• Wolf@lemmy.today
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      11 hours ago

      Capitalism isn’t about anything other than keeping the ruling class rich and in power. How it chooses to do that has varied throughout time. During the 20th Century the lie was that “American Style” capitalism was fair because the capitalists would promote Laissez-faire style economics (“Free Trade”) out of their mouths, while actually building monopolies.

      With the rise of Trump-style ‘conservatives’ Republicans have adopted a new strategy, Mercantilism. Mercantilism doesn’t even pretend to be fair or free. The word ‘Competition’ doesn’t even appear anywhere in that article because competition is bad for Capitalists and they see no reason to continue to lie about that. They actively oppose free trade.

      Even if ‘Capitalists’ possessed the ability to feel shame for being hypocrites (which they certainly do not), calling them out for not following along with the principles of ‘the free market’ does no good since they have abandoned advocating for that a while ago.

      • Zetta@mander.xyz
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        12 hours ago

        I’d argue that a critical piece of competition for all nations has always been stealing knowledge and technology.

        • kebab@endlesstalk.org
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          5 hours ago

          What technologies Germany, Poland, Singapore or Norway stole since the fall of USSR if that’s the case? I can name many technologies that China stole, that the US stole, but definitely don’t see it as a critical piece for all nations. Most countries don’t even have hackers nor network of spies capable of stealing other countries’ valuable trade secrets