723
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] admiralteal@kbin.social 39 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Many of these hospitals were capitalist before the takeover too -- they just were beholden to local owners rather than big national firm owners.

Local ownership is a VERY powerful check on the power of capital. Communities can hold sway over owners beyond what is reflected the general ledger of the business. And one of the reasons big national brands are good at out-competing local business is precisely BECAUSE they can ignore these social costs -- even externalize them -- and reap further profit for the exercise.

Even if you're anticapitalist as fuck, this is why it is still important to buy and support local business whenever possible. Because the less local the business is, the less it cares about its customers and employees' welfare.

And when local owners get greedy and want to sell to big firms, it's very important to hit them with as much social punishment as possible. Friends don't let friends sell their businesses to hedge funds.

[-] Alto@kbin.social 31 points 1 year ago

Local ownership can cut both ways. Local businessmen reach a certain level of wealth and power and can essentially take over the entire town. It's how you end up with situations like the Murdaughs.

However you look at it, the overconsolidation of wealth always has negative impscts.

[-] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Also a lot of hospitals were not for profit. It may upset the atheist crowd here but they were run by religious organizations as charities. Not that they didn't make money, but everything was reinvested back into care.

[-] prole@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

They also reinvest in their communities, whereas big corporations siphon up all the capital, and abscond.

this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
723 points (99.2% liked)

News

23655 readers
4680 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS