On: Fears over the true state of China's economy

[brc]

It's my hypothesis that the authoritarian actions leading to 2008 and the authoritarian responses to 2008 made it worse than it should have been.

A better structured economy would have more competition and more bankruptcies. And fewer bailouts and government-arranged mergers.

The capitalist system must be able to purge bad decisions and investments naturally or it will eventually calcify like a centrally planned economy.

[cconcepts → brc]

Totally agree. The idea that the laws of gravity shouldn't apply if you're "big enough" seems like it could throw the planets out of alignment.

[AnimalMuppet → cconcepts]

It's not quite that simple. The law of gravity will not be permitted to apply to you if doing so will cause too much damage to too many people.

But several times the "bailout" kept the institution alive, but wiped out the shareholders. I thought that was at least somewhat reasonable. Wipe out the senior management too (which I don't recall whether that was done), and that might be about as good as can be achieved.