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Nope, but what other alternative there is? We only have capitalism and communism, arguably there is socialism in between but that is actually capitalism with some brakes on exploitation and more opportunities for social mobility, such as in Scandinavia, basically.
One can't criticize capitalism for what it is, the economy of scale is a good aspect of it, but also the nimbleness of smaller competitors, so there is a balance in a well lead country. Where Trumpistanis continue to give tax breaks to the rich and cut benefits for the poor there will be fewer competitors as people won't have the money to start one and the ones with the tax breaks would be able to, if not bankrupt, at least acquire the smaller ones. If everything fails, there is plan B, buy some politicians which you can afford with the economies of scale and tax breaks.
There is a reason the internet access is so expensive in the US the 6th most costly in the world, and in Finland is 3-4 times cheaper and arguably of better quality even though the GDP per capita is only 25% less in Finland than in US.
I strongly believe capitalism is the best of systems
But I still stand by my point, it does benefit large companies, especially (but far from only) online
Also I wouldn't call scandinavia socialist, in Sweden at least, taxes are high and benefits are good, so definitely not as libertarian as other countries, but there's no cap or anything, and tax on capital income through investments is actually very low, for 2023 it's 0.882 % (although on the entire sum, not on profit), zero caps there too (you can choose higher tax % only on profit if you invest in low-interest stuff still)
Also, no inheritance tax
Dosen't exactly scream socialism
Zero inheritance tax was introduced in 2005 I believe and the extremely low-taxed capital gains accounts in 2012
Finally, when people online compare tax rates without much research, Sweden looks really bad because of our high mandatory pension payments, that's usually counted as tax but unlike tax you get it all back + the return of said investments (basically a forced investment managed by the state, although you can login and manage it yourself)
I'm more surprised that they even published one in the first place. Not sure if they're that meaningful if it's not cryptographically signed though.
Edit: Wouldn't this count as one, if we were to believe anything posted on Cloudflare?
https://www.cloudflare.com/transparency/
The definition of Socialism varies widely, so there is no wonder we do not refer to the same Socialism.
Viewed from the extreme right Scandinavia is almost Communist, ask Trump who berated Sweden (with lies) so many times over it, viewed from the extreme left, it is the same homo homini lupus Capitalism like in the US, only slight nouances of the same thing.
We are, arguably, non communists and non fascists, so we need to have a more balanced view.
It is somewhat clear that Socialism is between pure Capitalism and pure Communism, but it is very hard to say how much closer or farther it is from each of the two because we don't have a common description, but if we were to put it in the middle, it should be similar to Scandinavia, free enterprise but some serious social net.
How the social net is financed, that is through taxation which is arguably high, mostly for consumption and income, not capital, and that is a good way to balance things, in my view.
@Maounique definetely
Also it’s even more nuanced, it increases fast with income
So low incomes are actually not that highly taxed
Nice when you have your own company and decide your own salary🤩
Also, it’s been seen to benefit well-being, since highly-paid induviduals often choose other types of compensation since an even higher salary would be very highly taxed and therefore wouldn’t make that such of a difference, such longer summer-vacations, shorter hours or higher pension payments made by the company
Yes, and it should be less tax for smaller companies and more for the big ones, in this way there is balance, nobody can grow too big, at some point the economies of scale would be trumped by taxation levels and would give breathing room for the small guys who would have space to grow up to some level.
A well taxed economy does not need anti-monopoly laws, except for the most extreme cases, like price fixing across the sector, for instance.
The problem is that the extreme right keeps skewing the playing field, they give tax breaks for the rich who then can become quasi monopolies and can pay politicians for more tax breaks and this creates a system where meritocracy is replaced by dynasties and there is no need to be efficient, just big.
Added malus? The under-financing of the health and education sectors produces an impoverished mass of poor, uneducated and ill people who are not productive enough to even survive, let alone contribute to the society. Less demand, less productivity, lower economic output.
As the overall standards of living are going up, there comes a time when we no longer need poor uneducated workers to flail faster than robots at the assembly line in fear they won't be able to afford their healthcare or even next meal, so cutting benefits or imposing unrealistic conditions for getting those has the only effect of reducing demand and increasing the societal costs while dropping the productivity levels.
People who could have contributed but were unlucky at some point are falling through the cracks and become gangsters, mentally of physically ill, addicts etc, creating problems for the society, more costs with policing, A&E, emergency services in general.
@Maounique
That’s smart
100 % agree, lower taxes on smaller companies would level the playing field
Sad that’s not the norm
Absolutely, and that should be the goal of every economic system, the wellbeing of ALL people, variable levels of luxury, of course, but every single member of the society should be able to contribute something, even if their contribution is negative overall due to objective reasons, they should still be able to do something positive and feel themselves useful which would greatly reduce the crime rate, even physical illness while drastically cutting the mental illness.
The extreme views are not good in any situation in today's world, they are LEADING to failed states, not being a rescue for them like it could have happened in the first part of the last century where Fascist dictatorships were able to bring order into the chaos and Communism was a vast improvement of the Feudalism with cut-throat Capitalism nouances like in Russia, for example.
Communism then brought some radical new idea like the emancipation of women, equality of chances, secularism and those were great achievements for the time, but today we already have those and Communism would only bring the ruin of bureaucracy and incompetence due to political-criteria promotion which is another form of cronyism, the imposition of theoretically sound but inflexible production goals, creating a different kind of monopolies, promoting a system of "chain of command" where nobody contests anything and the boss is always right, obedience and sycophantism brings career progress if not pure corruption...
On the other hand, the extreme Capitalism has the issues I have already highlighted before and we can achieve the highest level of efficiency in production already by using robots, we no longer need a mass of disciplined workers who would never strike and accept any kind of conditions which the fascism was supposed to produce. Besides, that kind of Capitalism PRODUCES the very chaos it was supposed to suppress, the crime levels would rise due to unemployment and lack of opportunities for the poor, more policing does not solve the problem, it only creates more and more collateral damage and needs more and more powers for the police to suppress even the legitimate grievances.
We need a balanced view and act towards that in taking what is best from both worlds and that is possible, we are not facing an either/or situation, politicians trying to portray every opponent as a communist or fascist MUST be one of the two, because only from the extremes everything else is in the other camp.
i respect you for recognizing that quote but i don't respect you for having that stick up your ass, chill out nigga, stop being so obsessed with politics
cloudflare will say they pay for the bandwidth and server resources that the free users use with the profits they get from paid users, but do you believe that? i don't
you can do what kiwi farms did when cloudflare kicked them out, self-host your own WAF with a POW-based CAPTCHA on a high-bandwidth network. if it worked for them i can't imagine it won't work for anyone else, and for me that seems like the only way to be 100% sure you're not being MITM'd by anyone else
I only know a few folks on the right who actually say "glowniggers" for feds. Most of us just stick with "feds," 'cause who wants to tick off the folks watching our group chats every single day, right?
Great cover story but no, I wouldn't trust that.
privacy > convenience
So obvious when people with zero business experience try to outsmart free tiers and their hidden agenda
Cloudflare gains a lot from free users, the growth of their network
Imagine Warp users for example, accessing websites on the Cloudflare network will be snappier, if a lot of people use Warp, there’s an even bigger gain for big companies to pay Cloudflare a lot of money
Same kind of logic goes for most of their products
They’re basically launching a seperated network, trying to get the masses in and charging the giants to be let in
It’s not that hard to grasp but when you think conspiracy first, business second, you likely will never get it
Start with a business first way of thinking, and a lot of things going on in the internet overall will make a lot more sense