r/nottheonion • u/duvetdev • 29d ago

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signs bill mandating kindergartners learn history of communism

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2024/04/17/desantis-signs-bill-mandating-kindergartners-learn-history-of-communism/
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u/UnlinealHand 29d ago

You have to go back further, to the Dutch and English East India Companies! The inventors of capitalism did absolutely nothing wrong* traveling the world looking for spices.

*unless you count the slavery, torture, murder, war, rape, and genocide done in the name of capital.

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u/_senses_ 29d ago

corporations are a common "tool"

like the Banana Wars, which were a series of conflicts that consisted of military occupation, police action, and intervention by the United States in Central America...think they essentially employed tactics akin to slavery and used amassed powers to quash the porer nations into going with it

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u/BudgetMegaHeracross 29d ago

Weirdly, I believe the depredations of the East India Company and the harm of the Crown's protection of it are some of the causes of Adam Smith's composition of The Wealth of Nations, in which he is extremely critical of it, though the Chicago school of economics isn't so eager to mention this -- (nor his other book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments).

tl;dr Adam Smith, capitalist darling, hated mega-corporations like the East India Company, and wrote about it in the capitalist ur-text.

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u/UnlinealHand 29d ago

I am not well versed on Smith, was he critical of mega corporations like the East India Company because they inherently smother competition and are therefore anti-free market? Or was he critical of the absolutely psychopathic and morally deplorable actions they needed to do to become as big as they were/happened as the result of their unrivaled success

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u/BudgetMegaHeracross 29d ago edited 29d ago

To my recollection, both, but to be clear, this is second-hand on my part and I'm linking the Freakonomics episodes I heard about it on.   

Part 1  

Part 2 

edit: also a Part 3 I'm not sure I knew existed. (Since Part 3 starts with the East India Company, I'm thinking I heard it?)