steveman_ha

Capitalism and free markets are separate things within the economic "sphere" of society. Capitalism is an economic doctrine that focuses on directing production through private capital; free markets (in theory) ensure "equal access" to markets for products (as compared to monopoly or (economic, not necessarily drug) cartel markets which restrict access).

Over in the "public sphere", governments decide whether to jump in bed with private capital (often resulting in monopolies or cartels in economic marketplacs), or to make & enforce regulations that protect the (so-called) free market.

Or to make and enforce regulations that protect consumers -- i.e. human f-ing beings -- and enrich local economies without protectionism and "zero sum games", but I guess we shouldn't get too carried away here ;)

Yeah, this does seem like a kind of inaccurate generalization.

Does this mean you honestly wouldn't have a preference if you were dropped into a random "place" in one of these countries' societies and had to live the rest of your life there?

It's easy to say "Hey, plus a few ethnic cleansings, minus an intentional lack of economic development in favor of political corruption, plus a couple of highly extractive, insecure, and immoral sets of socio-economic conditions... and I mean we're all basically the same, amirite??"... But while each country's civil society is kinda fucked in some fundamental ways, they seem like unique ways that are hard to compare "apples to apples".

EDIT: Having said that, the issues in each country strongly depend on dividing lines between various "peoples", and a manufactured assurance that your conditions are the best that they could possibly be, so...

Allow me to offer a different perspective from the previous reply: holy frickin shit, I honestly never noticed this before. Tbh I'm not sure about the intentionality behind it though.

I mean, who exactly is intentionally doing this? Intent is important here; if it's not individually-assignable, and say emerges from a complex series of interactions between various other policies, or instances of individual decision-making - for example - then it seems hard to reasonably place "blame" like that.

This doesn't preclude taking action against the companies which will be salient for them (e.g. puts financial viability in question, rather than BS fines that amount to parking tickets)... I mean corporations are people too, now, right? Just a thought on how to argue/clarify the premise.

Because otherwise... Yeah, wtf. A lot of dividing lines, a lot of material insecurity, and so on, and nobody has the time - let alone the resources AND perspective simultaneously - to challenge the real dynamic. One which arguably IS being perpetrated with individual intent at multiple scales, and with cancerous impacts (figuratively and literally) on the societies which enable and tolerate them.