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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 21, 2025

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Capitalist corporations regularly make decisions that are wildly insane due to non-economic factors and burn a lot of value in the process, and the decision maker can still walk away with their bag.

Well you're just getting at the point that skin in the game is the best way to align incentives.

If your company offers paying customers a ride to the Titanic on an experimental submersible, having your CEO along for each ride is a good way to align incentives.

And on that point, someone had to realize "hey, there might be a market for tours of the titanic wreck site," and actually spend money and develop a product that can deliver on that desire, while being uncertain if they'd find enough customers.

And if it fails, well that CEO is now removed from his position of influence.

I agree that there's been a drift where decision makers in a corporate environments are insulated from the consequences of their decisions (although I argue this is mostly due to political influence. Criminal prosecutions are underused).

I also agree with the point that dominant actors in a market will usually start attempting to reduce the influence of competition, to build their 'moat' so they can start to exploit their position rather than improve their practices.

I would not agree that they're successful in the majority of cases.

I'm just pointing out that in practice Communism is unadulterated diffusion of responsibility for any mistakes, and Capitalism at least HAS a signal, and there are ways to make the signal sharper.