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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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I dont know what your intended point here was, but you aren't particularly wrong. White market financial institutions are so heavily regulated by the federal government that they are basically state controlled. Generally I've seen the model of nominal private control of industry but actual government control described as fascism instead of communism. But, I've generally said as well that, at least economically, the fascist is just a wise communist who realizes he can have 99% of the control in exchange for almost none of the blame by embracing this setup instead of total state control. If a government bureaucrat is the head of a bank and it fails, he gets all the blame! But if he merely regulates it into failure he gets to blame the "capitalists"! Its a win win. That is why this sort of approach is generally loved by the worldwide left/progressives in modern times, although they have not been keen to embrace the "fascist" label.

But you are entirely correct, you can't go into a Chase bank and get a loan because the loan officer thinks "oh Mihow is a good seed" because then he has to tell FDIC, DOJ, and other investigators why he denied Deehow the same loan application (hint Deehow is a bad seed). So they make up these standardized metrics which are generally very good at evaluating a person's activities in the white market. But, if you operate in the grey market or black market to any significant extent their evaluation of you will be off. But that isn't their job. If you want to buy a condo on credit using your grey market credentials, go to a grey market lender (almost none exist anymore) or a black market lender. Of course, that might be a crime, but thats the point. The government intends to control lending in the country because it is one of the commanding heights, and it does. This is not capitalism, but what is abstractly described as fascism, but modernly referred to as progressivism.