[PLUG-TALK] Band-Aids and Cures (was Fair Use, etc)
Dylan Reinhardt
dylan at dylanreinhardt.com
Sat Mar 30 20:03:43 UTC 2002
> The point is that capitalism has no mechanism for rewarding
> cures, only band-aids. And capitalism has no mechanism for
> rewarding the creation of abundance, only scarcity.
Oh, come now Jeme. I realize that's what belief in the Labor Theory of
Value would lead one to suppose, but blanket claims like that are just silly.
A company which produces a "band-aid" solution to a problem has a strong
incentive to see that problem go uncured. After all, a cure to the problem
would disrupt their profit stream, right?
But that's what capitalism is all about: competition, not stagnancy. What
better chance do we have of seeing a cure than for some competitor to come
along and attempt to tap into an existing market with a better product?
And abundance? Let's say that someone *did* come up with cold fusion or
some other small, abundant source of energy. Naturally, the whole petrochemical
industry would be threatened. In a capitalist system, such a product could
rapidly take over the energy market. In a socialist system, the displacement
of all the people working in existing energy companies would actually be
a consideration.
It is socialism, not capitalism, that is more innately hostile to technologies
that create abundance.
The problem here is that you are looking at what the US has and calling
it capitalism. This is, in essence, the exact same logical error made when
someone examines the history of the USSR and calls it a failure of communism.
The idea and the execution are vastly different things.
It is certainly the case in the US that many forces act to favor existing
companies, to sustain old products, to inhibit, restrict, mitigate, and
prevent change. If we can agree that stagnacy is the real problem, we can
take a clearer look at what causes it.
At the risk of making a gross generalization of my own, it's been my experience
that younger people tend to embrace change and older ones tend to resist
it. The reasons this might be the case are hardly difficult to discern:
for starters, older people tend to be more heavily invested in how things
already are.
So what system is best prepared to encourage (or even allow) new generations
to bring thier ideas and enthusiasm to the table? Is it the system where
all decisions are made collectively? Or is it the system where one can
establish a niche and work for change one decision-maker at a time?
It's certainly no mystery that I'm about to argue that capitalism is better
suited for encouraging and sustaining social change and economic mobility.
What might be less obvious is that I believe many of the problems in our
current execution of capitalism stem from too *little* capitalism, not too
much.
When the government gets involved in any market, there is an unavoidable
benefit granted to existing companies. Not only are they more likely to
have the legal staff, but they are most likely to have a say in how laws
are shaped. If you think this is just because of abuses in campaign financing,
I assure you that is not the only factor. Consider that there would be
no way to draft a law that accounts for an as-yet undiscovered product or
technology. Even if nothing else is amiss, government tends to account
for what exists at the time laws are drafted, not what might exist in 10
years if the government stayed out of it.
The main reasons that you cite for being *against* capitalism are many of
the same reason I'm so strongly *for* it. I favor self-determination, work
that has dignity, and an abundance of opportunities. Individuals should
have the same opportunities as large companies. And though there are limits
to how well it all works in practice, it is quite possible to assert opportunity
and self-determination in the US. I've managed to make a living of it,
as have many other people on this list, I suspect.
Yes, abuses can result when power becomes highly concentrated in the hands
of very few. I think we agree on that... but I would assert that capitalism
works *against* this problem, not in support of it. Excessive governance,
on the other hand, is the very definition of highly concentrated power.
I have read _Lies My Teacher Told Me_ and several works by Howard Zinn.
Have you read Hayek's _The Road To Serfdom_?
Dylan
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