Indeed - deregulate corporations, reduce government, bust unions, reduce salaries, poison the water, pollute the air, contaminate and over process food, mix plastic chips into milk shakes, buy up most homes and rental properties and raise the prices and rents, charge massive tariffs on foreign goods so that they're unafordable and US farmers and small businesses lose their farms and businesses when other countries won't buy American or invest in the US, enjoy extreme income inequality whereby 90% if the population is in massive debt and cannot afford food or a home, increase their taxes and remove support for health insurance because Republicans increased the national Debt by $40 trillion in recent decades, cut Social Security, allow corporations to form monopolies and gamble away pensions on the market, watch homelessness and crime increase, fail to vote because you don't have a recent drivers' license or passport, watch the rest of the world hate Americans because the US is the leading cause of genocide around the world, responsible for the murder of millions of civilians in the past 4 decades. Or support democracy and politicians that support constituents by - for example - temporarily capping food prices. (FEE.org is funded by wealthy right wing assholes.)
Ha! I was just listening to the History of Rome podcast on Diocletian where he tried this exact thing to combat inflation. It didn't work then either.
Turns out wholesalers at the shipyard would just buy up all the grain at the capped price, ship it out to the county side where it was almost impossible to enforce the cap and then sell it at massive profits.
Diocletian forced to abdicate because he didn't do that. Bread and circuses. Give us our bread at least or we guillotine you. Christianity took over Roman Empire cuz it was a movement by poor people starving with nothing to lose.
Log in
Indeed - deregulate corporations, reduce government, bust unions, reduce salaries, poison the water, pollute the air, contaminate and over process food, mix plastic chips into milk shakes, buy up most homes and rental properties and raise the prices and rents, charge massive tariffs on foreign goods so that they're unafordable and US farmers and small businesses lose their farms and businesses when other countries won't buy American or invest in the US, enjoy extreme income inequality whereby 90% if the population is in massive debt and cannot afford food or a home, increase their taxes and remove support for health insurance because Republicans increased the national Debt by $40 trillion in recent decades, cut Social Security, allow corporations to form monopolies and gamble away pensions on the market, watch homelessness and crime increase, fail to vote because you don't have a recent drivers' license or passport, watch the rest of the world hate Americans because the US is the leading cause of genocide around the world, responsible for the murder of millions of civilians in the past 4 decades. Or support democracy and politicians that support constituents by - for example - temporarily capping food prices. (FEE.org is funded by wealthy right wing assholes.)
Ha! I was just listening to the History of Rome podcast on Diocletian where he tried this exact thing to combat inflation. It didn't work then either.
Turns out wholesalers at the shipyard would just buy up all the grain at the capped price, ship it out to the county side where it was almost impossible to enforce the cap and then sell it at massive profits.
The Edict was not reliably enforced, albeit briefly and partially successful. The podcaster is trying to make a complex situation seem quite simple (it was not). "Scholars generally agree that the Edict was patchily enforced and of limited success in ending inflation. By the end of Diocletian's reign in 305, it was mostly ignored and may have been formally abrogated. The Roman economy as a whole was not substantively stabilized until Constantine's coinage reforms in the 310s." It's also difficult to compare that Edict to recent events.
So the lesson is enforce your laws, don't just say something but do no action.
Diocletian forced to abdicate because he didn't do that. Bread and circuses. Give us our bread at least or we guillotine you. Christianity took over Roman Empire cuz it was a movement by poor people starving with nothing to lose.
Direct opposite only a fool wouldn't. So it'll never happen. Instead govt gives farmers subsidies so they don't lower prices due to supply and demand.