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You are anthropomorphizing "Capitalism," as a sort of aggregate of all capitalist behavior, but with a single goal. That's not accurate. Individuals certainly t
by byrneseyeview 16y ago
You are anthropomorphizing "Capitalism," as a sort of aggregate of all capitalist behavior, but with a single goal. That's not accurate. Individuals certainly try to accumulate wealth, but the best way to make a lot of money is to find a better or cheaper way to do something--a side effect of which is the impoverishment of somebody else. Just look at, e.g., the way Sun nearly killed IBM in the late 80's and early 90's. Sun never made as much as IBM did, but the people who founded Sun made more than they otherwise would have.
That, I think, is why you see internal contradictions. You're pointing out that the best capitalists do stuff that harms the average capitalist; if Myspace is making money, there's always a Zuckerberg waiting to ruin things. But of course, there is no "Capitalism" that encompasses all of the goals of Myspace's owners and Facebook's.
That also takes care of the apparent contradiction of outsourcing. The capitalists who lose to outsourcing don't like it; the outsourcers do. There's less money made (since the outsourcers charge less), but the economy is more efficient. That's capitalism--the net result of lots of self-interested people, who often act against one another's interests. It's not the vision of capitalism in which the rich, as a group, make consensus decisions to advance their collective interests.
Thus, that version of capitalism is wrong.
Oh, and slavery and colonialism are much, much older than capitalism as we understand it today. In fact, one can make the case that slaves are the oldest form of property. Certainly, I've never heard of a civilization that advanced at all and never had slaves.
- jbellis 16y ago> Sun never made as much as IBM did, but the people who founded Sun made more than they otherwise would have. And of course the startups that became possible because Sun equipment was much cheaper than IBM's thought this was a pretty good thing too.
- jshen 16y ago"but the best way to make a lot of money is to find a better or cheaper way to do something" Nah, the best way is to prey on vice. Weight loss pills, get rich quick schemes, porn, 0 interest ARM loans, etc.
- byrneseyeview 16y agoOne would think so, but the Forbes 400 is not dominated by people who cater to vices. In fact, folks who bet against at least some of those (the 0% ARM loans) are well-represented among hedgies.
- jshen 16y agowhen he said, "the best way to make a lot of money", I was thinking a few million and that by best he meant easiest. It surely is easier to get rich tacking advantage of someone than trying to start the next microsoft.
- nl 16y ago* Just look at, e.g., the way Sun nearly killed IBM in the late 80's and early 90's. Sun never made as much as IBM did, but the people who founded Sun made more than they otherwise would have.* I don't disagree with your general arguments, but this bit is factually wrong. IBM's problems in the late 80's and early 90's were to do with the rise of the PC industry, not the Unix workstation. Yes, IBM had a dysfunctional Unix strategy during that period, and yes it lost sales (some to Sun) but it wasn't Sun that was killing it, it was the rise of client server computing. If Sun hadn't been there then Apollo (remember them?) or HP or maybe even SGI
- byrneseyeview 16y agoThanks for the clarification. Are there any good sources (books, articles) on this period and what happened to IBM? I've read about it from IBM's point of view, but when your business is selling Big Iron, you figure you fail because of something Big Iron-related, not something external.