but thank god for governments

oh.. turkey announced ceasefire after erdogans visit with putin

I guess assad will take back idlib

there was some bbc reporters doing a little story on it last night...

as usually they were just filming the women... and I dont know if it was by accident.. but they panned the camera around and it was just 100% men 😛

putting aside whether or not a hypothetical "free market" is good or not it's not really worth debating because it's a fictional concept

IIIII like new york in juuune .... how about youuuuuu

winners of market competition will use their resources to get the body that presides over it to regulate in their favor, i don't think there's really any getting around this

There isn't

maybe you could say like it could be done under an autocrat or somethiinnng

It wouldn't

that didn't really last when it waas tried in chile though

people got poorer over time

in real terms

not just relative

except for the very rich, of course

What happened there

granted you can argue that maybe some state interventions on behalf of capitalists in chile contravened the idea of a free market

and obviously not everything was privatized

though chile came much closer to that idea than the vast majority of country's i think

pinochet

augusto pinochet took power over chile in a military coup and implemented super economically liberal reforms on the advice of the chicago boys

almost everything was privatized, regulations were slashed, welfare was slashed, and so on

was that after Allende?

yeah

over the 20 year span of pinochet's junta most chileans actively got poorer (in real terms, not poorer in the sense of just more inequality, although that happened to of course), caloric intake plummeted, homelessness skyrocketed, and pinochet eventually abdicated

they did the same thing to chile what they did to Haitians

export oriented economy for the freedom boys

some people might point to a place like singapore tho as a free market autocratic (which it isn't an autocracy necessarily though you could say it's a de facto one party state) success

though even putting aside that singapore is in a unique position as a city state it has pretty extreme government intervention in certain areas

yeah the government decides what markets can or not operate

over 30% of singapore's workforce is employed in the state sector (higher proportion than venezuela) and about 75% of land and housing is nationalized

what percentage of home owners?

i dunno

from wiki - More than 80% of Singapore's population live in HDB flats. HDB Flats in Singapore are sold on a 99-year lease agreement. The remainder is rental flats reserved for those who are unable to afford to purchase the cheapest forms of public housing despite financial support.

There are a number of eligibility conditions in order for a flat to be purchased. A buyer must be a Singaporean citizen, or permanent resident and be 21 years of age and have a family. Singles below 35-years of age, and non-citizens are not allowed to purchase new HDB flats. Other requirements concern household status, time requirements, income and other special requirements.[9] The apartment flats are typically sold on a 99-year leas

singapore just runs things in the vein of east asian dirigisme/state capitalism a la post-deng china or south korea under park chung hee but while exploiting its strength as a small city state around an important port which gives it a strong niche in acting as a hub for trade and foreign investment

like Israel in a way

existing under the sole guardianship of the US

UN: "Coronavirus lockdowns and quarantines must respect rights"

the US would give no fucks about it if it wasn't for their military