Blarghnog

That’s incredibly thoughtful of you. I really look forward to watching your generation grow into the incredible people you’re becoming — and I hope you don’t have anything like a September 11th to deal with.

It’s important to look at the broader picture rather than jumping to extreme measures like nationalization. The argument you’re making seems to rest on the assumption that suppressing profits or forcibly taking over private industries will solve issues like food shortages. However, history shows us that when governments try to control production or profits through heavy-handed methods, it often backfires. For example, during the Soviet era, nationalizing farms and controlling food production led to massive inefficiencies, food shortages, and ultimately, widespread famine.

In a free-market economy, profits drive innovation, efficiency, and investment. Suppressing them or threatening nationalization discourages companies from investing in better technologies or expanding production, which are essential for long-term stability and growth. The Defense Production Act, while useful in specific situations, is not a catch-all solution and should be applied cautiously to avoid unintended consequences.

As for the issue of stock buybacks, it’s true that they can be controversial, especially when companies benefit from subsidies. But rather than dismantling the system entirely, a more balanced approach might involve stricter regulations on how subsidies are used or reforming tax policies to ensure that profits are reinvested into the economy in a productive way.

While the government does have a role in ensuring stability and fairness in the market, extreme measures like nationalization often create more problems than they solve, leading to inefficiencies, decreased productivity, and ultimately, harm to the very people they’re meant to protect.

It’s important not to let fervor or narrow political biases make emotional decisions for us, or deny the story of history. Every “modern” society has always said their situation is different and that history is no longer relevant — seriously you can read it all throughout historical texts — and then they repeat the pattern precisely. I think a lot of it has to do with folks making emotional decisions and politicians pandering to populism instead of doing what is actually best.

A lot of this is unpopular — just look at how one is likely among of the highest quality comments ever written in this subject on Reddit gets downvoted — even though it’s not wrong. And if nothing else it opens a high quality discussion. Yet, there is no room for a rational, educational, high quality discussion — only invoking the wartime executive privilege designed to win wars and nationalizing entire industries if they don’t bow to the whim of the popular politicians. It’s actually an insane position your taking — the possibility for abuse to put such power unchecked into one politicians hands is profound.

Emotion rules the masses and politicians know that.

Imaging putting cameras in these and putting them into an ultra cheap mesh topology micro drone battlefield awareness platform. You wouldn’t be able to go outside during the day.

Low cost drones ant this scale are scary tech — crazy to see how fast they are progressing.

So let’s sidestep the current polarized political environment and look at these policies through a historic lens. 

It is far too easy to let it be a blue policy or a red policy, when really this is a greenback policy that affects us all through economics.

Price gouging occurs when sellers sharply increase prices to exploit high demand, often during emergencies like natural disasters. 

“Excess corporate profits” is a term used to describe profits that are seen as disproportionately high, often during times of crisis or market manipulation. So it clearly fits into the price gouging laws, which are already in the books in the vast majority of states, but usually only when a declared state of emergency is in effect. That’s why they aren’t effective now in most cases: the declared state of emergency from 2020 long ended.

A classic example is during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 when gas prices skyrocketed in the affected areas. While the price hikes reflected increased demand and strained supply chains, they were widely condemned as unethical and led to legal actions against those accused of gouging. 

Price controls, on the other hand, are government-imposed limits on how high or low a price can be charged for a product. 

Price gouging and price controls appear to being conflated across the board, and they are separate and distinct things.

So, in to the history…

During World War II, the U.S. government implemented strict price controls on essential goods to prevent inflation and ensure affordability for all citizens. While this helped keep costs down, it also led to shortages, black markets, and a decline in product quality as businesses struggled to operate under artificially low prices. 

During World War I, the U.S. introduced the Excess Profits Tax, which targeted corporations making significant profits beyond a normal rate of return. While it aimed to redistribute wealth and prevent war profiteering, it discouraged investment and innovation, as companies feared that any significant success would be heavily taxed. 

These interventions often don’t work as intended because they disrupt the natural balance of supply and demand. 

Price gouging laws can discourage suppliers from bringing needed goods to market during crises, fearing legal repercussions. 

Price controls can create shortages and reduce incentives for businesses to produce or improve products. 

Taxing excess profits can stifle innovation and investment, as businesses may be less willing to take risks if they know a large portion of their potential earnings will be taxed away. 

These measures, while well-intentioned, often lead to unintended consequences that can exacerbate the very problems they aim to solve.

In the US, they are almost always done by politicians as a battle against the very corporate doners that fund their re-election campaigns as well, so regulatory capture is a colossal issue with them. It’s always done “for the people” and sometimes with the best of intentions, but the history of price controls has been to create huge shortages and disrupt markets, and price gouging laws are already in effect during emergency times.

It’s really important to have an education because the Harris campaign is conflating these two things, and not talking about the declared state of emergency required to invoke more gouging laws, but instead they are rather disingenuously presenting them together as a package where price gouging and price controls are the same things. They are not.

I’m fully in support of price gouging laws, but price controls are a bad idea and have a terrible track record, and I truly hope Americans are still in a place where they can understand policy as more than a black and white issue and separate these things from the political parties, because they have deep implications for us all.

Can’t wait until all of this is just AI generated and shows cost nothing to make — going to make for an insane amount of content and as it matures it should be really interesting.

On demand, cheap to make, but also mass personalized. Like you get injected into the show and can watch yourself in an original feature.

The cost of production is going to drop so dramatically it’s going to go there. Meantime we still have massive expense, bad executives, poor directors and failed shows that cost 670k a minute lol.

You know that means taking Reddit down too, right?

Yes. That’s why we have things called calendars, so people don’t argue about days, weeks, months and years.