I think meddlesome sports owners are a good example of why capitalism and private property are bad.

Missing the forest for the trees. You can't make judgement about capitalism from one of the few industries that can legally be a monopoly. Small sample size and poor sample at that.

 

And the post office and DMV are a good example of why soclism and government run properties are bad

 

Can we tax the churches and nationalize the banking and health industries while we're fixing things here?

 

When people muck with something they don't understand like Les has done with the Rockets, you get a mess. Gov't would make more of a mess as they don't understand business.

Regulations are not meant to protect the business or speak to their success/failure, they are meant to protect the interests of citizens.

It's not about capitalism or regulations - anyone who tries to insert that doesn't understand how organizations work and succeed, it's about choosing the right people in this case.

 

I always thought this comparison was curious.

The DMV and the Post Office are typically fine and run like clockwork.

The only time I have a bad experience there is because they are either understaffed or someone there was being a total jerk/dumbass.

 

The problem with the pure definition of capitalism is it is very closely related to anarchy.

 

Why can't the Rockets be run more like the VA or FEMA?

 

American taxpayers give an $18 billion gift to the post office every year

I am currently filing the paperwork to get an $18 billion annual subsidy for my lemonade stand, but to be honest I'd settle for $1 billion annually. And believe you me it will run like clockwork.

 

sure, but it's not capitalism

capitalism is free markets and voluntary exchange, it has nothing to say about the profit motive

 

Or when they are totally incompetent. We've had multiple people at the Post Office tell us that it was ok to shred other people's first class mail. It's a felony to that. It should also be a felony to hire D'Antoni.

 

God I hate this argument. Not that it doesn't have *some* truth to it, but it is pretty much completely irrelevant.

It essentially stipulates that you should just sit around doing nothing, waiting for random events to determine the course of your life. To which I think I'll just say...sure, go for it, see how that works out for ya. Who knows, maybe you will be the guy who wins the lottery...although that would require buying a ticket, which is a stipulated and self determined course of action, with the purpose OF winning the lottery...so that wouldn't really just be luck or randomness either.

Who cares what they attribute their success to? That has diddly with what anyone else could, or should, do on their own.

Plus, if they're really that skill-less, all the better for someone else to come in and take all that success away from them.

Which utterly fails the 'so what' test, in addition to having pretty much zilch to do with capitalism. Although it does open up a real opportunity for you to capitalize on all those experts inability to forecast accurately, and for you to step in and do it right.

 

And what, then, is the PURPOSE of setting up these free markets and encouraging this voluntary exchange? To create the most efficient mechanism for distribution of goods and services. How does it do that? By creating incentives for market exploitation due to (drum roll please!)...the profit motive!

Although I am also one to argue that this isn't the inherently evil thing so many make it out to be. We ALL seek to maximize 'profit', in every decision we make. This is the basis of economics, and, as freakonomics points out, economics is essentially just the study of human behaviour and decision making. Which, btw, is why capitalism works, and other market mechanisms don't. Free markets allow the most efficient means of distributing goods and services, and other mechanisms....don't.

 

Post office had to start getting their **** together when Fed Ex and UPS came along and they had to compete with them.

 

For some, the bar is pretty low for government services. For the amount of money they receive, this should not be the case. The government infrastructure and technology is probably 20 years behind....across the board.

The government metric system breeds incompetence. The liberal mentality has made government jobs nearly untouchable. For those who have no ambition and simply want a 'productive' job to pay the bills, a government job is perfect for them. Good benefits. Job security. Decent pay in relation to the work done. This all breeds mediocrity when there is no threat to job security.

 

I didn't see anything in there that indicated a sense of what constitutes ability, skill, merit, productivity, leverage, ownership, authority or leadership, all of which are completely distinct traits and circumstances. I just see the same weird reflexive resentment for class and institutions that probably make sports a fun outlet but have actually destroyed every other aspect of politics or media.

If you can advise on what horrific system we would replace mixed and regulated capitalism with extensive training, licensing and vocational pipelines that doesn't include nepotism and patriarchal forced breeding, or some kind of tribal and ethnic genocide; and you can find a better analogy than grown-up P.E. with eugenic undertones of racial aggression and intelligence let's hear it.

 

Big dog, the fact that I make more money than you and can sit back and have a good chortle at some Internet rando dimly replicating long dead branches of the EMH tree, which has been struck by lightning, chopped down, the processed into particle board and currently resides in an Ikea POANG chair, illustrates how unjust the world truly is.

You can believe what you want, special snowflake, but science is not your friend here.

 

It doesn't stipulate that at all. Maximize your efforts, cultivate relationships and manage your expectations to the point that you can pivot to a back up plan or not be paralyzed by adverse outcomes. Successful people are the ones who either anticipate or overcompensate for complications, not the ones who entitle themselves to apathy and self indulgence because of limited certainty.

 

A distinction with almost no difference. The "owners" have almost no say as to what goes on. They get to vote for directors that they don't know personally. It's run by the equivalent of an owner.

The only real benefit is it would be practically impossible to move the team.

 

I like the fact that the PO delivers everywhere and on Saturdays. It's damn inefficient, but provides some infrastructural backbone in the event the internet stops being the internet.

Like grannies with their death panel-less Meddycares, Americans take these privileges for granted then b**** and moan when they lose it to high falutin private industries that overprice the quality of service for the poor at lower tiers.