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Hear me out. What if it’s not capitalism as a whole but one specific facet. Debt. > In the liberal fantasy, spearheaded by Adam Smith, bakers, brewers and butc

by demarq 10mo ago

Hear me out. What if it’s not capitalism as a whole but one specific facet. Debt. > In the liberal fantasy, spearheaded by Adam Smith, bakers, brewers and butchers laboured within markets so cut-throat that none could make more money than the bare minimum necessary to keep their small, family-owned businesses running. In a cash only capitalism world that you can’t conspire to have more than you earn. You earn what the market earns. But debt suspends capitalism long enough for someone to “beat” the market. And when capitalism resumes you have this perverse player operating under exceptional circumstances. > Joseph Schumpeter … Progress he argued, is impossible in competitive markets. Growth needs monopolies to fuel it. How else can enough profit be earned to pay for expensive research and development I know this to be false. Almost all the big tech companies consistently FAILED to bring about innovation through research. They instead had to acquire SMALLER companies and teams that had the innovation. YouTube, Android, Instagram, WhatsApp etc… And almost every other innovation was gained at the startup stage not the monopoly stage. Uber, AirBnB etc..

impossiblefork 10mo ago
Surely though Schumpeter must have been right when it comes to new industrial projects where the technology is already well-understood, maybe research in universities or similar?
- demarq 10mo ago
  Yes, there are a lot of situations where that is true. And as you say industrial projects, and I assume you specifically mean heavy industries, like building a new type of airliner. I agree. But when it comes to information technology those situations are far and few in between.
  - impossiblefork 10mo ago
    Yes, but I think it also applies to things like transformer-doomscaling, as emphasized by OpenAI, for example.
charcircuit 10mo ago
I think it's unfair to think that growing a small service or operating system to a billion users doesn't require innovation. The skills and requirements to grow a company from 1 to 1,000, 1,000 to 1,000,000, 1,000,000 to a 1,000,000,000 are going to be different. It makes sense to me that there are companies who specialize in growing companies of a particular size. And innovating around the problems of doing so. How is youtube's recomendation system, automatic subtitles (including translation), or content id system not innovative? These were key technological improvements required for the service to grow to a massive size.
- saubeidl 10mo ago
  When was the last time YouTube did anything innovative? Aren't they just an ossified bureaucracy now? The Soviets, too, innovated. Sputnik shock and all that. But at some point the structures were just too rigid - just like they have become in Big Tech capitalism.
  - nephihaha 10mo ago
    Much of the Soviet space programme was down to the personal brilliance of Sergei Korolev and other such figures, and large dollops of intelligence taken from the Germans and the Americans. Definitely the greatest Soviet achievement, but Korolev died prematurely due to his time in a prison camp and their manufacturing sector often let them down. YouTube is quite innovative, by the way, just not in the way it should be. Its comments sections change on a frequent basis allowing for ever more complex shadow banning and censorship systems. Its search algorithms also tend to exclude certain channels and big up others.
    - sebg 10mo ago
      I’d love to learn more about the Soviet Space programme. Short of asking my favorite LLM, are there any books / articles you’d recommend?
      - nephihaha 10mo ago
nephihaha 10mo ago
That's not really what Adam Smith proposes in "the Wealth of Nations" by the way. Despite claims to the contrary, we live in a system where government and big business are coalescing. In fact, they make many decisions together behind closed doors at the World Economic Forum, which Yanis Varoufakis is a member of. (You don't get into Davos unless you are either a) invited from the inside or b) pay vast amounts of money to attend.) https://www.weforum.org/stories/authors/yanis-varoufakis/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/authors/yanis-varoufakis/

by demarq 10mo ago

impossiblefork 10mo ago

Surely though Schumpeter must have been right when it comes to new industrial projects where the technology is already well-understood, maybe research in universities or similar?

demarq 10mo ago
Yes, there are a lot of situations where that is true. And as you say industrial projects, and I assume you specifically mean heavy industries, like building a new type of airliner. I agree. But when it comes to information technology those situations are far and few in between.
- impossiblefork 10mo ago
  Yes, but I think it also applies to things like transformer-doomscaling, as emphasized by OpenAI, for example.

charcircuit 10mo ago

I think it's unfair to think that growing a small service or operating system to a billion users doesn't require innovation. The skills and requirements to grow a company from 1 to 1,000, 1,000 to 1,000,000, 1,000,000 to a 1,000,000,000 are going to be different. It makes sense to me that there are companies who specialize in growing companies of a particular size. And innovating around the problems of doing so. How is youtube's recomendation system, automatic subtitles (including translation), or content id system not innovative? These were key technological improvements required for the service to grow to a massive size.

saubeidl 10mo ago
When was the last time YouTube did anything innovative? Aren't they just an ossified bureaucracy now? The Soviets, too, innovated. Sputnik shock and all that. But at some point the structures were just too rigid - just like they have become in Big Tech capitalism.
- nephihaha 10mo ago
  Much of the Soviet space programme was down to the personal brilliance of Sergei Korolev and other such figures, and large dollops of intelligence taken from the Germans and the Americans. Definitely the greatest Soviet achievement, but Korolev died prematurely due to his time in a prison camp and their manufacturing sector often let them down. YouTube is quite innovative, by the way, just not in the way it should be. Its comments sections change on a frequent basis allowing for ever more complex shadow banning and censorship systems. Its search algorithms also tend to exclude certain channels and big up others.
  - sebg 10mo ago
    I’d love to learn more about the Soviet Space programme. Short of asking my favorite LLM, are there any books / articles you’d recommend?
    - nephihaha 10mo ago

nephihaha 10mo ago

That's not really what Adam Smith proposes in "the Wealth of Nations" by the way. Despite claims to the contrary, we live in a system where government and big business are coalescing. In fact, they make many decisions together behind closed doors at the World Economic Forum, which Yanis Varoufakis is a member of. (You don't get into Davos unless you are either a) invited from the inside or b) pay vast amounts of money to attend.) https://www.weforum.org/stories/authors/yanis-varoufakis/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/authors/yanis-varoufakis/