this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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100% agree. I had a much higher opinion of the soviet union before i heard how little it took to be placed in a gulag. It sounded like a toxic environment for voicing concerns at the very least. Although my sources could be biased I suppose.
Generally competition is good for the "consumer" or citizen in this case
no
Wait why not?
I think competition — actual competition, not "5 megacorps own everything" competition — can be useful in some cases, but keep in mind that competition does not necessarily incentivize good products. With food, for example, competition incentivizes addictive, unhealthy shit. With social media, same thing. With labor, it incentivizes exploitation, because whichever company squeezes the most work out of people for the lowest pay outcompetes everyone else. You can ameliorate these shitty incentive structures by putting workers and communities in charge of production, rather than owners and shareholders who want to maximize profit at the expense of any other metric.