EDIT: I wrote what I thought was going to be a brief reply about other stuff you brought up, but it turned out rather lengthy, and I think this thread has flirted with the ban hammer long enough. I don't want DBO to devolve into yet another place ruined by endless political squabbling. I'll email it to you. If anyone else wants to read it, email me and I'll send it. I don't mind discussing this further among friends--I just don't think this is the appropriate place.

Cody's suggestion about regulation is about 30-40 years too late. It's a centrist argument from the pre-Nixon, pre-Reagan era, that assumes there's still enough shared assumptions and values between stakeholders to forge an agreement about what the rules of the game are supposed to be, when there's a "side" that has basically said there is no acceptable rule or oversight ever for a long, long time.

Oh that’s weird. Because when Warren proposes the kind of regulation I am talking about, nobody calls that position centrist.

Just… fix those bad aspects. Crazy right?!

That’s what I mean by regulation. One side of our political spectrum is seemingly on a quest to get as rich as possible at all costs and fuck everything else.

It's so strange that in the system that said it was good for people to want to be as rich as possible, and then praised the people who did that, then used their money to seize political power to make sure you could not regulate their ability to continue to increase their wealth.

Cody's suggestion about regulation is about 30-40 years too late. It's a centrist argument from the pre-Nixon, pre-Reagan era, that assumes there's still enough shared assumptions and values between stakeholders to forge an agreement about what the rules of the game are supposed to be, when there's a "side" that has basically said there is no acceptable rule or oversight ever for a long, long time.

I don’t want pure socialism. I want what a bunch of idiots clutch their pearls over and label socialism to fear-monger their idiot
base into voting for stupid policies that only make the rich richer at any cost.

Very much this.

Although again the "I don't want socialism but" is a reaction to exactly the sort of pearl-clutching that's been going on for 40 years. It's a necessary prelude that gets in the way of any honest discussion, much like "well I'm not a feminist BUT... how about equal rights for women?" People are required to carve out what they think are the elements of a position that everyone agrees are beyond the pale before having a discussion, and we ought to stop doing it.

Medicare for all, abolishing the ridiculousness that has become predatory student loans, much stronger unions in nearly every industry, much higher taxes on the extremely wealthy to provide services to the people the rich constantly exploit.

Capitalism is great, the crony capitalism that is current rampant in this country is not.

Just want to mention something here.

When most people say "capitalism" what they really mean is a regulated free market. That can and is a component to capitalism, but it's not what capitalism is.

Capitalism is about the primacy of, well.. capital. It says that in the process that involves having an idea, making a product, getthing that product to market, and consuming that product, the single most essential element is capital. Capital gets paid first. Capital gets paid most. Capital gets paid forever.

In return for taking on the initial risk-- putting up the money before people know a product is viable-- capital gets to rent seek into eternity. Because venture and equity capital takes on the task commercial banking was supposed to do, because banking decided to focus first on speculation and then on fees. And the legal framework puts almost no limits on the kind of agreement capital can strike in those initial situations-- and in public markets, which were supposed to be the end-game for shares of big successful companies, where the entire populace can invest and participate, we've witnessed the clawing back of control into the hands of private equity, who consolidate or dismantle entities for short term profit, leading to less transparency and less competition. You know, the things that people really mean when they say "capitalism".

Capital overstates its initial risk as a matter of course and overpays itself, then uses the fruits of that overpayment to lobby into existence legislation that protects their right to continue to be paid first, most, and forever. That's what capitalism currently is.

We are absolutely experiencing the worst sort of "crony capitalism" currently, as classically understood by that term, but that should not distract us from the fundamental structural changes that probably need to be made if we care about the quality of life of the average citizen.

With Eververse persisting I think it's a reasonable worry that its model starts to apply to other items.

::shrug::

They've said, over and over, that this isn't going to happen. Some people think they lie, and don't believe it. I don't think they lie, and I'm willing to say that if it happens, I'll reconsider my stance, but for now, I'm okay with what they're doing.

Not saying anyone is lying.

Sometimes people just change their mind. Institutions often do, in response to internal and/or external stimuli.

If Bungie wants to absolutely allay any concerns that their in-game store might become dominated by gambling, one way to do so might be to have a policy, perhaps even as part of the user agreement, that says that no gambling is allowed ever and never will be, and to eliminate any and all, not just most, of any in-game for sale items that deploy gambling as a mechanic.

Of course, though, if they did that and THEN changed their minds... well, then they'd have been lying-- or at least in breach of agreement.

But I thought they were on the "featured" tab. Bottom right corner?

I also don't know how much (or how regularly) that tab changes mind you.

You're not misremembering. They're in the bottom right corner of the featured tab. I used the terminology I used because I was parroting what the question used. They're not totally hidden.

This doesn't change the fact that they're 1) the cheapest thing in the store, and 2) the ONLY thing that is random in the store. I don't think you can honestly make the argument that Eververse is run on casino mechanics because of them.

The products that Eververse sells that employ casino mechanics run on casino mechanics.

If Bungie doesn't want to be tarred by accusations that their in-game store deploys casino mechanics, they could decide not to sell any in-game items that deploy casino mechanics. And if it's so few of them and they cost so little, what's the reason not to?

And this way they could later say they decided to do it of their own accord before legislation forces them to either go all in on gambling because a law says their game is gambling if it has, you know, ANY amount of gambling in it, or to eliminate all the gambling instead of just most of the gambling.

Which fallacy is that?

Its not even clear to me what point you're making here, but it looks awfully scarecrow-y

A quick look at the page he linked shows only two western European countries that are higher on the list than the US: Finland (pretty much the same rate as the US) and Belgium (15% higher than the US).

So even if it's NOT scarecrow-y (I think you're completely right, btw), his point is silly.

Hey I gotta liven up the thread somehow :-p

Its not even clear to me what point you're making here, but it looks awfully scarecrow-y

A quick look at the page he linked shows only two western European countries that are higher on the list than the US: Finland (pretty much the same rate as the US) and Belgium (15% higher than the US).

So even if it's NOT scarecrow-y (I think you're completely right, btw), his point is silly.

I'm just floored by the stretch he made...

Its not even clear to me what point you're making here, but it looks awfully scarecrow-y

A quick look at the page he linked shows only two western European countries that are higher on the list than the US: Finland (pretty much the same rate as the US) and Belgium (15% higher than the US).

So even if it's NOT scarecrow-y (I think you're completely right, btw), his point is silly.

Attributing all of human progress to capitalism is incredibly reductive.

But it isn't… Capitalism allows for economies of scale, without which many of the things that allow for today's standard of living would not be available to you.

Find me a list of countries rated by Standard Of Living where the more capitalistic US is doing better than countries with more socialist policies (like Norway, Finland, Denmark, the UK, whatever) and we can then discuss how best to raise the standard of living...

Oh look at that. Europe has the highest suicide rate by region. 50% higher than the Americas. Yes, because when your standard of living is high you totally want to kill yourself. Makes total sense to me.

Because you seem real reluctant to upset the status quo...

Here are my cards on the table: I'm a capitalist, but not without some serious reservations. Because humans participate in capitalism and socialism, both can be corrupted by cronyism and greed, as history has plainly shown. That said, I think liberal democratic capitalism is undeniably responsible for a 30-fold increase in living standards over the last 200 years.

There's no denying that. But what's the cost? We have simply exported our atrocities and environmental destruction in service of the almighty dollar.

I am not anti-capitalist, necessarily. I'm very anti-whatever our current form of bullshit is, though. We can do better than a world in which thousands of people are dying every single day because bloodsucking middlemen in the form of private health insurance companies exist. We can do better than allowing massive corporations to avoid taxes and letting billionaires form policy through what amounts to legal bribery.

Greed and corruption are rampant in both socialists and capitalists systems. We need a mixing of the two. We need far more regulation for massive companies wreaking havoc on the world to produce a bunch of useless bullshit that ultimately ends up in the garbage. And we need better social safety nets.

This has strayed pretty far from the origin of this thread. In the grand scheme of things, I don't think Bungie is really the problem. I don't like a lot of stuff about the Eververse, as we discussed last week. I don't have a problem with their physical store. I am a little flabbergasted that they decided it was worth producing a $160 piece of foam, just because I think it's ridiculously stupid, but, whatever, I'm not going to buy it and I'm not going to waste time caring if someone else wants to buy one.

I do just want to call out the confusion at the younger generation embracing socialism, though. How could they not? Look around at what's happening in this country. Wages are as low as they've ever been while companies post record profits year after year and just generally wreak havoc to do it. We can do so much better than we are, and if that means embracing some socialist policies, I'll board that fucking train.

The problem I have with some of your line of thought here is that it seems to presume (please correct me if I’m wrong) that changing the system will reduce corruption/greed. I don’t think that’s true. I think as long as human beings are behaving in the world, there will be corruption and greed. That’s why I have so little time for the typical “capitalism is bad because GREED” arguments... it’s utterly ignorant. It looks to me like the only answer to greed and corruption is the good will and hard work of other people, and a system that allows those elements to flourish stands the best chance.

Ok to encourage people to have good will and be able to work hard I'd like to:

• provide them free health care, so they can get back to working hard
  
• provide accessible transportation for free so they can get to their job easier
  
• free childcare so both parents can work while having free time to spend with their kid

My main thing is that in some cases Capitalism doesn't provide the most efficient system to for certain solutions. When we look at Health Care Expenditure per capita of a largely private system like the US vs a more socialistic one like Norway, Germany, or UK it looks drastically inefficient.

It’s not that I think capitalism is the ultimate end-solution or anything like that, but it is so clearly, far and away the best system we’ve come up with, and that’s a BIG DEAL. It’s taken us hundreds of thousands of years to reach this point, and life on earth for most human beings was utterly miserable, short, and filled with suffering. The fact that we’ve clawed our way up out of that is miraculous. And the system and way of life that has allowed that is so complicated, that it’s dangerous to mess with it in any extreme way. We don’t fully understand it. A slight little tweak, and it all could go off the rails. That’s why, despite the fact that I’m generally a left-leaning guy, I get very conservative when it comes to suggestions of messing with what we have. Human beings are terrible at predicting the results of our actions, especially when it comes to something as monstrously complex as western civilization. The chances that any grand, sweeping changes will make things worse instead of better is almost 100%.

Attributing all of human progress to capitalism is incredibly reductive.

Now, on the environmental side, there are some serious concerns there, and we need to deal with them. But we also need perspective. We didn’t even know that our industries were effecting the environment in any real way until ~40-60 years ago. That’s nothing. And yet, in that time, there are some areas in which we’ve made huge progress. There are more trees in the northern hemisphere today than there were 70 years ago (but nobody knows that, because the media only reports the bad news). There is also the widespread general trend that has been well documented by UN environmental researchers that as people around the world get lifted into better living conditions, their local environments start to clean up. Turns out when people aren’t starving to death and live in relative safety, they begin to care about their local environment and work to clean it up. (On a related note, this trend correlates perfectly with the spread of free market capitalism in under-developed nations).

You the phrase "correlates perfectly" incredibly casually.

This is where the environmental discussion gets real tricky. When I listen to experts who study the environment and it’s effects on us, and I listen to what they recommend, it doesn’t line up at all with what I hear from “environmental activists”. The activists seem to ignore the proposed solutions from experts, and instead focus on anything vaguely anti-capitalist. You don’t have to dig very deep to discover how many of the environmental activists are self-proclaimed socialists or even full-blown communists. So it’s not surprising that they’re using the environment as a guise to attack capitalism. The problem is they’ve hijacked the entire discussion, so ACTUAL solutions are being ignored.

The most comprehensive and well-rounded research that I’ve found attacks the whole issue from a very different angle. They point out that higher standards of living lead to more concern about the environment from the wider population. They also point out that human beings themselves, when thriving, are the best problem-solving mechanism we know of. We’ve seen it before. Diseases, mass starvation... they were the “environmental crisis” of 40 or 100 years ago. And we solved them by raising standards of living and producing more geniuses (turns out the two are actually related), and those geniuses went to work and created solutions. New developments in battery technology, or the creation of cleaner power sources can and will do wonders for our efforts to clean up the environment. But nothing like that is going to happen if we start dismantling our economic prosperity. If we go by the experts, then proposals like the Green New Deal are just about the worst things we could do to clean up the environment. But again, if anyone believes for a second that the Green New Deal is actually about the environment, they’re not paying attention.

Whoa wait, we'd be dismantling our economic prosperity? At no point have you demonstrated how things like the Green New Deal would dismantle our economic prosperity and produce fewer "geniuses". Do you think that programs like the Green New Deal and other socialist programs wouldn't raise the standard of living?

Find me a list of countries rated by Standard Of Living where the more capitalistic US is doing better than countries with more socialist policies (like Norway, Finland, Denmark, the UK, whatever) and we can then discuss how best to raise the standard of living...

All this to say, the struggle to correct the harm we’re doing to the environment is a) very important, and b) not going to be solved by dismantling democratic capitalism, which is actually the only system we have that produces anything resembling a solution. That is, unless a drastic increase in human suffering is considered an “ok solution”.

Your post does a good job of demonstrating how democratic socialist policies that improve the standard of living while addressing the environmental crisis directly would do a dang good job.

Just… fix those bad aspects. Crazy right?!

That’s what I mean by regulation. One side of our political spectrum is seemingly on a quest to get as rich as possible at all costs and fuck everything else.

I don’t want pure socialism. I want what a bunch of idiots clutch their pearls over and label socialism to fear-monger their idiot base into voting for stupid policies that only make the rich richer at any cost.

Medicare for all, abolishing the ridiculousness that has become predatory student loans, much stronger unions in nearly every industry, much higher taxes on the extremely wealthy to provide services to the people the rich constantly exploit.

Capitalism is great, the crony capitalism that is current rampant in this country is not.

The problem I have with some of your line of thought here is that it seems to presume (please correct me if I’m wrong) that changing the system will reduce corruption/greed. I don’t think that’s true. I think as long as human beings are behaving in the world, there will be corruption and greed. That’s why I have so little time for the typical “capitalism is bad because GREED” arguments...

Capitalism is GOOD because of greed. It funnels this human emotion into production, innovation, and wealth. It turns greed into a positive. You want more money? Make a better thing!

Then you simply regulate as necessary to prevent the negative consequences of such greed, like monopolies, worker exploitation, environmental destructions, etc.

Everyone looks at the negative aspects of capitalism without realizing the simple fact you can design the system to prevent those things through regulation and law. Just because the system has some bad aspects doesn't mean you should totally trash it.

Just… fix those bad aspects. Crazy right?!