions could be made with the degree of data and instant communication we have available today. That said, I certainly wouldn't be keen to advocate for it in my own country, because I don't much like the idea of giving the state absolute control in an era with a level of surveillance the KGB could not have dreamed of.
By hylaride 2025-12-0513:36 You can't even measure it cleanly. It was so isolated and its currency wasn't even convertible, but by most measures Japan and West Germany had larger economies with far, far, far better living standards. Go to per-capita level equivalents and you'd be hard pressed to find it higher than any western developed country. Even economic basket-case countries in South America often had better living standards.
North Korea is sending things into space. You can't measure a country on its isolated accomplishments, even if they're impressive.
By OneDeuxTriSeiGo 2025-12-0513:19 Many asian countries industrialised with what was essentially central planning. Not in the literal "one government decision maker" sense but via a handful of extraordinarily large mega-corporations operating as central planners themselves.
The big five chaebol in South Korea for example orchestrate more than half the economic activity in the country and that's down from what it was before the turn of the century.
Similarly Japan was heavily industrialised under the zaibatsu and they effectively ran the entire economy of Japan through the entire imperial era. It was only during the american occupation that the zaibatsu were broken up and afterwards the keiretsu would take their place as the dominant drivers and orchestrators of economic activity.
This isn't to say that central planning or extremely heavily integrated planning and operations are a good thing for an economy or remotely healthy in the long term, just that they were pretty prevalent in many major cases of rapid industrialization in asia regardless of whether they came in a socialist or capitalist flavor.
Virtually any country that achieves political stability and effective institutions experiences rapid development in the modern world with open knowledge and trade networks.
There is nothing special about central planning in that manner that a laissez-faire economy would also achieve at that low development.
By anonymous908213 2025-12-0512:272 reply That's quite a misattribution of success. The Russian empire was politically stable throughout the industrial revolution era, and yet lagged behind other great powers substantially. The Soviet revolution, of course, ushered in a famously politically unstable era with regular, massive purges. Meanwhile, there are many relatively politically stable countries that never managed to become especially industrialised over a period of many decades even up to the modern day, for example Mexico.
There's also a difference between "any country can rapidly develop", and what the USSR did, reaching a superpower status only two countries in the world achieved. For example, the USSR produced 80,000 T-34 medium tanks to the US's 50,000 Sherman tanks and Germany's 8500 PzIV tanks, and it was superior to both. That is a ridiculous feat, and it happened in the middle of a massive invasion that forced the relocation of huge swathes of industry to boot. The USSR was also the first to most space achievements, and it was second to develop nuclear weapons. The USSR did not just catch up to "any industrialised nation", it surpassed them all completely other than the US.
By hylaride 2025-12-0513:16 > The Russian empire was politically stable throughout the industrial revolution era, and yet lagged behind other great powers substantially.
The Russian empire was (finally) developing industrially at the outbreak of WW1. It's industrialization was retarded by it's hanging onto serfdom (including in practice after it was technically ended) far longer than the rest Europe (that prevented people moving into cities and work in factories).
> There's also a difference between "any country can rapidly develop", and what the USSR did, reaching a superpower status only two countries in the world achieved. For example, the USSR produced 80,000 T-34 medium tanks to the US's 50,000 Sherman tanks and Germany's 8500 PzIV tanks
The US sent over 400,000 trucks and jeeps to Russia (on top of building many more for itself and other allies), built out a massive navy and merchant marine, built 300,000 planes of various types (almost as much as the rest of the other allies and axis combined), supplied massive amounts of food, energy, etc and researched and built the atomic bomb (and didn't steal it). They did this while fighting a war on two fronts and maintaining a relatively good living standard (it's a fair argument to make that they weren't dealing with a direct invasion threat, though). They also had one of the best military supply chains in the world, that still persists to this day.
The superiority of the T-34 is overplayed. It was a decent tank that was good enough to build at scale, but the Sherman was more survivable and just as reliable.
The Soviet Union went to massive amounts of trouble to gloss over lend-lease aid for propaganda reasons. Russian blood absolutely won the war in Europe, but the USSR had massive amounts of help.
By corimaith 2025-12-0513:26 >industrialised over a period of many decades even up to the modern day, for example Mexico.
Pretty sure Mexico's GDP per capita was higher for quite a while, and their stagnation lied precisely in improper government interference that closed off the economy with protectionist policg rather than embracing free trade. Nor did these have inclusive institutions or really stable political situations.
The thing about the USSR, just like with China and India and USA is that once the economic growth sets in, their large populations compared to existing European states would obviously lead to much larger economies of scale and thus GDP growth. But of course, even given that large absolute growth, living standards never did converge with Western Europe. That speaks more to how central planning stagnated things.
By kakacik 2025-12-0512:57 This is all false, I guess you've never been to Soviet Union nor russia (that country doesn't deserve capital R). Central planning is dysfunctional at its core, ignoring subtleties of smaller parts. Also, it was historically always done in eastern Europe hand in hand with corruption, nepotism and incompetence where apparatchiks held most power due to going deepest in ass kissing and other rectal speleology hobbies, not because they were competent.
I come from one such country. After WWII, there was Austria and there was eastern bloc to compare. Austria was severely damaged and had much lower GDP than us. It took mere 40 years of open market vs centrally planned economy to see absolutely massive differences when borders reopened and people weren't shot anymore for trying to escape - we didn't have proper food in the shops ffs. Exotic fruits came few times a year, rotten or unripe. Even stuff grown in our country was often lacking completely. Any product ie electric ones, or cars were vastly subpar to western ones while massively more costly (and often design was plain stolen from the western companies).
Society as a whole made it because almost everybody had a big garden to complement everything basic missing in shops. The little meat you could buy was of worst quality, ladden with amount of toxic chemistry that wouldn't be acceptable in Bangladesh.
Just had to break a few eggs[1] to make that omelette.
Same as with the other omelettes. [0]
Uh huh. Sure.
> The proximate cause of the famine was the infection of potato crops by blight (Phytophthora infestans)[14] throughout Europe during the 1840s.
Vs.
> While most scholars are in consensus that the main cause of the famine was largely man-made, it remains in dispute whether the Holodomor was intentional, whether it was directed at Ukrainians, and whether it constitutes a genocide, the point of contention being the absence of attested documents explicitly ordering the starvation of any area in the Soviet Union. Some historians conclude that the famine was deliberately engineered by Joseph Stalin to eliminate a Ukrainian independence movement. Others suggest that the famine was primarily the consequence of rapid Soviet industrialisation and collectivization of agriculture.
By saubeidl 2025-12-0517:49 You could've read a bit more of the article. Proximate cause != ultimate cause.
> Initial limited but constructive government actions to alleviate famine distress were ended by a new Whig administration in London, which pursued a laissez-faire economic doctrine, but also because some assumed that the famine was divine judgement or that the Irish lacked moral character,[20
Money is power. Markets produce wealth inequality. The richest use their money to buy influence and write the rules. Fundamentally a “regulated market” is an unstable system that eats itself, a fiction.
By inglor_cz 2025-12-0511:39 No system consisting of humans is ever stable. We can dampen various events, but building a stable system is impossible. Too many things change constantly around us.
Not even old ossified feudal systems were stable. Either the Mongols came, or Black Death, or some smart-ass with his moveable type, and nothing was like before.
By mytailorisrich 2025-12-0511:262 reply What is you definition of "markets"?
Markets are nothing more than the aggregate expression of what people do, need, desire. It's an expression of a free society. No market means a Stalinist society.
> Markets produce wealth inequality.
That always reminds of Margaret Thatcher's famous words in Parliament: "They'd rather the poor be poorer provided that the rich were less rich."
> No market means a Stalinist society.
It doesn't. That's just ideological propaganda.
> They'd rather the poor be poorer provided that the rich were less rich.
That is an absolutely reasonable stance? Wealth isn't absolute, it's relative. If the rich are less rich, more resources are available for everyone else.
By 1718627440 2025-12-0512:54 Richness is about available resources. The poor being poorer means that they have even less resources, so it precludes that there would be "more resources available for everyone else". What you propose is the rich getting less rich and the poor getting less poor.
Markets are the expression of an unfree society because they concentrate power in the hands of the few. Those with more money benefit by exploiting those with less - exploiting workers on the one hand and consumers on the other (through rent extraction). Stalinism is one form of planned economy but in your view the choices are Stalinism vs unregulated markets as if no other options exist. Absurd.
After decades of neoliberalism (thanks to politicians like Thatcher) we can see what a failure it has been. Wealth inequality is growing, climate change is getting worse, far right movements are spreading, governments are run by oligarchs, industry has declined, the working class is squeezed, labor movements have been crushed, housing shortages.. it’s an ideology of class war by the rich against the working class.
By mytailorisrich 2025-12-0513:481 reply > Stalinism is one form of planned economy but in your view the choices are Stalinism vs unregulated markets as if no other options exist.
You've shifted from "market" to "unregulated market". Your point is against markets in general and you haven't explained what's your understanding of "market" is (it seems at the very least unclear to you).
Trying to abolish "the market" can only lead to Stalinism, or whwtever you can to call it, because, again, since a market is the expression of people's actions, needs, and desires abolishing it has to mean abolishing individuals' freedoms. This is not absurd or "ideological propaganda", this is factual (and common sense, really) and proven again and again through the 20th century.
By grafmax 2025-12-0612:29 Markets are a place where buyers and sellers come together and exchange money for goods and services.
Markets exploit. Example: the labor market; individuals are forced among unfavorable options to work for the enrichment of business owners otherwise they will end up on the street. Business owners themselves do not face this choice; they have their capital to fall back on. Another example is the housing market where the wealthy have bid up housing as a financial asset, so the working class pays a larger and larger share of income to banks and rentiers, a cash flow from workers to the wealthy. Now people are making ‘choices’ here so supposedly that means markets are expression of free desires. But when one’s choices are constrained due to the power differential between the haves and have nots, the choices are not a free choice. To have actual agency you have to have power, but the power is in the hands of the ownership class.
Maybe you think markets are a necessary evil. But they are not some bastion of freedom like you suppose. That is absurd. We should look at markets for what they are not to candy coat them.
By 1718627440 2025-12-0512:591 reply > Markets are the expression of an unfree society because they concentrate power in the hands of the few.
The idea of markets is that both sides are unable to influence the price. What you describe is a problem, but it isn't a healthy/free/working market anymore. I agree that the current economy is suboptimal, but the problem isn't capitalism and and free markets. It's rather a lack of the latter.
I guess see a “free market” as a contradiction, a utopia that even if it existed for a moment would promptly undo itself. As for capitalism - capture of the state by monied interests has always been a central feature.
By 1718627440 2025-12-0513:361 reply A totally free market is of course utopia, but a lot of markets actually come close. Think your local butchers, bakeries and mechanics. All business with less than 10 employees and the boss is actually working. There are not that much markets that are actually problematic, but of course we talk about them a lot. Most local markets are actually fine, it's the big multinational corporations that are the problem.
> As for capitalism - capture of the state by monied interests has always been a central feature.
Capitalism is about the concept of private ownership and an economy primarily controlled by the decisions of private business oriented societies. Capture of the state isn't necessary, but common and normal up to a point.
Capitalism is a system where workers create value through their work and are compensated with a portion of that value in the forms of wages. The business owner, the capitalist, is able to extract a portion of that for themselves because they own the business. The state maintains this exploitation of workers’ productivity through so-called property rights - the “rights” of the business owner over the worker. Without the state, this system falls apart.
By 1718627440 2025-12-0616:431 reply What separates capitalism from earlier forms, e.g. guilds in the middle ages is that every person can decide to make their own business at any time. Nobody is predestined to a specific profession or estate. That not everyone has its one business is because not everyone wants to do that managing work, some people want to do productive work and a lot of projects are larger than a single person could do.
That work can be exchanged for money predates (the current form of) capitalism and depends fundamentally only on the concept of money alone. I fail to see how that is exploitation per se. You choose to trade something you have for something you want. That's freedom. Taking that away means slavery or starving people.
> The state maintains this exploitation of workers’ productivity through so-called property rights - the “rights” of the business owner over the worker.
What are you talking about? What "rights" of a business owner? The only thing they make are voluntary contracts. You are doing the same when you buy groceries, you are trading money you have for the work of others. What you describe is (wage) slavery, which we claim to have abolished.
Yes they are property rights, but show me the person who doesn't have property. I bet even the homeless person doesn't want it to be legal that the few processions he has can be taken away by anybody, because they just want it.
In civilized countries employees also have more rights than employers e.g. for notice periods, precisely because the working market is often in a state where the employee has less negotiation power. The contract drafter is also the disfavoured party in court.
No you need a state to enforce the property rights of capitalists over workers.
Nor are people all “free” under capitalism - for example the ability to start a business is predicated on assets to fund the business. Capitalist freedoms is freedom for the rich.
And the supposed freedoms of a worker to enter into a contract are a choice between lesser evils - limited choices given their precarious position relative to employers. Jeff Bezos vs an Amazon warehouse worker - it’s not a contract between equals. You seem intent on denying the real power difference between employers and employees as supposedly free arrangements.
As for worker rights they have been fought for by the labor despite the vicious resistance of the capitalist class. Since the 1980s those rights have deteriorated as wealth has continued to consolidate. It’s a trend that’s likely to continue as the richest pollute our globe, promote austerity, extract rent from the working class, undermine democracies, and instigate war.
By 1718627440 2025-12-0621:181 reply > No you need a state to enforce the property rights of capitalists over workers.
Can you please define what you mean with "property rights of capitalists"? I don't think we are thinking of the same. When I think of property rights, I think of the concept of exclusive ownership of a thing, which is maintained by declaring theft to be illegal. That is a right, that everyone has including the homeless person living next to the train station.
> Nor are people all “free” under capitalism - for example the ability to start a business is predicated on assets to fund the business. Capitalist freedoms is freedom for the rich.
You can start selling parsley growing in your living room tomorrow, from seeds you found in the local park. However we didn't just started being settled yesterday, so you do need to compete with all the other people already doing things. That you need resources to live, that you don't just have, is not something, that was invented by the "evil capitalists", that is something, that is just human nature (actually not specific to humans). It is true, that some people are born rich, and most don't, but this is unfair not unfree.
> And the supposed freedoms of a worker to enter into a contract are a choice between lesser evils - limited choices given their precarious position relative to employers. Jeff Bezos vs an Amazon warehouse worker - it’s not a contract between equals.
Yes, people like Jeff Bezos are an issue, and Amazon is famous for being a shitty company. However most employers are not Jeff Bezos and most employees don't work for Amazon. You could also start working at the carpenter next door and if you are very good, you will inherit the company. They are looking for people like crazy, prizes for them are high and a lot of craftsmen need to close their business, not because of less demand, but because they are old and their is no one to inherit them to. Working at a carpenter requires you to have finished school, which is payed for by the state and actually mandatory.
> You seem intent on denying the real power difference between employers and employees as supposedly free arrangements.
> In civilized countries employees also have more rights than employers e.g. for notice periods, precisely because the working market is often in a state where the employee has less negotiation power. The contract drafter is also the disfavoured party in court.
Yes, once you are in a contract you need to fulfill them, however you can make any contract you like and are free to terminate them at any time (with a notice period).
> As for worker rights they have been fought for by the labor despite the vicious resistance of the capitalist class.
That highly depends on the country. Often also rulers have seen that peace in their society makes for a stronger society and employers that employees that don't need to think about feeding their children produce better work and providing benefits to their employees improves there competitiveness in the workers market. Traditionally states also didn't liked persons becoming richer than them, as this might pose a threat, people like Jeff Bezos are very much a new phenomena.
So-called property rights are a legal construction that protects the wealth of the wealthy from the working class utilizing the justice system to maintain the domination of the wealthy over the working class, classifying expropriations of their wealth as theft. Capitalist states have always been subordinate to the wealthy, and the justice system is one branch of that apparatus.
> once you are in a contract you need to fulfill them, however you can make any contract you like and are free to terminate them at any time (with a notice period).
This is a bankrupt notion of freedom that ignores the power differences between the parties in the contract. Those with less money have fewer choices available to them and are thus less free. That’s why relationships of exploitation continue to exist such as between the Amazon worker who pisses into a bottle to boost their metrics while Bezos retains the freedom to sit on his billions and pay politicians to do his bidding. These relationships wouldn’t exist if the parties were on equal footing.
> It is true, that some people are born rich, and most don't, but this is unfair not unfree.
Wealth differences are power differences. The power differences give rise to exploitative relationships. Wealth differences aren’t a fact of nature. They are a result of how we as humans have organized our societies. We have made this and we can unmake it. Sucking our thumbs and saying “that’s just the way things are” is part of the ideological apparatus that maintains the power of the capitalist class over the working class.
Wealth differences are power differences and as such impinge on freedom since those with less wealth have their choices subtracted in relationships of capitalist exploitation.
By 1718627440 2025-12-1614:20 Sorry for the late reply.
> classifying expropriations of their wealth as theft
Like I wrote earlier the average homeless also wants to have "expropriations" of his things to be classified as theft. Normalizing "expropriations" also results in a self-education to an attitude that does not fare well in a society.
> ignores the power differences between the parties in the contract.
No we are not "ignoring power differences". That is why we have (labor) laws after all, whose independent application you also don't seem to like. Laws only limit the powerful, the powerless would be even more at the mercy of the powerful without (enforced) laws, as this is the very meaning of having or not having power.
I do not think that the existence of Amazon and people like Bezos, is the result of a healthy, competitive market. If anything it has destroyed the very same. The actions of Amazon are borderline to literally illegal, which is why they need to transport the workers across country borders to evade law enforcement.
> These relationships wouldn’t exist if the parties were on equal footing.
Which is why these relationships are affected by labor laws. If you want to suggest, that we should invest in law enforcement to deal with these issues or maybe tweak the laws a bit, to make more of that behaviour illegal, then I agree.
> Wealth differences are power differences.
Yes.
> The power differences give rise to exploitative relationships.
Given the absence of a healthy state, yes.
> Wealth differences aren’t a fact of nature.
Maybe.
> They are a result of how we as humans have organized our societies.
Yes.
> We have made this and we can unmake it.
Citation needed.
> Sucking our thumbs and saying “that’s just the way things are”
This is a strawman, nobody is suggesting that.
I do not want to be subject to the "ideological apparatus" that rises from your ideas. I would if my dad hasn't fought against it, under threat of live to him and the family (which is why my grandfather was against it). No I very much do not want to see how your ideas work out in practice AGAIN. Read a history book.
> Wealth differences are power differences and as such impinge on freedom
I think we also have a different definition of freedom as well. Having less choices doesn't make you less free. Arbitrary limiting choices does. Not being able to snip your fingers and be rich, doesn't make you unfree, if anything being attached to wealth makes you unfree. Forcing you to work for someone, forbidding you from buying or selling a product makes you unfree.
Equality =/= Freedom. It is perfectly possible to have high inequality but individual agency when operating in a positive sum game.
If you want to critique unequal distribution of power, that has always been the case with any society. You cannot coordinate thousands without some form of delegation. But problems borne of the market are always much easier to resolve than problems borne if the political. Therefore it is better to contain an unavoidable problem in a manageable domain that let it establish itself in a more concrete way.
The actual failures of the Western economies lie in naive assumptions about dealing with mercantalist countries and NIMBYism, but given this forum is against the solutions to both it is more politically acceptable to blame everything on "neoliberalism".
By grafmax 2025-12-0513:11 Inequality has always existed to some degree, sure, but that’s a shallow platitude. Markets have give us levels not seen since the Pharaohs. No the existence of any inequality doesn’t justify the insane levels we see today.
And blaming NIMBYism not Thatcher’s ideology for UK’s stagnation is pretty funny. Like that has had more influence.
By 1718627440 2025-12-0512:56 > The actual failures of the Western economies lie in naive assumptions about dealing with mercantalist countries and NIMBYism, but given this forum is against the solutions to both it is more politically acceptable to blame everything on "neoliberalism".
And turning themself more into mercantalist countries, which is meant by 'blame everything on "neoliberalism"'.
By littlecosmic 2025-12-0512:08 Even under capitalism there is a lot of central planning at huge scales. Walmart is one American example. Woolworths and Coles are another couple in Australia. These companies aren’t rocketing up at the market each morning and taking the latest price… they are managing supply and pricing end to end for most of what they do in advanced.
By torginus 2025-12-0512:31 All great achievements were result of economic planning.
The moon landing (and the necessary R&D and buildup) wasn't based on market-based economic incentives.
There are multiple examples of advanced high-tech economies built up with the help of central planning married to market forces - basically every East Asian country followed this blueprint.
The USSR was a much more powerful economy than it capitalist successor, even though it wasn't run especially effectively.
City supported housing initiatives produce with extensive public planning and infrastructure investments produce much better results than for-profit developers building the least amount of stuff for the most amount of money.
There are 3 main methods of economic control: profit motive, central planning, and intrinsic incentives. Purist approaches that rely on just one or reject the other tend to have bad outcomes.
Yes. A mechanism that rewards the greediest and most ruthless is not a good basis for building a society.
Markets tend to emerge where there are people who have some things while wanting other things
When something emerges, you can either embrace it or you can fight it.
When a cancer emerges, one doesn't usually embrace it. I suggest we treat markets the same way.
By 1718627440 2025-12-0513:021 reply Fighting that people can decide what and how they want to sell and buy, results in a society I don't want to live. To enforce it you will eventually free the people from a bunch of other decisions, as they strangely refuse to follow your great ideas.
What the problem is, is the asymmetry in the market, not the market itself.
> What the problem is, is the asymmetry in the market, not the market itself.
Markets are inherently asymmetrical. The problem is a core feature of the system.
By 1718627440 2025-12-0513:271 reply > Markets are inherently asymmetrical.
Citation needed. A healthy market has so many sellers and buyers that no side can force a price above the other. Think your local bakery or butcher. In a healthy market profits are nearly zero.
Any market inherently results in consolidation. My local bakery is a giant chain. My local butcher has been driven out of business by supermarket chains.
By 1718627440 2025-12-0515:241 reply > My local bakery is a giant chain.
That's not what I would call a local bakery. Or are they making bread there?
> Any market inherently results in consolidation.
Only when you can undercut prices through scale. There are of course baking shops here as well, but they just don't have the quality of a real baker.
That is exactly my point. Local artisan bakers are being priced out by crappier quality baking shops due to their economy of scale. The market optimizes for the cheapest slop made by the biggest conglomerate, the opposite of what I want.
By 1718627440 2025-12-0516:181 reply And yet that is a problem of the past twenty years while we had markets for centuries. The concept of markets doesn't seem to be the problem.
If you say we need more regulation and an actual Antitrust Division that does things, then I agree. If you say we need to get rid of free markets and capitalism and return to socialism, then I am strongly against that.
By TFYS 2025-12-0517:09 A cancer doesn't kill you as soon as the first cancerous cell division happens. It takes time for the processes of markets to develop into something that threatens our existence.
By potato3732842 2025-12-0517:22 >My local bakery is a giant chain. My local butcher has been driven out of business by supermarket chains.
Is that an inherent property or is it the result of people in government who believe what you believe putting their thumb on the scale of the market in piecemeal?
By orphea 2025-12-0511:25 What is an alternative and why do you think it would work?
By zimza 2025-12-0512:03 Brother, writing something like this on EnlightenedCentristNews is a dead end, trust me.
By penguin_booze 2025-12-0511:22 Hey, but greed is good, and market solves everything.
Or they like staying in business and producing energy that people willingly purchase.
By madeforhnyo 2025-12-0511:151 reply If they're not doing evil work, why all the secrecy? It's not like they're going bankrupt either since, like you mentioned, the demand is not going away
By tomaskafka 2025-12-0511:191 reply Because people are hipocrites - our stated goals (clean environment, fair business) are different from the actual ones (get a lot of stuff and energy cheaply)
But these shouldn't be in contradiction. Oil and gas will end when they will be unprofitable, priced out by much cheaper renewables. Of course this will result in more and cheaper stuff and energy, boost economic growth rates not suppress them.
By adrianN 2025-12-0512:35 It's hard to compete with something that is allowed to externalize the majority of its costs.
That’s the theory. What’s happening is the complete opposite. Thank the government for it.
By anovikov 2025-12-0512:27 Well, regardless of what government does, renewables will eventually price out oil and gas. And the government and the megacorps will be on their side because that way they will be making more money. Not before.
No one is trying to limit renewables just for the sake of it. They are trying to do so because so far renewables don't allow to make much money while oil and gas does. There won't be any reason for the powers that be, to resist them once this situation reverses.
By croes 2025-12-0511:28 You could say the same about any drug lord.
If your business harms the masses maybe you should overthink your business model.
“Big oil” is not demonic it is your God as much as it is everyone’s God that uses electricity and all the things you have that are only possible through oil. You are likely not even remotely aware of just how many things you have and do that are only possible because of oil.
Hint: it’s basically 100% of things you have and do. Even your minor deities, Renewable Energy are all a creation and possible due to your God, Big Oil.
By RGamma 2025-12-0514:15 How about these companies go from "fuck your democracy lol" to "okay this is bad, this is how we can attempt to fix it". They are among the richest corporations humanity has ever seen.
The dependence on oil is physically plausible, the constant political or public subversion is not.
By triceratops 2025-12-0516:36 Is there a rule that you get to be an asshole as long as your products are useful?
When people demonize "Big Oil" they don't mean the product. They mean how the people who run it behave.
Welp, it has worked ok for most of us. It’s below zero outside my house is at 22C and I have strawberries and avocados on the kitchen counter. This weekend I’ll drive with my family to a wedding 500km away and will spend $40 in transportation. With all I hate O&G can’t deny it has made my life easier in many ways.
In 200 years time Ken Burns the 6th is going to make a documentary about climate change, and quotes like this will be read out to illustrate just how short-sighted, selfish, and hyper-nihilistic people were.
By cindyllm 2025-12-0512:49 [dead]
By Wololooo 2025-12-0512:04 This is the most "I've got mine" statement that I have seen these past months.
It's not because it was "OK" so far that it is going to be OK moving forward, it's just kicking the can down the road and hope for a miracle, and they have done this since people have wondered about greenhouse gases (and this happened very early on).
Note that most of the issues we will be facing was not because of all the conveniences, but just because doing things in a way that was sustainable and/or more regulated would have hit the bottom line of big oil...
At the end of the day, it will not matter whose pockets were lined when there is no more food to feed people...
By haritha-j 2025-12-0512:24 "most" of us? Really? Once you add up the people in the countries the West invaded / started wars for the sake of oil, countries where the oil industry gets rich while the population suffers in poverty due to oil induced instability like Venezuela, all the countries where climate change induced national disasters have destroyed lives and livelihoods you'd find that its not really 'most' of us. But hey at least you have your strawberries.
Actually this was (and still is) commonplace these last decades, for poor and rich people alike. Even the poorest could afford to have a car and put petrol in it. It's becoming untenable for the younger generations because of government intervention and mishandling of the economy.
By array_key_first 2025-12-060:30 Petroleum is subsidized so heavily globally. Most oil actually comes from nation companies. That's, like, the maximum amount of government intervention you can get.
The people who think oil are or were a "free market" are beyond delusional. No, that was never the case - all the big players are governments, all of it is centrally planned, and all of it is subsidized by the population. That's why it's so cheap.
The reason it's going up in price is BECAUSE we're doing this less, as renewables become more competitive.
