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Capitalism Breeds Innovation
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this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
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Capitalism itself rarely invents new things, but it does optimize existing things quite well
Though what it tries to optimize it for isn't always what is best for the consumer
Chicken sandwiches used to be so much better. Now it occasionally feels like I'm biting into a tire. I don't understand this business strategy.
Its simple, capitalism treats the consumer like cattle, and the optimization of profit drives them to replace real quality products with cheaper and cheaper substitutes over time until you're expected to bite into that tire and go "wow, this chicken is delicious"
But I just stopped buying them instead.
Unfortunately, you're the minority.
Most people seem to as economic actors behave quite a lot like cattle, which is why treating them as cattle works...
I just broke into the fast food chain's headquarters to find the secret formula. Next year's recipe is going to be this between two buns:
You still bought it and they saved money. Profit!
Woody breast syndrome?
Damn chicken steroids.
Woody breast syndrome
Capitalism is also highly adept at taking the credit for the inventions and innovations of talented engineers and other scientists.
Steve Wozniak: makes hardware and writes the software
Steve jobs:
I can't find it anymore, but there was an excellent Youtube vid or podcast about the components and integrations of an iPhone and how almost none of them were new inventions even though their particular use was patented by Apple, and they were in fact mostly publicly funded projects! University grants, AR&D defense contracts, infrastructure allocations, open source, etc.
GPS, touchscreen, LCDs, cell networks, HTTP, GPS, IMUs, basically every file format on the thing aside from distribution formats, much of the SDK and the foundations of the IDE.
Capitalism does not foster innovation. It fosters opportunism. The public sector takes the 1-in-a-million risk inventing something like HTTP, and carefully nurses small saplings into a sprawling fruit-bearing orchard, then the private sector comes along and harvests it, taking credit for inventing the apple. (Pun intended)
Capitalism only ever optimizes along the "maximum profitability for the seller" axis, and buyers only ever benefit if there is a ton of competition and it's a low brand recognition domain (otherwise the profitavility optimization mostly just ends up influencing marketing, not price or quality) and only ever whilst said situation lasts (the profit optimization will also tend to end high-competition low brand recognition situations if possible as that's not optimal for profitability).
Optimization is only a guaranteed good thing for those who benefit ftom what is deemed the optimal state or direction of improvement and in Capitalism that's the ones taking the profits.
I don't know that it even makes sense to say that capitalism (or socialism, or communism) invented something, but it seems fair to say that most of inventing we've seen in the modern world was done in a capitalistic system.
Sure, it's not really the economic model itself doing the inventing, but people like to say that there couldn't be any innovation under any economic model but capitalism.
But more often than not, new technologies come from universities since investing in potential technologies is risky, it's much safer to invest in refining an existing one. Meanwhile universities are more willing to spend money on research for researchs sake
Take the language models that are all the rage these days, the underlying technology was created at a university, then once it existed, companies took it and pretty much just made them bigger and more easily available
Computers, screens, modern encryption, lithium batteries, the internet, touchscreens, wifi, i could go on. Your phone is pretty much just a pile of parts that were invented at an university, then made smaller, cheaper and assembled together by a company
And while some of those university projects were also externally funded, it was usually state funded, usually for their military applications
It does spread and apply new things fairly well though even if it doesn't invent them as much.