6 ms·

That's what I call Metacapitalism.

Tenoke 5y ago
Seems odd to call it that as there's little 'capitalism' in it. It's abuse of state regulations rather than market forces.
- kragen 5y ago
  Agreed, regulators granting your company a monopoly is definitely the opposite of capitalism in a significant sense, even if the company does use wage-labor to produce products whose ownership rests with the owners of the means of production rather than the laborers.
- salmonfamine 5y ago
  Only the most naive understanding of capitalism holds those two things as opposites, or mutually exclusive.
- PicassoCTs 5y ago
  State regulations which are exploitable due to lobbyism which is capital transferred into law generating power. Neo-Feudalism is the final form of unregulated capitalism and has always been it. Why not just step forward into the Acceptance-Stage of Ideology-Death, instead of being caught with the intellectual trousers down half a century later by ones googling grandkids on a witch hunt?
  - Nasrudith 5y ago
    Any characterization of corporations as neofeudal shows a fundamental complete and utter ignorance to what feudalism actually is, in a way that only communists could manage to get so wrong. Feudalism is a system of rule by networks of oaths and obligations, with military service as the top links. Its practicioners also historically depised merchants and traders from the top and bottom of the hierarchy. It aims for lifetime oaths. And it is capitalism which cannot accept its ideological death, not communism? The one who proclaimed its inevitability loudly only to die in a single human lifetime, and is preoccupied with 19th century writings and works from unquestioned imperatives rather than experimentation? I think there is some major projection going on here.
- pasquinelli 5y ago
  lobbying is just utilizing accumulated capital to create favorable conditions. that capital was accumulated by a capitalist firm. that firm's competitive strategy might be aesthetically unappealing to you, but the firm exists in the first place because it can more efficiently utilize resources than any individual could. capitalism is a way of organizing production with workers being paid a flat rate and owners keeping all additional value added by the workers in exchange. is that not how pharmaceutical companies are arranged?
- nyolfen 5y ago
  of course, true capitalism has never been tried, but this is what you might call 'actually existing capitalism'
- cloudfifty 5y ago
  Why wouldn't a capitalist corporation choose to lobby the government to bend the rules in their favor if they think that that would give the best ROI? In what version of Capitalism would this not happen? What would remove this incentive structure?
  - kragen 5y ago
    In almost any version of Democracy, an authoritarian politician can choose to run for office on a platform of establishing a dictatorship; in most of them, they can even succeed. That doesn't make the would-be dictator a democrat, and it doesn't make their platform a democratic platform. Similarly, free-market incentives to lobby for government monopolies don't make monopolies capitalistic, because capitalism requires a free market, and monopolies and monopsonies are the opposite of a free market. Marx called this sort of thing "the internal contradictions of capitalism"; he argued that capitalism was an inherently unstable structure, just as many writers have argued that democracy was inherently unstable. They might be right. But in either case, the possible fact that one system inevitably gives rise to its opposite doesn't make it the same as its opposite.
    - cloudfifty 5y ago
      You're missing the forest for the trees. This is what Capitalism has always been and always will be due to its incentive structure. If you accept wealth and thus power concentration, you accept market manipulation. The corps won't skip this due to some overarching ideological free-market reason. That's just naive. I mean, just look at the jungle of regulations and the vast inefficient bureaucracy of the US healthcare system. Those 15k layers of shite can only happen with just as many corps doing everything to either save their profits or trying to get as large a piece of the cake as possible. Public good be damned. Say if the US gov planned to add $100 per patient in some grant for whatever reason. How much do you think would actually trickle down to the patient? I'd be like nervously donating $100 to a dodgy charity in a corrupt developing nation in the 1960s.
      - kragen 5y ago
jdkee 5y ago
It is "evergreen" with respect to patented pharmaceuticals. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreening

Seems odd to call it that as there's little 'capitalism' in it. It's abuse of state regulations rather than market forces.

kragen 5y ago
Agreed, regulators granting your company a monopoly is definitely the opposite of capitalism in a significant sense, even if the company does use wage-labor to produce products whose ownership rests with the owners of the means of production rather than the laborers.
salmonfamine 5y ago
Only the most naive understanding of capitalism holds those two things as opposites, or mutually exclusive.
PicassoCTs 5y ago
State regulations which are exploitable due to lobbyism which is capital transferred into law generating power. Neo-Feudalism is the final form of unregulated capitalism and has always been it. Why not just step forward into the Acceptance-Stage of Ideology-Death, instead of being caught with the intellectual trousers down half a century later by ones googling grandkids on a witch hunt?
- Nasrudith 5y ago
  Any characterization of corporations as neofeudal shows a fundamental complete and utter ignorance to what feudalism actually is, in a way that only communists could manage to get so wrong. Feudalism is a system of rule by networks of oaths and obligations, with military service as the top links. Its practicioners also historically depised merchants and traders from the top and bottom of the hierarchy. It aims for lifetime oaths. And it is capitalism which cannot accept its ideological death, not communism? The one who proclaimed its inevitability loudly only to die in a single human lifetime, and is preoccupied with 19th century writings and works from unquestioned imperatives rather than experimentation? I think there is some major projection going on here.
pasquinelli 5y ago
lobbying is just utilizing accumulated capital to create favorable conditions. that capital was accumulated by a capitalist firm. that firm's competitive strategy might be aesthetically unappealing to you, but the firm exists in the first place because it can more efficiently utilize resources than any individual could. capitalism is a way of organizing production with workers being paid a flat rate and owners keeping all additional value added by the workers in exchange. is that not how pharmaceutical companies are arranged?
nyolfen 5y ago
of course, true capitalism has never been tried, but this is what you might call 'actually existing capitalism'
cloudfifty 5y ago
Why wouldn't a capitalist corporation choose to lobby the government to bend the rules in their favor if they think that that would give the best ROI? In what version of Capitalism would this not happen? What would remove this incentive structure?
- kragen 5y ago
  In almost any version of Democracy, an authoritarian politician can choose to run for office on a platform of establishing a dictatorship; in most of them, they can even succeed. That doesn't make the would-be dictator a democrat, and it doesn't make their platform a democratic platform. Similarly, free-market incentives to lobby for government monopolies don't make monopolies capitalistic, because capitalism requires a free market, and monopolies and monopsonies are the opposite of a free market. Marx called this sort of thing "the internal contradictions of capitalism"; he argued that capitalism was an inherently unstable structure, just as many writers have argued that democracy was inherently unstable. They might be right. But in either case, the possible fact that one system inevitably gives rise to its opposite doesn't make it the same as its opposite.
  - cloudfifty 5y ago
    You're missing the forest for the trees. This is what Capitalism has always been and always will be due to its incentive structure. If you accept wealth and thus power concentration, you accept market manipulation. The corps won't skip this due to some overarching ideological free-market reason. That's just naive. I mean, just look at the jungle of regulations and the vast inefficient bureaucracy of the US healthcare system. Those 15k layers of shite can only happen with just as many corps doing everything to either save their profits or trying to get as large a piece of the cake as possible. Public good be damned. Say if the US gov planned to add $100 per patient in some grant for whatever reason. How much do you think would actually trickle down to the patient? I'd be like nervously donating $100 to a dodgy charity in a corrupt developing nation in the 1960s.
    - kragen 5y ago

jdkee 5y ago

It is "evergreen" with respect to patented pharmaceuticals. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreening