The gains from capitalism have dropped the costs to produce foods to previously unheard of levels. The productivity of a modern farm is incredible compared to farms of 25, 50, 100 years ago. The amount of labor and land needed to produce the food humanity needs has dropped considerably.
I realize these are not the statements that people posting here want to read, but that’s reality. Take the good with the bad because regular capitalism is not bad. Unfettered capitalism is the problem.
But that’s not because of capitalism, that’s because of technological advances. We have centuries of technological advances in agriculture before we even had proto capitalism. There’s no reason to believe those advances wouldn’t have happened under any other economic system.
You do realize that we have roughly 3-4 millenias of technological advancements, before we even invented early capitalist theory? The vast majority of human history contradicts your statement.
Capitalism is exceptionally good at short term efficiency, because it’s profits driven and and as long there’s someone else to compete for profits there’s technological advancement. But capitalism is also all consuming and once it’s killed off all its competitors and profits are guaranteed the efficiency of technological advancements stops. Xerox is a great example, they invented a lot of modern things we use today like the foundation of the personal computer, GUI, computer mouse and desktop computing. But they invented those things at the height of their success and because of it did almost nothing with it. They just didn’t need to because they were already making loads of money. Those ideas were instead taken by Microsoft and Apple and they found immense success in it. Had Xerox also killed all the competition then the world we know today wouldn’t exist because there wouldn’t be any need for tech to advance here. The efficiency capitalism gives comes from a purely external source, it’s to beat the competition for profits. Once competition dies out so does the efficiency. Long term capitalism is not more efficient than any other economic system where the efficiency is derived from an internal source, such as the desire to do less work.
And while we’re on the topic of efficiency, the efficiency of capitalism is not necessarily a good thing. Do you know what is efficient? Working from the moment you wake up until the moment you have to sleep. That is what capitalism, at its core, wants. But I doubt it’s something you want. In fact we collectively have decided it’s not what we want because we have laws that exist solely to limit capitalism. The fact that you have time to comment here is inherently anti-capitalist, because capitalism wants that time spent on making a profit.
What you are describing in the later part of your post is essentially unfettered capitalism. Fuck everything about unfettered capitalism, but regular plain old capitalism is, as you said, great for tech innovation. Too many people can’t keep the two straight.
Sure, I won’t get into that now. But you really didn’t address the main part where a capitalistic company essentially stop innovating once they reach a market dominant position and kills off all the competition? Amazon hasn’t innovated anything since killing off its every competitor. Google kills every innovation they create because it’s not as profitable as they want. Meta has been stealing ideas and buying innovations since its inception. Once the external incentive to innovate dies off capitalism stops innovating.
It is because of capitalism. Capitalism includes price competition, necessity to update farming tools and adopting technology in timely manner for every farmer, reducing worker numbers by replacement with farming tools, free labour movement, meaning less people being stuck being farmers. Tech development competition and tool production is its own capitalistic dynamic too.
Other forms aren’t necessarily centuries behind in effectiveness but they would require very microscopic management and preplanning, hopefully competent leaders and selfless participants.
Agriculture is in most societies already heavily regulated and intervened by governments and politicians bc of its importance. So even in capitalistic nations, agriculture is never pure capitalistic
All you’re saying is that you cannot comprehend a world without capitalism. Let me give you a quick hypothetical that you can hopefully relate to. Imagine you could do something about your work that makes your work easier and also take less time, but the wage your being paid doesn’t change. Would you do it? I’m sure you would because even if you don’t get more money out of it you get more energy (as less is spent on work) and more free time to spend that energy. There are other ways to motivate technological advancement than just pricing, primary being the desire to do as little work as possible. It’s actually superior to pricing because it’s not externally driven. If you’re able to assert a dominant market position you no longer need to innovate because you’re going to make a profit anyway. But unless we’re in full automation (where you never have to work again) there’s always motivation to innovate to do less work.
And now the other part of this hypothetical. Assuming there is something that could be changed to make your work easier and take less time, could you actually change that? You brought up how other forms aren’t as efficient as they require microscopic management and preplanning with competent leaders. But if you’re a worker in a capitalist company the change you would want to make gets bogged down by those same things. A competent leader might implement your change, but for them to even hear your suggestion you have to get through all the levels of management. Now, imagine if you worked in a company where you and your co-workers can decide together that this is a great idea. Compared to a capitalistic company would you consider that slower or faster, and do you think it would be more likely or less likely your innovation gets implemented?
Well, those yield gains are from capitalism subsidized with government-sponsored ag research at hundreds of college campuses, and subsidized by intellectual property protections for patents and copyrights, and government price supports, and government crop insurance, and government land-bank programs to pay farmers to not overuse the land, and ag labor subsidized by special exemptions for minimum wage and citizenship verifications, as well as tight border controls and political vilification of the immigrant labor force to keep the wages low.
But yeah, when society throws enough money into capitalism and soaks up the external costs, it sometimes delivers results.
In short, modern US agriculture is hardly a good example of either unfettered markets or unfettered capitalism. Big US ag is privatized profits and socialized losses, like a lot of other US industry, albeit with much better PR than (for instance) the banking industry.
Take the good with the bad because regular capitalism is not bad. Unfettered capitalism is the problem.
The thing is, unfettered capitalism is basically regular capitalism brought to you by Adam Smith & his successors. Bernard Mandeville, who arguably also described capitalism prior to Smith, called it out for its faults and said that it may only be to the public benefit through careful regulation, whereas Smith thought that greed would somehow regulate itself.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Smith is the one more may have heard of today over Mandeville.
On review, you’re right, but I do think there is a notable ambiguity regarding whatever Smith’s trying to describe with his “invisible hand” concept, which is more of what I was referring to than any sort of magic. An ambiguity which, I think it may be fair to say, is among those misquotings and employed as an argument to defend deregulation and unregulated capitalism.
I’d have to do some further reading to get a better sense of what Smith may have been trying to say with that idea, but at least at a glance it seems I’m not alone in finding it questionable. At best it appears to be the notion of incidental good produced from self-interested endeavors in circumstances of good governance, and to which I think you raise a good point in Smith’s articulation of what prudent governance might look like, e.g.
The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market, and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can only serve to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens.The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order [of employers/dealers that live by profit], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention.It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.
Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, emphases & bracketed insertion mine for clarity, drawn from earlier portions of the paragraph. Ctrl+F and search this section to verify if concerned.
What he described by the invisible hand was the idea of systematic forces - essentially emergent properties of a system.
They’re patterns in a system that emerge not from individual actors, but from the interaction of many actors. No one has to enforce the behaviors - hell every individual actor in the system might be against it - but the system itself creates certain forces
Smith approaches the concept awkwardly and very cautiously - he probably was afraid he’d sound like a lunatic, or that the concept would be controversial
The gains from capitalism have dropped the costs to produce foods to previously unheard of levels. The productivity of a modern farm is incredible compared to farms of 25, 50, 100 years ago. The amount of labor and land needed to produce the food humanity needs has dropped considerably.
I realize these are not the statements that people posting here want to read, but that’s reality. Take the good with the bad because regular capitalism is not bad. Unfettered capitalism is the problem.
But that’s not because of capitalism, that’s because of technological advances. We have centuries of technological advances in agriculture before we even had proto capitalism. There’s no reason to believe those advances wouldn’t have happened under any other economic system.
technology advances because people in power pay for it. it doesn’t passively increase.
societies eventually stagnate without capital investments into technology.
You do realize that we have roughly 3-4 millenias of technological advancements, before we even invented early capitalist theory? The vast majority of human history contradicts your statement.
Absolutely false no matter how much you want to believe otherwise. Capitalism brings about the motivation to improve efficiency unlike anything else.
Capitalism is exceptionally good at short term efficiency, because it’s profits driven and and as long there’s someone else to compete for profits there’s technological advancement. But capitalism is also all consuming and once it’s killed off all its competitors and profits are guaranteed the efficiency of technological advancements stops. Xerox is a great example, they invented a lot of modern things we use today like the foundation of the personal computer, GUI, computer mouse and desktop computing. But they invented those things at the height of their success and because of it did almost nothing with it. They just didn’t need to because they were already making loads of money. Those ideas were instead taken by Microsoft and Apple and they found immense success in it. Had Xerox also killed all the competition then the world we know today wouldn’t exist because there wouldn’t be any need for tech to advance here. The efficiency capitalism gives comes from a purely external source, it’s to beat the competition for profits. Once competition dies out so does the efficiency. Long term capitalism is not more efficient than any other economic system where the efficiency is derived from an internal source, such as the desire to do less work.
And while we’re on the topic of efficiency, the efficiency of capitalism is not necessarily a good thing. Do you know what is efficient? Working from the moment you wake up until the moment you have to sleep. That is what capitalism, at its core, wants. But I doubt it’s something you want. In fact we collectively have decided it’s not what we want because we have laws that exist solely to limit capitalism. The fact that you have time to comment here is inherently anti-capitalist, because capitalism wants that time spent on making a profit.
What you are describing in the later part of your post is essentially unfettered capitalism. Fuck everything about unfettered capitalism, but regular plain old capitalism is, as you said, great for tech innovation. Too many people can’t keep the two straight.
Sure, I won’t get into that now. But you really didn’t address the main part where a capitalistic company essentially stop innovating once they reach a market dominant position and kills off all the competition? Amazon hasn’t innovated anything since killing off its every competitor. Google kills every innovation they create because it’s not as profitable as they want. Meta has been stealing ideas and buying innovations since its inception. Once the external incentive to innovate dies off capitalism stops innovating.
It is because of capitalism. Capitalism includes price competition, necessity to update farming tools and adopting technology in timely manner for every farmer, reducing worker numbers by replacement with farming tools, free labour movement, meaning less people being stuck being farmers. Tech development competition and tool production is its own capitalistic dynamic too.
Other forms aren’t necessarily centuries behind in effectiveness but they would require very microscopic management and preplanning, hopefully competent leaders and selfless participants.
Agriculture is in most societies already heavily regulated and intervened by governments and politicians bc of its importance. So even in capitalistic nations, agriculture is never pure capitalistic
All you’re saying is that you cannot comprehend a world without capitalism. Let me give you a quick hypothetical that you can hopefully relate to. Imagine you could do something about your work that makes your work easier and also take less time, but the wage your being paid doesn’t change. Would you do it? I’m sure you would because even if you don’t get more money out of it you get more energy (as less is spent on work) and more free time to spend that energy. There are other ways to motivate technological advancement than just pricing, primary being the desire to do as little work as possible. It’s actually superior to pricing because it’s not externally driven. If you’re able to assert a dominant market position you no longer need to innovate because you’re going to make a profit anyway. But unless we’re in full automation (where you never have to work again) there’s always motivation to innovate to do less work.
And now the other part of this hypothetical. Assuming there is something that could be changed to make your work easier and take less time, could you actually change that? You brought up how other forms aren’t as efficient as they require microscopic management and preplanning with competent leaders. But if you’re a worker in a capitalist company the change you would want to make gets bogged down by those same things. A competent leader might implement your change, but for them to even hear your suggestion you have to get through all the levels of management. Now, imagine if you worked in a company where you and your co-workers can decide together that this is a great idea. Compared to a capitalistic company would you consider that slower or faster, and do you think it would be more likely or less likely your innovation gets implemented?
A lot of people dont want work to be faster, more efficient. They just want no changes in process. People are comfortable in avoiding changes.
A lot of people also see stuff they do as art or enjoy the process. They dont mind things taken a lot of time.
We had fake communism and real communism, feudalism levy and feudalism slave systems before.
You are talking about project groups companies. Agriculture doesnt operate like that bc farmers tend not to be like some agile project groups
Well, those yield gains are from capitalism subsidized with government-sponsored ag research at hundreds of college campuses, and subsidized by intellectual property protections for patents and copyrights, and government price supports, and government crop insurance, and government land-bank programs to pay farmers to not overuse the land, and ag labor subsidized by special exemptions for minimum wage and citizenship verifications, as well as tight border controls and political vilification of the immigrant labor force to keep the wages low.
But yeah, when society throws enough money into capitalism and soaks up the external costs, it sometimes delivers results.
In short, modern US agriculture is hardly a good example of either unfettered markets or unfettered capitalism. Big US ag is privatized profits and socialized losses, like a lot of other US industry, albeit with much better PR than (for instance) the banking industry.
The thing is, unfettered capitalism is basically regular capitalism brought to you by Adam Smith & his successors. Bernard Mandeville, who arguably also described capitalism prior to Smith, called it out for its faults and said that it may only be to the public benefit through careful regulation, whereas Smith thought that greed would somehow regulate itself.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Smith is the one more may have heard of today over Mandeville.
Smith described capitalism, he didn’t idolize it.
He’s often misquoted, but skim through the wealth of nations. It most certainly does not say unregulated capitalism just works out magically.
It describes how capitalism works, and heavily implies the situations where it doesn’t. It’s not subtle about it either
On review, you’re right, but I do think there is a notable ambiguity regarding whatever Smith’s trying to describe with his “invisible hand” concept, which is more of what I was referring to than any sort of magic. An ambiguity which, I think it may be fair to say, is among those misquotings and employed as an argument to defend deregulation and unregulated capitalism.
I’d have to do some further reading to get a better sense of what Smith may have been trying to say with that idea, but at least at a glance it seems I’m not alone in finding it questionable. At best it appears to be the notion of incidental good produced from self-interested endeavors in circumstances of good governance, and to which I think you raise a good point in Smith’s articulation of what prudent governance might look like, e.g.
Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, emphases & bracketed insertion mine for clarity, drawn from earlier portions of the paragraph. Ctrl+F and search this section to verify if concerned.
What he described by the invisible hand was the idea of systematic forces - essentially emergent properties of a system.
They’re patterns in a system that emerge not from individual actors, but from the interaction of many actors. No one has to enforce the behaviors - hell every individual actor in the system might be against it - but the system itself creates certain forces
Smith approaches the concept awkwardly and very cautiously - he probably was afraid he’d sound like a lunatic, or that the concept would be controversial
Listen, just hear me out. I propose we all go back to subsistence agriculture and perhaps a primitive barter system. Who’s with me?