4 ms·

That’s just the nature of western capitalism.

rgmerk 3y ago
Australian capitalism isn’t that different to American capitalism, and the interaction of government incentives and market players has produced all manner of disasters here too (child and aged care are but two examples). But in the case of the solar market things have turned out dramatically differently. The Australian rooftop solar market has worked so well that a large part of the market is now unsubsidised.
rstuart4133 3y ago
> That’s just the nature of western capitalism. I'm also an Australian, and I think rgmerk is bang on. It's not the nature of all capitalism - just the USA style of it, and only in some instances. It seems to arise from the USA's love affair with free markets, or perhaps distrust of governments. They are two sides of the same coin, because distrust of government means they don't trust them to put the rules in place require to create competitive markets. For clarity, not all markets are equal. A monopoly is a kind of market for instance, but it's one that favours the suppliers. As other comments here have pointed out, some markets can self-destruct. A personal example is I refused to purchase SD Cards off suppliers like Ebay because fraud was so rampant, and it was impossible to figure which sellers were genuine. Later, SD Cards disappear from Ebay from a while - ie the market collapsed. I bought my SD Cards from stores instead, so that market (for an identical good) worked fine. A competitive market is one where there are lots of buyers, lots of sellers, free flow of information - in general no power imbalances. They are surprisingly fragile. Government intervention is often required to create them. An example of such in intervention is the EU changing the rules for software, effectively saying software must do what it promises on the side of the box. (Currently software typically has shrink wrap licences that disclaim all liability if it doesn't work.) In typical fashion, a lot of what appeared to be USA posters here decried the the unnecessary impost on business, and promptly predicted all software producers would move their operations to the USA. Perhaps they will, but businesses can't survive without customers and it's just as likely the customers will doing their purchasing in the EU when they can.

Australian capitalism isn’t that different to American capitalism, and the interaction of government incentives and market players has produced all manner of disasters here too (child and aged care are but two examples). But in the case of the solar market things have turned out dramatically differently. The Australian rooftop solar market has worked so well that a large part of the market is now unsubsidised.

rstuart4133 3y ago

> That’s just the nature of western capitalism. I'm also an Australian, and I think rgmerk is bang on. It's not the nature of all capitalism - just the USA style of it, and only in some instances. It seems to arise from the USA's love affair with free markets, or perhaps distrust of governments. They are two sides of the same coin, because distrust of government means they don't trust them to put the rules in place require to create competitive markets. For clarity, not all markets are equal. A monopoly is a kind of market for instance, but it's one that favours the suppliers. As other comments here have pointed out, some markets can self-destruct. A personal example is I refused to purchase SD Cards off suppliers like Ebay because fraud was so rampant, and it was impossible to figure which sellers were genuine. Later, SD Cards disappear from Ebay from a while - ie the market collapsed. I bought my SD Cards from stores instead, so that market (for an identical good) worked fine. A competitive market is one where there are lots of buyers, lots of sellers, free flow of information - in general no power imbalances. They are surprisingly fragile. Government intervention is often required to create them. An example of such in intervention is the EU changing the rules for software, effectively saying software must do what it promises on the side of the box. (Currently software typically has shrink wrap licences that disclaim all liability if it doesn't work.) In typical fashion, a lot of what appeared to be USA posters here decried the the unnecessary impost on business, and promptly predicted all software producers would move their operations to the USA. Perhaps they will, but businesses can't survive without customers and it's just as likely the customers will doing their purchasing in the EU when they can.