4 ms·

To Serve the Public, Seek Profits

7 points by jkuria 6y ago

Barrin92 6y ago
The entire piece is just a reiteration of the very superficial arguments advanced by Friedman and so on decades ago (as the article itself kinda admits) but just to pick on a crucial issue >"There’s no point in trying to “reimagine capitalism.” Capitalism works by creating wealth. Equality comes best through the creation of ever-cheaper goods and services, not handouts. The supercomputer in your pocket, same-day delivery, heart stents, even perfect Costa Rican bananas in your ShopRite were all generated by reinvesting profits. Other “isms” typically fail because they eventually fritter away the wealth that capitalism had furiously created." Capitalism, or any *-ism for that matter, only 'works' if it can successfully reproduce the political conditions which enabled it to flourish in the first place. Cheaper phones and stents are great, but they require rule of law, stability, functional administration, education, public health, social harmony, and so on. Shareholder capitalism isn't concerned with any of those (in the US liberal) conditions, it just kind of benefits from them and takes them for granted. When Disney censors itself to appease China, when domestic companies lobby the government, all in the name of profit maximisation, they're undermining the very (non-economic!) values that underpin the system. Michael Sandel categorised this as moving from a market economy to a market society. Conflating markets or profits as an instrument with a way of life, and in the process undermining the cultural and political values that sustain the entire system.
- elipsey 6y ago
  Yeah, I think it's interesting to consider whether some of the assumptions that held at the time neo-liberalism emerged have been invalidated by things like greater industrialization and productivity outside of US and Europe, globalization generally, and greater mobility of capital. There have always been certain classes of problem that haven't (yet?) been solved by markets alone[1], and it seems to me that we might be noticing some new ones lately. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-liberta...
joshribakoff 6y ago
But public companies operate against the public all the time, spilling oil into the ocean, defrauding customers in finance, and systemic racism. I fully stand with Elon Musk that government needs to put a price on carbon, because we are on a doomsday trajectory

7 points by jkuria 6y ago

The entire piece is just a reiteration of the very superficial arguments advanced by Friedman and so on decades ago (as the article itself kinda admits) but just to pick on a crucial issue >"There’s no point in trying to “reimagine capitalism.” Capitalism works by creating wealth. Equality comes best through the creation of ever-cheaper goods and services, not handouts. The supercomputer in your pocket, same-day delivery, heart stents, even perfect Costa Rican bananas in your ShopRite were all generated by reinvesting profits. Other “isms” typically fail because they eventually fritter away the wealth that capitalism had furiously created." Capitalism, or any *-ism for that matter, only 'works' if it can successfully reproduce the political conditions which enabled it to flourish in the first place. Cheaper phones and stents are great, but they require rule of law, stability, functional administration, education, public health, social harmony, and so on. Shareholder capitalism isn't concerned with any of those (in the US liberal) conditions, it just kind of benefits from them and takes them for granted. When Disney censors itself to appease China, when domestic companies lobby the government, all in the name of profit maximisation, they're undermining the very (non-economic!) values that underpin the system. Michael Sandel categorised this as moving from a market economy to a market society. Conflating markets or profits as an instrument with a way of life, and in the process undermining the cultural and political values that sustain the entire system.

elipsey 6y ago
Yeah, I think it's interesting to consider whether some of the assumptions that held at the time neo-liberalism emerged have been invalidated by things like greater industrialization and productivity outside of US and Europe, globalization generally, and greater mobility of capital. There have always been certain classes of problem that haven't (yet?) been solved by markets alone[1], and it seems to me that we might be noticing some new ones lately. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-liberta...

joshribakoff 6y ago

But public companies operate against the public all the time, spilling oil into the ocean, defrauding customers in finance, and systemic racism. I fully stand with Elon Musk that government needs to put a price on carbon, because we are on a doomsday trajectory