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Excuse me. This is not intrinsically how capitalism works. Capitalism can exist in free and non-free markets. Capitalism in a free market is efficient if proper

Excuse me. This is not intrinsically how capitalism works. Capitalism can exist in free and non-free markets. Capitalism in a free market is efficient if property rights which exist and are enforced, there are low barriers to entry, and there are low transaction costs. You have just described capitalism with barriers to entry. At this point you have left free-market capitalism, and entered a world with no particular term of art describing it. I would say it is best called by an epithet like "crony capitalism." The operation of free markets is Intro to Econ material. You should pursue a remedial course that you may understand this before proposing remedies, because while some of your proposed remedies hit near the mark, I think this is by accident. The most effective remedy is competition, achieved once you can dismantle the barriers to entry. You mention antitrust in passing, which is the key policy-based approach, and regulatory provisions against trusts are mentioned in passing in the article — but mostly you focus on a "union" of customers, and I have grave doubts to its efficacy in practice. There is a massive coordination problem here, thousands of firms and their legal departments who must agree to risk substantial consequences individually in order (denying themselves key software) to achieve the collective goal.

jessaustin 6y ago
Before prescribing remedial education, perhaps you could consider the root word of "capitalism" a bit more carefully? "Capital" has its own interests, but those don't include free markets, which latter I hope we can agree is more important for the innovation upon which humanity relies. Properly understood, all "capitalism" is eventually revealed as what you're calling "crony capitalism". Temporarily the owners of capital and their sockpuppets might have to pretend to value free markets. Unless the local political or ethical system is quite incorruptible, capitalists' true colors are eventually seen. After all, they have the money, by definition. Many people will do unethical things (e.g. write tax codes under which corporations pay no taxes) in exchange for money.
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  What you describe isn't a "capital" thing. What you describe is a "power" thing. It describes princes and bureaucracies at least as well as it does capital, and there are plenty of investments into capital in the world which do not take place at these massive scales (indeed, probably the majority). This becomes particularly relevant as one prescribes massive government interventions to "fix" this concentration of power, delivering it into the hands of even-more-powerful politicians.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    OK, sure, royalty is also bad. We're not talking about that, and we're not talking about e.g. a small shop owner plowing some profits back into improvements to her shop or whatever you mean by "investments into capital". We're talking about the owners of vast wealth, and what they have done from the moment they or their ancestors acquired that vast wealth. They treat customers (and employees) as property and their custom (and labor) as rents to which capitalists are due by birthright, which is not humane. Now I realize, it's a bit silly to invoke such high-minded concepts in defense of the commercial interests of a group who themselves enjoy a lucrative state-supplied professional monopoly. Architects who don't like the terms under which software is available should hire some programmers. Programmers don't have a monopoly from the state, so as Autodesk knows they are relatively cheaper to hire than architects. If the architects try to lobby their way to a better commercial circumstance, which the effort described in TFA seems to indicate they will, they're likely to find themselves out-bribed by their monopolist vendor. I'm just opposed to attempted re-definitions of the word "capitalism". It is what we have seen it always to be, nothing more and nothing less.

jessaustin 6y ago

Before prescribing remedial education, perhaps you could consider the root word of "capitalism" a bit more carefully? "Capital" has its own interests, but those don't include free markets, which latter I hope we can agree is more important for the innovation upon which humanity relies. Properly understood, all "capitalism" is eventually revealed as what you're calling "crony capitalism". Temporarily the owners of capital and their sockpuppets might have to pretend to value free markets. Unless the local political or ethical system is quite incorruptible, capitalists' true colors are eventually seen. After all, they have the money, by definition. Many people will do unethical things (e.g. write tax codes under which corporations pay no taxes) in exchange for money.

fennecfoxen 6y ago
What you describe isn't a "capital" thing. What you describe is a "power" thing. It describes princes and bureaucracies at least as well as it does capital, and there are plenty of investments into capital in the world which do not take place at these massive scales (indeed, probably the majority). This becomes particularly relevant as one prescribes massive government interventions to "fix" this concentration of power, delivering it into the hands of even-more-powerful politicians.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  OK, sure, royalty is also bad. We're not talking about that, and we're not talking about e.g. a small shop owner plowing some profits back into improvements to her shop or whatever you mean by "investments into capital". We're talking about the owners of vast wealth, and what they have done from the moment they or their ancestors acquired that vast wealth. They treat customers (and employees) as property and their custom (and labor) as rents to which capitalists are due by birthright, which is not humane. Now I realize, it's a bit silly to invoke such high-minded concepts in defense of the commercial interests of a group who themselves enjoy a lucrative state-supplied professional monopoly. Architects who don't like the terms under which software is available should hire some programmers. Programmers don't have a monopoly from the state, so as Autodesk knows they are relatively cheaper to hire than architects. If the architects try to lobby their way to a better commercial circumstance, which the effort described in TFA seems to indicate they will, they're likely to find themselves out-bribed by their monopolist vendor. I'm just opposed to attempted re-definitions of the word "capitalism". It is what we have seen it always to be, nothing more and nothing less.