12/13/16

Correcting Inefficiencies of Capitalism


If there is implicit structural inefficiency in contemporary capitalism is it possible to innovate a remedy? Capitalism applications have different forms in differing economic circumstances, levels of sophistication and so forth some being more practical than others. Capitalism presently has a bias toward expensive means of production limiting the potential number of product producers, and perhaps requiring substantial capital investment. If one could invent a universal hat-making machine easy to make at home it would put hat makers and related hat making supply industries out of business. The market is biased against most-efficient, lowest cost methods of production. The market runs against the present ecological-economic drive toward lowest-entropy economics as a principle of environmental conservation.
Traditionally in classical economics there has been analysis about market efficiency. With high-speed quantitative trading today that works with cold-blooded machine-language analysis efficiency of abstract values for instant speed-of-light dark pool exploitation the concept of market efficiency also means eliminating the human element from business and moving toward a version of Adam Smith's capitalism evolving to consolidation of power for the sake of power. Even so, capitalism has an innate bias against inventing the lowest cost way of production such that it would virtually be open source.
Modern capitalism increasingly favors expensive means of production with rare limited entry producers such as makers of computer chips. Transforming common goods into rare and expensive goods for political control is good sense although corrupt. Though mass production lowers cost and a corporation produces immense profits social economic development moves toward capital investment in businesses that benefit from investment and become more specialized and rarefied in production moving even beyond few existing rivals. Alternatively technologies that produce goods at very low cost and require little public investment are avoided. Inventors are disincentivized to search for such product inventions with no rewards for producer efficiency. There is an implicit bias toward expensive means of production and products that allows a class hierarchy to form unifying government and corporate political power.
When a dichotomy develops between producers and consumers on the basis of corporate hierarchies gathered about an exclusive, costly production industry democracy obviously dwindles. Though planetary masses may be drafted into becoming employees and affiliates of the costly production corporations the efficiency of capitalism suffers. When political power is taken by economic powers of capitalism even the potential for finding or inventing low-cost and efficient open source means of production dwindles. In such a deformed variety of capitalism anthropogenic entropy increases abnormally quickly.

Capitalism that has created de facto corporatism and concentration of wealth through networking and that does not use principles of ecological economics is existentially unresponsive to national and global interests. Uncreative minorities that concentrate wealth and power are repressive minorities of necessity. In a post-18th century high-tech version of capitalism that is a universally available method for all citizens because of the willingness of society to finance ecologically and creative business models there is no need to seek security within rarefied social strata of wealth. In an ecologically sustainable national context that is synergistic of global interests security and ambient lifestyle independence and satisfaction would be common facts. Capitalism that is over-concentrated is inefficient and a variety of reforms should be enacted to relieve the economic state of affairs from a networked business structure running toward universal plutocratic business monopoly.

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