NoneOfUrBusiness

First, eat shit you imperialist ghoul. Second, yes, because Iran being a democracy sure stopped them the first time around.

I still think that you are being overly literal for an argument (“There is no such thing as a free market”) that doesn’t actually get you anywhere.

It does. Whenever you criticize capitalism or the free market, you invariably get a bunch of “free market enthusiasts” arguing that the problem is too much regulation and too little free market. Any time the “free market” produces brutally exploitative living conditions and colluding oligopolies, the claim is always the same: “This is corporatism, not capitalism. Government interference in the market did this. We should make the market freer.” This is the idea behind the comment I was originally replying to, and my argument is a response to it. Since a free market is the capitalism equivalent of a unicorn, “this isn’t a true free market” type arguments are basically all No True Scotsman fallacies. I’m shutting down a common counterargument to criticism of capitalism.

If free markets don’t exist, then personal freedom doesn’t exist for the exact same reasons.

Yeah true; both “true” free markets and “complete” (only constrained by the Harm Rule) personal freedom are models with varying degrees of accuracy depending on the situation. Thinking of a situation as described by a free market is like ignoring air resistance; it’s not a useless abstraction, but ultimately it’s still an abstraction and should be treated as such.

How so? Under state governance businesses are forced to pay a certain entity for security (policing) and other services through taxes on pain of loss of property. This is a monopoly on essential services enforced by violence, basically the most anti-free market thing ever.

Okay devil’s advocate over, serious argument here: The monopoly on violence, by definition, comes with the ability to make and enforce various rules for the operation of the market. This is tax codes, zoning laws, labor laws, tariffs, environment protection laws, IP law, etc. The ideal of the perfect free market requires that these rules to be minimalist and “fair,” but that’s impossible to achieve because nobody can objectively decide which rules are necessary and fair and which are not. Therefore it’s always going to be possible to argue that such and such isn’t a true free market because this or that rule stifles competition, ultimately tying back into the point that a true free market can’t be subject to arbitrary rules and therefore is incompatible with the monopoly on violence. The two senses of “free” are identical here.

There can’t be a free market with a monopoly on violence by definition of the word “monopoly,” yet a free market requires the enforcement of basic rules (“no stealing” being the most obvious). Conclusion: “Free market” is a contradiction.

I mean the Judeo-Christian god is also omniscient so he did so knowing they wouldn’t, meaning them eating the apple was the point in the first place. Otherwise he just wouldn’t have created the tree.

PS: I’m Muslim and this story is a bit different in Islam but I’m pretty sure I got it right.

Breaking Amazon’s stuff automatically makes one at least somewhat based. Fuck Amazon.

I never thought a reactionary repressive theocracy could be so based.

I think we all know what happens to declining empires, but is anyone clear on whether that’s supposed to happen to their vassals too?

AFAIK Lemvotes runs a private instance with a bot (???) as an admin which it uses to collect downvote information (as others have explained, the information is already there, it’s just private on the client side on most Fediverse platforms).

Apart from some episodes of violence, it was stable. But when imperialism ended, it was basically a mess.

Not directly relevant to your question, but for starters you should read about Sykes-Picot. The destabilizing impact of imperialism simply comes after the imperialist force and its vastly superior military leaves. Also you’re thinking of colonialism; imperialism never ended.

Now to directly answer your question, I’m a politics and history guy and the Ottoman Empire doesn’t get nearly enough hate for its role in shaping the modern Middle East. The stagnation they caused that allowed the region to be so easily swallowed by Western imperial interests is a direct result of centuries of Ottoman stagnation and authoritarian incompetence. The janissaries in particular deserve a special place in hell for their role in obstructing any and all progress in the Empire until it was too late. Those fucks are the reason there’s no Ottoman Catherine the Great or Frederick the Great.

Speaking for the Arabic abjad: No, no and we don’t.

Do you ignore the majority of Palestinians support Hamas?

Imagine supporting the only viable resistance organization when you’re subjected to a slow-burn genocide. The humanity!

Your point being what? That they fund Hamas so they’re helping?

Uh… Literally yes. Palestinian Islamist resistance is the only notable resistance movement in Palestine.

Somehow Egypt helps them by having secret govt backed coups? Instead they could have just taken in refugees but why would they do that? They’ll just have a coup instead.

My man the Egyptian government is an American puppet what are you talking about?

So Lebanon helps the Palestine people by building tunnels where Hamas stored weapons and hostages?

Literally yes. See above.

You can look into any Islam media and you would find they actively burn u.s. flags on state media and call for our destruction.

Well yes. Do you have any idea how much US neo-colonialism has harmed the Middle East over the past 70 years? Your country supports ISIS for fuck’s sake go touch some grass.

Also why do you think their Muslim brothers won’t help them? Surely not because most of the Arab world is run by American puppets.