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All the things you mention are certainly possible, but if that’s truly what consumers wanted (judged by where they spend their time and money), then the market
by URSpider94 9y ago
All the things you mention are certainly possible, but if that’s truly what consumers wanted (judged by where they spend their time and money), then the market would reward companies that provided those services.
Put another way, you can argue as much as you want that people want to eat salad and steamed vegetables for every meal, because it will make them thinner and healthier. And yet, McDonalds is still doing well (maybe not quite as well as before, but still very well).
Regulation will curtail the edge cases where people are acting to their own detriment to a degree that society deems unacceptable. Beyond that, it’s up to the invisible hand of capitalism to dictate what customers want.
- geofft 9y agoWhat? Why? The market rewards working services over not-yet-working ones - it's not surprising that customers who prefer a more complicated service will use the less complicated one in the meantime. There's also all sorts of confounding things with social networks like network effects. Capitalism is one way to get at a society's preferences. It is not the only way, nor is it able to perfectly determine a society's preferences.
- merinowool 9y agoCapitalism is the most free of all, from there the more you turn left the more authoritarian it gets.
- geofft 9y agoWhy is democracy not the most free of all? Let one person have one vote - not one dollar have one vote.
- merinowool 9y agoIt is not, as one could say it is a tyranny of majority...
- nybble41 9y agoTo expand on what merinowool said: Under capitalism you are free to do whatever you want with your own property provided you extend the same courtesy to others, and don't interfere either their use of their property. It is easy to see that this is an optimum balance: any more freedom than that would necessarily come at someone else's expense. This is sufficient on its own to say that any other system must be less free than capitalism. "Democracy" comes in many forms. If a particular implementation of democracy includes strong (effectively absolute) protection for the rights of the minority, including property rights, then it becomes a special case of capitalism where interested people voluntarily choose to address issues of common concern through voting. One example of such a system is a co-op; no one is forced to participate, but those who do become members have equal representation with respect to the disposition of the co-op's common property. If respect for the minority's rights is subject to majority vote, however, then things which one would be free to do under capitalism—by definition involving only one's own property and that of others who voluntarily choose to participate—become restricted to suit the will of the majority, which plainly makes one less free.
- merinowool 9y agoI couldn't put it any better. Thanks!
- qznc 9y agoIn other words: People get what they want, but not what they need. Similarly: Short-term trumps long-term.
- EGreg 9y agoI think it is because the solutions don’t exist yet. Like before the Telephone consumers “preferred” to visit each other. The Gentleman Caller.