The future of neoliberal capitalism
in Economy ·
Capitalism doesn't actually mean a free market or liberalism.
To me, capitalism is just a method of management involving both production factors and the market itself.
On the production side, you have constraints like resource scarcity, ranging from raw materials to skilled labor. I guess nobody is going to start manufacturing computers in a place like Ohio; there simply isn't enough specialized talent that understands the tech deeply enough to build the machines that make the chips.
On the market side, you deal with supply and demand. Right now, the bottleneck seems to be demand—people just don't have the cash to buy everything being pushed on them.
This leads to inventory buildup. Companies that can't move product start to fail and lay off workers, who then get pushed out of the market because they lack the funds to participate in demand. It’s a cycle where lower corporate earnings lead to even less spending.
There was an attempt to regulate this via money supply through central banks, but I suspect that mostly just funded those closest to the flame—big capital. When a small player fails, nobody bats an eye. But if a massive conglomerate like Walmart were to collapse, it would trigger a crisis felt across the entire USA. The system seems designed to bail out big capital.
A colleague correctly noted that current consumption is down because the government takes huge taxes and redistributes them through its own spending, though it's hard to imagine us buying much else when the market is dominated by giants. We all know how much big retailers charge just for shelf space.
The core issue is the favoritism shown to large-scale capital. Once these entities reach a certain size, they stop growing through innovation and instead focus on crushing small competitors to protect themselves. Just look at how many giants have tried to pivot and failed; we all remember what caused the dot-com crash.
The fundamental problem lies in consolidation and how that concentration of power affects both production and market forces.
If we wanted to solve our own problems, I suppose we would have to spend nothing but the bare essentials on food and water for the next 50 years, reinvesting everything into education, science, and research. Only then might we become world leaders.
But since the giants maintain control, maybe eventually some new creators will emerge to unseat them, much like how Google displaced Microsoft.
To me, capitalism is just a method of management involving both production factors and the market itself.
On the production side, you have constraints like resource scarcity, ranging from raw materials to skilled labor. I guess nobody is going to start manufacturing computers in a place like Ohio; there simply isn't enough specialized talent that understands the tech deeply enough to build the machines that make the chips.
On the market side, you deal with supply and demand. Right now, the bottleneck seems to be demand—people just don't have the cash to buy everything being pushed on them.
This leads to inventory buildup. Companies that can't move product start to fail and lay off workers, who then get pushed out of the market because they lack the funds to participate in demand. It’s a cycle where lower corporate earnings lead to even less spending.
There was an attempt to regulate this via money supply through central banks, but I suspect that mostly just funded those closest to the flame—big capital. When a small player fails, nobody bats an eye. But if a massive conglomerate like Walmart were to collapse, it would trigger a crisis felt across the entire USA. The system seems designed to bail out big capital.
A colleague correctly noted that current consumption is down because the government takes huge taxes and redistributes them through its own spending, though it's hard to imagine us buying much else when the market is dominated by giants. We all know how much big retailers charge just for shelf space.
The core issue is the favoritism shown to large-scale capital. Once these entities reach a certain size, they stop growing through innovation and instead focus on crushing small competitors to protect themselves. Just look at how many giants have tried to pivot and failed; we all remember what caused the dot-com crash.
The fundamental problem lies in consolidation and how that concentration of power affects both production and market forces.
If we wanted to solve our own problems, I suppose we would have to spend nothing but the bare essentials on food and water for the next 50 years, reinvesting everything into education, science, and research. Only then might we become world leaders.
But since the giants maintain control, maybe eventually some new creators will emerge to unseat them, much like how Google displaced Microsoft.