• Ignotum@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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

    • DaCookeyMonsta@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • Kichae@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Indeed. People like to claim that capitalism is the most efficient system, but what it’s efficient at is transferring wealth to the ownership class.

      That’s what efficiency means in context, and in practice.

      • MxM111@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Well, everything is learned in comparison. I lived in USSR, and that OP meme for USSR would be just an empty frame. At least under capitalism there is this wealth that is being transferred and if it is democratic capitalism then a safety net can be created to correct for capitalism failures.

        • trustnoone@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          To be honest, the whole farce is the capitalism vs socialism argument anyway. It was just a an idea so that we can do us vs them.

          We should be doing what’s best for the country each and every time as best we can. In some cases this may mean socialism when providing free education which then enhances capitalismn having a smarter country average of people.

          The problem is people don’t realise we’re not really capitalist. When everything’s good for companies rich CEO’s blame capitalismnin why they keep their fat pay checks and why if you don’t like it you should leave. When everything’s bad, CEO’s blame society in why they deserve a free government bail out. Because the truth is, either way it’s the people who get screwed over.

          Sure we may have many companies with competing products (usually only 2 big ones) that’s supposed to bring competition. Until you realise they’re all largely owned by two main shareholder groups.

        • Soup@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Simply having it worse doesn’t validate something that’s not quite as bad. The whole reason it’s called capitalism is because the driving factor is capital and everything else is secondary. It was literally made as a replacement to monarchies because the nobles and merchants already held all the money and could keep their undeserved power.

          You should know as well as anyone else that you didn’t live under communism in the USSR. The USSR was stuck in the place on the way to communism because people didn’t want to give up their power. It was basically state-run capitalism at that point.

          Correcting for the failures of capitalism is a waste of time when better systems exist that don’t require going all-in on extreme ideologies. If it takes bringing up the disaster that was the USSR to make it sound good then it’s just a joke and shouldn’t be taken seriously.

          • MxM111@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            USSR economic system is called socialism, which is a step in direction to communism. Given that this might be a particular flavor of socialism/capitalism, nothing significantly different was tried experimentally, so to say.

            I also disagree with the certainty of you last statement claiming that a better system exists, which I assume you mean communism. Existence of such system on paper does not mean that it works in practice. It is possible, and in my opinion is very likely that particular features of human brain, of human psychology makes the system relying only on altruism to be less effective that the system that relies also on material interests.

            It is plausible that in future, with different level of economic development, and with possibility to directly modify brain pathways (or transferring to silicon all together) the situation can be different and better system may exist. But with current biological humans and present development level? I seriously doubt that.

        • Shalakushka@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Holy shit this is a reach. “Maybe you can’t afford to live under capitalism, but that guy on a yacht is having a nice time, so it’s really all worth it. Imagine if we all couldn’t afford to live? Then you couldn’t see that guy’s cool yacht!”

          • MxM111@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            That’s clearly not the situation in the most developed western democracies.

      • Peaty@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        that’s not what efficiency means in context. Stop spreading ignorance.

        Also source in the claim that capitalism is the most efficient system?

        • Zoboomafoo@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          My source is communists claiming that capitalism is too efficient and mean for their system to compete against

    • AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Capitalism is also highly adept at taking the credit for the inventions and innovations of talented engineers and other scientists.

      (Pictured: a now deceased deadbeat dad/marketer/capitalist/new age medicine enthusiast who never invented anything, but sure did enjoy wearing turtlenecks)

      • kibiz0r@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        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)

    • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • jimbo@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Capitalism itself rarely invents new things

      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.

      • Ignotum@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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