I'm flattered. Thank you. I find the conversation enjoyable...
I am enjoying it too, and it's quite alright. I'm (so far) able to keep up.
Well then we're close to splitting hairs.
I'll move on then from this part.
What if we just talk about free markets? There's nothing about...
Even the term "free markets" is incredibly vague. And depending on what you count as "modern times", even capitalism itself hasn't existed until modern times. So it would kind of not make sense to expect to see mega corps in an economic system that doesn't permit the kind of corps we see today.
And I hate to repeat myself, but core principle of capitalism is competition, but competitions inherently have winners. And therefore the freedom you speak of inherently gives rise to mega-corps. They buy each other up and kill off competitors until they become mega-corps.
Any given loser of a competition under capitalism may not immediately die, but each loss forces a company closer and closer to dying.
everyone's able to compete, fair and square.
We unfortunately don't have that though due to inheritance discrepancies, and the burden of entry that corporations put in place through their control of politicians, and through the inherent difficulty of starting a business in an economy as specialized as ours.
For instance if somebody wanted to start up a new business to compete with google, at a minimum they would need several billion dollars to have a reasonable chance of success. Google has such a huge market share and is so well established that it would take decades for any new company to put an actual dent in google's market share.
Is it a West Coast city? What you describe is absolutely not the America...
I actually live on the East coast, in a mid to large sized city, I think mine is 3rd in pop for my state. And as for your second bit here, I haven't made anything up.
Yeah, it was a joke. I explicitly said I was joking.
Sorry, I am a very argumentative person if you couldn't tell already lol
No, not usually. Its rate of scale is directly tied to the starting investment. It's eventual success is only tied to that certain kinds of tech startups, where a ton of work is needed before there's anything to show for it. For most businesses, success is tied to vision and execution.
This is another one of the issues that I wish I had more data on, but unfortunately do not. The closest I was able to find was this:
And the most frequent cause of failure is lack of cash, which definitely ties into what I've been saying.
People may feel a lack of freedom resulting from estrangement from God.
So this is similar to the drug addiction/true christian inverse correlation that I've been talking about in one of the other threads. I know you don't quite agree with the freedom index I've been using, but freedom is not in any way correlated with christianity.
What's a livable wage? That's a mighty subjective phrase
Sure, it's a subjective phrase, and I would personally like to see it added and defined within a new amendment to the constitution, though it probably would never happen
As for an actual definition, a living wage should be defined as a wage that is sufficient to raise a family on, with adequate housing and food. A living wage should be a basic but decent wage for a family.
I would also like to point out that you seem to have missed my point about the lack of freedom through vertical mobility.
And we were happy. Because we had God...
I don't think that was the reason, I think the reason was because life was literally simpler and more connected to nature. Also you can't be happy if you can't afford food and shelter.
anything more than that standard, it's unreasonable
I'm not saying a livable wage is one in which you will be able to afford anything fancy. It should be a basic wage, but enough so that you can have a family without worry