Post AdPkxbrfiZPHeYT0vw by OliverUv@mastodon.social
(DIR) More posts by OliverUv@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #AdPkx69zav31K6nC2y by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
2023-12-28T14:12:52Z
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@AlexanderKingsbury Of course capitalists are incentivized to prioritize profit—or, more specifically, to maximize differential profits. That is, by the workings of the market itself, capitalists must try to beat the average rate of return in their market or potentially lose all their capital (and become the worst thing imaginable, a wage laborer subject to the whims of capital owners).Capitalists who beat the rate of return can reinvest that additional income in capturing more market share faster than their competitors—sometimes by expanding production, but more often by acquiring other firms, investing in regulatory capture by bribing the state, dumping to undersell competitors, raising prices faster than competitors, etc.The greater the market share, the faster capitalists can accrue differential profits. The more differential profits, the faster capitalists can expand market share. Capitalists who don’t behave this way will soon find themselves competed out of business and replaced by capitalists who *will* behave this way.
(DIR) Post #AdPkx71APDa9z1fevg by OliverUv@mastodon.social
2023-12-28T14:46:06Z
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@HeavenlyPossum @AlexanderKingsbury turns out it's important to not just look at first order effects when trying to understand complex systems like capitalism
(DIR) Post #AdPkx7pVO3qeV9DrOK by AlexanderKingsbury@mastodon.social
2023-12-28T14:54:27Z
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@OliverUv @HeavenlyPossum I agree. It's also worthwhile to look at the wider, longer-term effects; reductions in poverty, for example, or the development of new and radically improved medical technologies. That being said, it's also important not to lose sight of your principles. If a system is posited to have good outcomes but it inherently violates basic rights, I don't find it particularly compelling.
(DIR) Post #AdPkx8bMW884tZc4zA by OliverUv@mastodon.social
2023-12-28T15:46:30Z
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@AlexanderKingsbury You are not describing wider, long-term effects. "Enlargement of the pie" is something that happens, distributed unevenly, while new resources are being found and exploited.You know resources are not infinite. Neither is our ability to find new efficiently exploitable resources.The long term effects are something we're experiencing now.The pie can grow larger for a decade or a few more, perhaps, but the cost of doing so is ever increasing, and unevenly distributed.
(DIR) Post #AdPkxS7bwSDNR5qbOC by AlexanderKingsbury@mastodon.social
2023-12-28T15:49:06Z
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@OliverUv Some resources are effectively infinite; sunlight, for example. Others are functionally infinite; we will never dig up all the coal or drill for all the oil, because at some point the cost of extraction will be above the value of what is extracted. We also find new and interesting things to do with previously "useless" things. We also increasingly create wealth with intangible resources; many people value music, for example, and we can make as many copies of a given song as we like.
(DIR) Post #AdPkxTJLWJCD7mLUJs by OliverUv@mastodon.social
2023-12-28T15:48:37Z
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@AlexanderKingsbury The growing of the pie is, perhaps, a second or third order effect of capitalism.The exhaustion of resources is perhaps a third order effect, as well.The fact that participants in capitalism are forced to dominate or be dominated whenever the pie isn't growing at exponential rates is perhaps a fourth order effect, or whatever.
(DIR) Post #AdPkxWzHqpWkWizWbo by OliverUv@mastodon.social
2023-12-28T15:53:38Z
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@AlexanderKingsbury As you correctly note it is the efficiency of resource exploitation that matters, not the actual amount of resource available.Music! Great example. What does the music industry look like? How well are workers compensated? How have existing capitalists entrenched their positions using above mentioned legislative capture? What happens to those who invent better methods of distribution?(Hint: the Spotify founders didn't want to sell ownership of the platform to RIAA etc)
(DIR) Post #AdPkxa5QKTDc8csy5g by AlexanderKingsbury@mastodon.social
2023-12-28T15:57:32Z
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@OliverUv I'm not inside the music industry, although I hear people complaining about it. However, I don't see many people leaving it. Musicians are more than welcome to distribute their own work by a variety of methods for free or for pay. However, as it turns out, it's generally a good idea to sign with a label so you can use their distribution, advertising, legal representation, etc. People may not like it, but hating something doesn't provide a better alternative.
(DIR) Post #AdPkxbrfiZPHeYT0vw by OliverUv@mastodon.social
2023-12-28T16:01:33Z
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@AlexanderKingsbury Better alternatives have existed, but have all been forcibly taken over through the legal system (Napster, Spotify) or been made illegal (PirateBay), or are bought by increasingly larger corporations looking to exploit platform effects (Bandcamp).What I mostly want is for you to understand that the competitive ratcheting dynamics that @HeavenlyPossum described work perfectly well for turning "infinite" resources into exploitative hellhole industries.
(DIR) Post #AdPkxeBx48ois1yEoy by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
2023-12-28T18:15:41Z
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@OliverUv @AlexanderKingsbury A key insight by economist Thorstein Veblen is that we can draw a distinction between what we might call “industry” and what we might call “business.” The goal of industry is to satisfy wants as efficiently and thoroughly as possible. The goal of business is to maximize (differential) profits. These two functions of our economy are fundamentally at odds with each other. Goods and services that are plentiful or ubiquitous are hard to sell for profit. So business—ie, capital—“sabotages” industry by artificially restricting it in ways that all business to collect rents. Hence things like copyright—a classic example of artificial scarcity imposed on what would be a nonrivalrous good so that owners can collect profits.
(DIR) Post #AdPkxfRaPUuwkoIEpU by OliverUv@mastodon.social
2023-12-28T16:04:55Z
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@AlexanderKingsbury Also> However, I don't see many people leaving it. shows an incredible ignorance of the industry and the lives it ruins and the opportunities it willingly kills to ensure that entrenched owners maintain their positions of poweredit: which is ok, you did say you're not in the industry. I'm not either, but many of my friends are. It's easy to believe things are hunky-dory when you don't know what is happening.