Were they somehow not greedy before? What changed?

Opportunities for price gouging increased due to supply chain disruptions.

This article lays out arguments for and against this theory:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/03/business/economy/price-go...

> supply chain disruptions

Government meddling in the market though lockdowns, embargoes, and other limiting of supplies.

If not government you mean China, sure. Massive supply chain problems.

The Russian government invading a sovereign country didn’t help either.

I can't dictate policy to foreign nations but I can lament my own countries inane policies on these issues.

Regarding the coof: No need to go all Papers Please and ban people from working, fine and arrest people traveling more than 1km from home, or repress morally justified protest over those actions. It was the most horrendous expansion of government power I've seen, probably since the patriot act.

Regarding russia: No need to harm energy markets more than war normally does with embargoes and destruction of infrastructure. No need to deplete local stockpiles by giving them away to foreign civilians rather than your own. No need steal people's money to give away.

Whenever socialist policies, in this case the central planning of credit and interest, don't work out and cause the exact disaster that has been predicted for decades in advance, actual, unironic communists like OP just turn around and blame the rich.

This is the Soviet Union playbook to a T, except they would always blame "wreckers" or reactionaries.

Unfortunately, people have an attention span for politics of about two weeks so they always keep falling for this.

> Whenever socialist policies, in this case the central planning of credit and interest

You are conflating centralization with socialism. Mario Draghi is the centralist banker behind QE and he is a fervent neoliberal. He has nothing to do with socialism.

> This is the Soviet Union playbook to a T, except they would always blame "wreckers" or reactionaries.

Crazy how distracted I've been lately, I've lived in a communist economy without noticing. I must have missed the proletarian expropriation somehow.

Jokes aside, it's interesting how people like to call the current system socialist when it doesn't work, capitalist when it does.

> You are conflating centralization with socialism.

Centralization is what socialism /is/ minus your dreams about some lofty goals that have never been achieved.

> He has nothing to do with socialism

What you do trumps what you call yourself or what wiki calls you.

> I've lived in a communist economy without noticing.

Not full communist but there are significant socialist components in the western economies, usually the sectors that don't work, and yeah, it's not really to your credit that you somehow failed to notice that education, healthcare, military and so on aren't capitalist.

Central banking is, at least since the bailouts, full on monetary communism. It's infuriating to me that people just refuse to learn the first thing about this system.

> I must have missed the proletarian expropriation somehow.

You clearly haven't been following the news from the Netherlands.

> Jokes aside, it's interesting how people like to call the current system socialist when it doesn't work, capitalist when it does.

When socialism doesn't work, capitalism get's the blame. Actually it's even worse than that, capitalism is just a blanket label for anything bad, regardless of the underlying dynamics.

I strongly disagree that QE policies and central banking are socialist. In fact, I would argue that QE, as it has been enacted since its inception after the collapse of Japan’s credit bubble, is closer to the opposite since it strengthens capital’s control over labour. The mechanisms of which are asset price inflation, financialization, austerity which reduces spending on public goods, poor wage growth, and so on. These are all examples of capital increasing its power while labour loses power. I agree the policy choice is terrible, but I don’t see how they can be construed as socialist.

Also, keep in mind that the theoreticial justifications for these policies do not originate in socialist/marxist economics. Nor are the technocrats that implement them motivated by socialist theory.

It seems the only connection that exist is that central banking is central (so is the military) and that marxist-leninist regimes make heavy use of centralism. Central banking predates all such regimes, by the way. But that seems like a superficial connection that does nothing to elucidate. I disagree heavily with QE but labeling it socialist does not help in understanding it so that I may effectively oppose it.

Hello ChatGPT, good to have you!

Central banking is literally the fifth plank of communism.

the headline should read, "Bad behavior is excused for the poor".

pantries and welfare exists. stealing is not necessary. most of these sort of people cant cook well and resort to packaged bs

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” -Anatole France

This from a lousy novel about the impossibility of divorce. The phrase you're uttering is from a flighty aristocrat who in the novel sees virtue in poverty. Perhaps in stead of pithy phrases we could engage with the topic at hand?

In my experience, bad behavior is excused for the rich. I suspect the poor have finally caught on.

Feel free to move to one of the countries without many rich.

You should encourage this behavior in your neighborhood. Watch them all disappear