This is misuse of language. Rent seeking is anti-competitive by definition. The current system, as far as it encourages and rewards rent seeking, is anti-capitalist.
Getting into a position where you can tilt the playing field exclusively in your benefit is 100% the logical outcome of for-profit companies in capitalism.
It’s so transparently and frequently stated outright, that building companies geared around achieving that has become the norm: it is the fundamental business-model of _every_ _single_ unicorn startup, or the company that buys them. Launch, squeeze out competitors by relying on VC money, capture the market, and become the sole dominant force in that market and use your position to then pull up the ladder behind you and cement your position. Uber and Facebook are prime examples of this.
Using power to tilt the playing field is the logical outcome of all political systems, not just capitalism.
> capture the market, and become the sole dominant force in that market and use your position to then pull up the ladder behind you and cement your position
This is worth discussing in detail. Becoming dominant by providing a better thing, or investing more capital, is not tilting the playing field, it's winning the game. Getting government protected monopolies, special tax write-offs, subsidies, exclusive grants is. Uber and Facebook are not anticompetitive just because they are dominant, they are anticompetitive to the extent that they specifically use their dominance to influence politics.
Like most words, capitalism has multiple definitions. Among the popular ones, the one that is about capital doesn't concern itself with markets, only capital, so you are quite right that any kind of market goes. It could even be centrally planned! But another popular definition is about the "invisible hand". Rent seeking is absolutely considered to be at odds with the "invisible hand". This is most likely what the parent is talking about.
And no doubt there are a bunch of other definitions that aren't so popular, so the parent commenter could even be using one of those. It might even be his own pet definition that he just made up on the spot right now. The author always gets to choose what a word means, so if something seems off "It isn't" isn't a logical retort. You first need to clarify what the author intended the word to mean.
> And no doubt there are a bunch of other definitions that aren't so popular, so the parent commenter could even be using one of those. It might even be his own pet definition that he just made up on the spot right now.
This is an absolutely insane take if you want to be taken seriously in a conversation. Making up definitions on the spot and "getting to choose what a word means" is deliberately acting in bad faith.
Rule #1 of logical debate is to agree on definitions, otherwise you're just yelling past each other.
I'm not sure what definition of capitalism you're running with, but as early as Adam Smith, the importance of competition free from monopoly and rent seeking was central to the mainstream definition.
> Making up definitions on the spot and "getting to choose what a word means" is deliberately acting in bad faith.
Not quite. Not taking the time to understand what someone means when they use a word is acting in bad faith. Using a word as you understand it, even if that does not match how others understand it, before the word is contextually defined cannot be in bad faith. Nobody can read minds. It is impossible for one to predict how the reader thinks the word is defined. You can only work with what you know. Fundamentally, the onus must be on the reader to ensure that they have full knowledge of the author's intent.
> Rule #1 of logical debate is to agree on definitions
Agreed. The bad faith actor with the username antisthenes that I replied to earlier failed to do that, putting in absolutely no effort to find the necessary common ground. He assumed the definition and then came up with a ridiculous comment built up around that false assumption. Hence why I called him out on his bullshit.
> Survival of the fittest and efficient marketplace
Rent seeking is an Econ 101 example of market inefficiency.
> what's the other option, rent seeking is socialism?
Rent seeking is rent seeking. It is a form of corruption, via regulatory capture. It is a way in which any political system can fail, not limited to an ideology like "socialism" or "capitalism".
If monopolies are "non capitalistic", then why has every capitalist economy in history had such a tendency towards creating large monopolies? The same cab certainly not be said any those economies producing, say, worker control of the means of production.
Let's flip the hypothetical -- if someone googles for suicide info and scrolls past the hotline info and ends up killing themselves anyway, should google be on the hook?
I don't know this for sure, but also I'm fairly sure that google make a concerted effort to not expose that information. Again, from experience. It's very hard to google a painless way to kill yourself.
Their SEO ranking actually ranks pages about suicide prevention very high.
The solution that is going to be found, is they will put some age controls, probably half-heartedly, and call it a day. I don't think the public can stomach the possible free speech limitations on consenting adults to use a dangerous tool that might cause them to hurt themselves.
I wonder if it has to do with accessibility API thread locking. I found a different extension I used to emulate an i3 style environment suffered when I used the Unity game engine. It ended up being limitations of the accessibility API.
This delay is configurable. The delay is there so you can actually type a bit before the UI pops up, and then the UI will be filtered to just your selection.
Patents are government granted monopolies on ideas. The case for them is that you need the carrot of a monopoly to incentivize innovators (empirically untrue). The case against them is that government mandated monopolies immediately dampen all subsequent innovation until expiry (empirically true across industries throughout history).
How about the delayed electrification in Britain? It seems that elswhere it began in the late 1870s, but there was no major electrification in Britain before the 20th century. I thought maybe it was also because of some patent obstruction?
Taking up space, degrading public infrastructure, polluting the air, and killing pedestrians are real ongoing costs of transportation. The cost does not magically end at vehicle purchase.
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