You're the one making a non-sequitur. Capitalism is an ideology about maximizing profits. You can make a lot more profit if you externalize all your costs. "Privatize the profits, socialize the losses" is a way of saying that corporations have a lot of magical legal devices that let them avoid responsibility for externalities they themselves created once the revenue stream is no longer flowing.

Can't you think of time and again examples of this? For instance, all fossil fuel using companies are participating in this exercise in real-time today; they certainly are not paying anything for the massive pollution damage they are creating. Corporate fraud never leads to meaningful punishment of the executives and they often make a profit even after "punishment".

A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.

Benjamin Franklin (with a hint of Einstein) :p

>Corporate fraud never leads to meaningful punishment of the executives and they often make a profit even after "punishment".

No, this is a meme that needs to die. Please link examples where profits from a specific activity did not outsize the profit from that activity.

People get confused when some international massive company made a profit overall after some big fine and think the illegal thing was therefore profitable. This is never the case and the fines drastically exceed the profit from the specific activity (every country levying fines structures them explicitly this way).

BP absolutely did not make a profit on the deep water horizon.

>all fossil fuel using companies are participating in this exercise in real-time today

Red herring in a discussion about fraud. This is purely because governments don’t charge for CO2 (quite bafflingly).

>Corporate fraud never leads to meaningful punishment of the executives

Enron, Madoff, Theranos, Worldcom, Tyco, Qwest, Rite Aid… the list goes on.

In capitalism, attempts to change the status quo are always met with "but this will hurt profits!"

In socialism, attempts to change the status quo are not met with "but fewer people will starve this way"

Whether or not the GP is correct, it's silly to feign ignorance of how this idea could come about.

>In capitalism, attempts to change the status quo are always met with "but this will hurt profits!"

This is laughably stupid. The entire point of capitalism is to constantly disrupt the status quo of competitors to eat their margin.

What you’re describing is some state run capitalism or state guaranteed monopolies where the only possible disruption could come from the government.

Attempts to reduce externalities are met with "but this will hurt profits!"

Actually no. Im not describing anything about capitalism than what I see and hear on the broadcast/cable news and from the people who parrot it.

Congress wants to pass a law making it illegal to torture children by throwing them into piles of burning puppies? Cue talking heads rambling on and on about economic impacts. Politicians on the other side talking about how $market_segment will suffer. Ceos/business owners talking about how it hurts them or worse, helps the competition. All with the terrifying footer note "opponents say this move will hurt profits".

I'm not imagining anything, I'm merely saying what happens. If you want to claim that I'm stupid for saying what I see, call me Forest Gump and keep pretending you can't see what's in front of you. I'm sure your emperor is wearing clothes or whatever other fantasy makes you feel smug and safe.