It was argued, yes, but that is a state supreme court decision, not binding in any other state, and there is still no law that says this is true. Friedman wouldn’t have bothered arguing about it in 1962 if it was unquestionably federal law or already settled by 1919. It is only convention.
It really isn’t. Smith argued (I agree wrongly) that the invisible hand of a free market would correct everything, but that monopolies and restrictions distort the market and that the worst thing we could do would be to allow corporations to dictate law. That was my point. The US has set up too many barriers to entry to reasonably claim it is free market, and corporations have absolute control over the current government.
Any reasonable reading of Smith’s Wealth of Nations would be socialist anyway. He outright stated that the capital class had a responsibility to entirely pay for the expenses of the state in caring for the populace.
The better discussion of Smith would be what industries could reasonably be capable of sustaining an actually free market. I would argue that housing, communications, agriculture, and healthcare are impossible to de-monopolize due to practical spatial limitations and therefore would have to be under state control, given Smith’s statement that capitalism’s invisible hand only works in a free market.
The USA is not capitalist in the sense most people (e.g. Adam Smith) mean. It is a protectionist oligarchy, that is capitalist only in the sense that it protects those with capital over all else. Monopolies and trade restrictions protect the capital class at the cost of the populace, and most laws are now written by corporations who hand them to their sponsored representatives. It is exactly what Adam Smith warned against.
Publicly traded companies are legally bound to prioritize shareholder demands ahead of any other duties.
This is actually a myth. They are expected to be responsible with their money, but they are not in any way required to maximize profit from a legal perspective. They repeat the lie because it is a good excuse to be evil. If a company doesn’t do what it’s shareholders like, they may vote out the board, or they might sue if the prospective was fraudulent (said they were working on something that they weren’t for example… But remember also that American companies don’t make forward statements like European ones do, so those cases are going to be things like “last year we spent 10 million on R&D” when they actually spent the money on plane trips to cocaine parties) but those are the recourses available to shareholders.
Yes, the inability to close the community list page and go back to the main page is really the only problem I ever have with this app. I’ve tried everything I can think of, but once you accidentally open the communities list there is no going back no matter how much you want to.
Imagine 10 years ago trying to convince someone that “self described Mecha-Hitler rolls out pornographic anime companion and gets Department of Defense contract” would be a real thing.
I live in the EU now, coming from the US. The US is almost comically backward. The effectiveness of its propaganda is incredible, that the people living there really don’t know what the rest of the world is like. Yes, I have been to Mexico. I’ve also been to towns in northern New Mexico where the majority of the population doesn’t have electricity or phone service. I’ve been to countries where much of the population lived in poverty, but most of them they still had phones at least. I’d say the US is currently just above mid tier from the perspective of median income vs cost of living. In the developed countries I’ve been to, even when they have lower incomes, they at least have much lower cost of living to make up for it. The US has got to be the most expensive place I’ve ever spent time in, except maybe Denmark. So yes, income is high, but I doubt seriously that there are many places less affordable for median-income residents, at least in the developed world.
Wow, that looks almost exactly like my dog. Except less furry.
I have a coworker who regularly wears an anti-static wrist strap that he attaches to grounding points on furniture. I’m not quite as staticy myself, so I usually just tap the screw on the light switches when I pass by during high static months. That’s usually grounded.
One of you is using the monkey’s paw again, aren’t you?