Late Cycle Capitalism

[DBTrek]

I don’t know, man.
Given the choice between living in a society with merchants or without, I’d have to go with merchants.
Same with roads.

I like roads and merchants.
And guns.

[Speaker to Animals]

I did not say I want no merchants.
I said I want no merchants in political power.

They just keep making this shit worse. Patent law is an abomination to free markets.

[DBTrek]

Difficult to separate money from power, can’t think of a successful example of humans doing that. Even the Soviet politburo treated themselves pretty lavishly while millions starved in the countryside.

[Fife]

Fife hates roads.

Libel.

[Ph64]

Patent law is an abomination to free markets.

Yeah. Copyright makes some sense - if I write a great novel, or write the next killer compute game or Photoshop, you shouldn't be able to just literally print copies of my book for sale of rattle off a million copies of my software on a DVD copier machine and sell them, that's literally stealing the fruits of my labor.

That was the intent of patent law originally, to provide a short period of time where you couldn't just steal my original/inventive work outright. It worked when the pace of change was far slower, but as technology has made the pace of change so rapid that even say 10years is stifling (much less 20) to progress it's become more of a hindrance.

[DBTrek]

Fife hates roads.

Libel.

Sanction me.
Sanction me with your army.

[Hastur]

It's not the merchants in government that is the problem it's the lawyers. No moral backbone. Just focus on "winning" the next issue, by hook or crook. Get some decent people in there and the merchant won't have anyone to buy.

[Speaker to Animals]

You kind of need lawyers when writing laws. We just tend to get shitty lawyers as politicians. If you want to produce a complicated software project, you want software engineers. If you want to craft decent laws, you need lawyers.

You don't need merchants for a God damned thing in government.

[Hastur]

If you need someone to write law get some jurists. If I want to build a good house I consult an architect and a construction engineer, not a carpenter.

[Speaker to Animals]

I get your point, but just think about what I am saying. Writing laws has quite a lot to do with lawyers. Lawyers are the ones who have to use and navigate these laws in court. They understand the difference between poorly-written laws and laws you can sort of work with. There is at least some applicability there.

Merchants offer literally nothing to government but their own aggrandizement. Their values are the values of Mammon. And as bad and wicked as lawyers can get, there is nothing inherent about being a lawyer that is completely antithetical to good governance. The same cannot be said about merchants. Merchant values and culture are the polar opposite of what you need in government.

That's not to say they shouldn't have a voice. We obviously want them to participate in discussions about economic policies. But when you give them control over those policies, they absolutely will destroy your fucking nation for profit (and that's exactly what they are doing.. globalism).