In a capitalist economy, corporations act within the free market established by the government. Government is responsible for establishing fair and transparent ways of doing business, such as maintaining a currency, and legal and accounting frameworks. But that’s not enough.

The article has a good starting point about breaking up monopolies to reestablish competition. We’ve let so many monopolies grow in the last few decades, to our detriment.

But that’s not enough. It’s also governments role to incorporate externalities into the market so corporate actions are fairly priced instead of costing society, and to ensure the market is working for the citizens. As prime examples, corporations need to bear the costs of resource extraction or an imposition on the environment. How could the free market work effectively, if some corporations are allowed to impose costs on society that are not priced into their goods? They’re effectively being subsidized, given an unfair advantage against their competitors, while also working against the future of the citizens forming this market.

But a fair market is only fair, if all the participants have standing, including the consumers who are the focus of the market, and workers who make it all happen. Currently we’ve let corporation ps dominate other roles in the market, we’re following a corporate economy and of course are not happy with the results. For example, consider “terms of service” imposed for just about everything these days. They’re always phrased as a contract and as if customers agree, yet are completely one sided, imposed without recourse or even any reasonable standard for a legal contract, and without any real choice. How can that be called a free market?

We could go a long way toward a free market that serves society if government does it’s part of establishing fairness, transparency, honesty for all entities in that market, and remembering that both governments and the market serve society, rather than the other way around

Great article, totally agree with the author. I would still be concerned with that power moving to the government, particularly in countries with limited options for true representation (eg. two party systems, where it is usually more a matter of "lesser evil" voting), but that then becomes the next challenge; still more appropriate in the government's hands than the level of power corporations currently wield.

Relevant for me; i nearly changed careers out of tech entirely -- being fed up with the state of the industry -- but found some great folks in worker cooperative spaces. Here's what's kept me optimistic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UmU1dSe3n0

Plucked a vid off this channel and let it be known the idea of the channel name is to "reject isms/be your own ism"

Solarpunk has replaced, for me, the plasteel+glass greenhouse skyscraper skylines. Afrofuturism offers a much better preconfiguration than anything of capitalist and anglo origins. Importantly, the dismantling of unjust heirarchies.

I never lost the optimism, i just recognized that the root cause of our pain is not going to be addressed by technnlology (new invention) without an equal-or-greater effort into decolonizing and unlearning on the part of those building, using and promoting a given technology.

#NO

The only way is to build technologies that allow humans to escape the capitalist system and allow us to build our own communities in direct opposition to capitalist greed and exploitation.

The technological innovations of the last fifteen years, from advertising enshittifcation to AI cheating, have largely been a disaster. We are sadly at the point where, as Ted Gioia says, “most so-called innovations are now anti-progress by any honest definition.” I dare say that if we could revert all digital technology to where it was in 2009 – before the invention of the retweet – we’d all be better off.

I'd go back even further (to 2007) before the invention of the iPhone. The smartphone has, arguably, IMO been a bad, or at least premature invention. It created a generation of kids obsessed with their photographies, giving girls eating disorders and creating/spreading unrealistic beauty ideals, etc... Also it has severely disrupted teenagers' social living, created sleeping disorders, chronic doomscrolling, addiction, and more bad stuff. The iPhone was, IMO, not ready for this world.