There is some validity to the issue of that closeted hard drives or phones or the 10 year refrigerator. We are able to squander resources in our throw-away society. It has only been perhaps ~ 30-40 years we were able to afford the waste of planned obsolescence. Economically somewhat like the broken window model for improved GDP - hire people to break windows opening the need for a lot of work. But pointless work somewhat akin to the 1890 drudgery of hauling water for our needs. If you are doing that you aren't inventing the iPhone.
So we create an issue that means we can fix the issue, if there is an incentive. The free market will step in eventually. The right-to-repair is one such answer along with those reliability ratings that Consumers Report does for wiser shoppers. But at least we have those choices.
Right now it seems we are dominated by perhaps the most incompetent government ever. Not sure if it's part of the pendulum swing of politics or the rule of ever larger organizations that become inefficient over time. Economic creative destruction fixes itself because businesses fail while government remains stuck. They have no incentive to perform allowing incompetence to continue.
But until recently I had some reasonable trust in some parts of government. To think that professional scientists and physicians would be corrupt was not in my wheelhouse. My eyes have been opened. That a single sociopathic person could so dominate an agency has been a revelation. That such a small group of people could cause such damage is a reflection on how lazy but insecure we all have become to allow such damage. Worse yet has been the inability of our leaders to lead.
I’m sold on the Free Market as the best solution. It’s too bad it does not actually exist. The government has meddled in the market for far too long. It’s a farce.
Yes, very good post. It is amazing that even though we have plenty of evidence that centralized government, corporate and institutional power fail and fail very big we still haven't figured a way to prevent it. History is full of the examples. Although our culture loves to denigrate these the examples of localized government and power through the people we keep repeating the same mistakes. The very definition of insanity.
"He who ignores the lessons of history will be like "Wind in the Buffalo Grass." (attributed to various American Plains Native American leaders)
And "I prefer dangerous freedom to peaceful slavery." (T. Jefferson)
These central planners ALWAYS claim ‘X is limited, therefore we must limit your X.’
This is their great mistake. It’s strange that these “geniuses” are still stuck in a mercantile economics and do not understand that free markets can *create* or *discover* more X if the incentives are there. I don’t understand why we keep having to make the same mistakes over and over again.
It is demonstrably false. That the car is driven 3% of the time? Do they mean during its existence or what? Ridiculous and the kind of ridiculousness coming from never having experienced lack or want. Spoiled rich brats with lots of education and no sense.
It was tried in the 1970s with "collective cars", bikes and so on. It didn't work because no-one can plan beforehand exactly when or for what or for how long I'd need the car, and when I do need it it must be available and filled with petrol. And since no-one wants to be then one filling it with petrol, it will always be out of it. I bet you a Biden-dollar that people will do the same with electric cars too - drive up to a parked one and attached your charger, siphoning from their battery. That should be even easier than slurping petrol from a real car.
Private profits for the already rich and corporate communism for the rest of us is the future, now that the power-triangle of nation state - private capital - demos/oikos has again become a pyramid with private capital at the apex playing at being philosopher kings, using the state (demoted to province in a global hegemony) as enforcer against the people, forming the base of the pyramid.
That's not a good structure, since it leaves the people with only one option: violent revolution. Again. And again and again until rich and powerful accepts that no-one has a problem with peope being rich or making a decent deal: it's the rampant greed and ruthless egotism that's the problem.
"Radix malorum est cupiditas" isn't a joke, it's the wisdom of the ancients telling us that greed and want both leads to evil. All things in moderation, even moderation itself.
Hmmm.... but could it have anything to do with the US Petrodollar and military interventions that made sure we could make dollars and the rest of the world makes things that dollars buy? Russia actually has to trade something of value--oil--to get something back and then they had to sell it in petrodollars. And wasn't Yeltsin the drunk who couldn't get re-elected so US oligarchs bought up the whole media and shoehorned him in with Putin as his running mate?
I'm not a fan of any centralized gov't whether communism or socialism or so-called representative democracy but surely you're not confusing our gov't with freedom? We have rampant wasteful consumerism, for sure, that we can't escape. Aisles and aisles of poisons in every flavor you've been programmed to crave. But we can't afford real food.
Maybe I'm not reading this closely enough, or just have on my anarchist glasses ;-)
It’s incredible to me how often I hear people assert that things like healthcare, energy, the post office, etc. are so important that government needs to provide them. But in countries where the government took over the production and distribution of the most important material good for our survival (food), the result was…not much food! The lesson from countries like the USSR and Venezuela is that there are some goods and services that are so important, their production and distribution should be handled by markets, not government.
I think you quoted Macbeth. Nice! Not sure though.
Here's the irony of the current shit:
The USSR generated large productivity increases in the 50's and 60's by moving people from rural areas and putting them into factories.
In the end, that totally failed to generate incentives for improving productivity or for innovation except in military areas where they put the preponderance of their resources.
Ultimately, when people were not forced to buy the goods Soviet industry produced, they basically went out of business.
Now the Russian economy is held up not by the benefits of centrally planned industrialization but by high natural resource prices.
We are HELPING Russia with our follies in Ukraine!
If things continue on their current path in the U.S., assuming there are any people left alive here, in 80 years when Amerikan communism has failed, a U.S. politician may be visiting a Russian grocery store and marveling the same way Boris did. I agree SC, we have to get busy changing our world asap. I always say, if every one of us would just do one thing (it could be almost anything) to secure liberty for ourselves, we might not change "the" world, but we absolutely can change *our* world. Thanks for the post. I'd forgotten about Boris's visit.
This piece reminds me of Kropotkin’s Conquest of Bread. The first few chapters at least.
Humanity needs to go wide on solutions, not tall. We are all better the freer we are.
There is some validity to the issue of that closeted hard drives or phones or the 10 year refrigerator. We are able to squander resources in our throw-away society. It has only been perhaps ~ 30-40 years we were able to afford the waste of planned obsolescence. Economically somewhat like the broken window model for improved GDP - hire people to break windows opening the need for a lot of work. But pointless work somewhat akin to the 1890 drudgery of hauling water for our needs. If you are doing that you aren't inventing the iPhone.
So we create an issue that means we can fix the issue, if there is an incentive. The free market will step in eventually. The right-to-repair is one such answer along with those reliability ratings that Consumers Report does for wiser shoppers. But at least we have those choices.
Right now it seems we are dominated by perhaps the most incompetent government ever. Not sure if it's part of the pendulum swing of politics or the rule of ever larger organizations that become inefficient over time. Economic creative destruction fixes itself because businesses fail while government remains stuck. They have no incentive to perform allowing incompetence to continue.
But until recently I had some reasonable trust in some parts of government. To think that professional scientists and physicians would be corrupt was not in my wheelhouse. My eyes have been opened. That a single sociopathic person could so dominate an agency has been a revelation. That such a small group of people could cause such damage is a reflection on how lazy but insecure we all have become to allow such damage. Worse yet has been the inability of our leaders to lead.
I’m sold on the Free Market as the best solution. It’s too bad it does not actually exist. The government has meddled in the market for far too long. It’s a farce.
Yes, very good post. It is amazing that even though we have plenty of evidence that centralized government, corporate and institutional power fail and fail very big we still haven't figured a way to prevent it. History is full of the examples. Although our culture loves to denigrate these the examples of localized government and power through the people we keep repeating the same mistakes. The very definition of insanity.
"He who ignores the lessons of history will be like "Wind in the Buffalo Grass." (attributed to various American Plains Native American leaders)
And "I prefer dangerous freedom to peaceful slavery." (T. Jefferson)
These central planners ALWAYS claim ‘X is limited, therefore we must limit your X.’
This is their great mistake. It’s strange that these “geniuses” are still stuck in a mercantile economics and do not understand that free markets can *create* or *discover* more X if the incentives are there. I don’t understand why we keep having to make the same mistakes over and over again.
You have crAcked one of the codes.
It is demonstrably false. That the car is driven 3% of the time? Do they mean during its existence or what? Ridiculous and the kind of ridiculousness coming from never having experienced lack or want. Spoiled rich brats with lots of education and no sense.
It was tried in the 1970s with "collective cars", bikes and so on. It didn't work because no-one can plan beforehand exactly when or for what or for how long I'd need the car, and when I do need it it must be available and filled with petrol. And since no-one wants to be then one filling it with petrol, it will always be out of it. I bet you a Biden-dollar that people will do the same with electric cars too - drive up to a parked one and attached your charger, siphoning from their battery. That should be even easier than slurping petrol from a real car.
Private profits for the already rich and corporate communism for the rest of us is the future, now that the power-triangle of nation state - private capital - demos/oikos has again become a pyramid with private capital at the apex playing at being philosopher kings, using the state (demoted to province in a global hegemony) as enforcer against the people, forming the base of the pyramid.
That's not a good structure, since it leaves the people with only one option: violent revolution. Again. And again and again until rich and powerful accepts that no-one has a problem with peope being rich or making a decent deal: it's the rampant greed and ruthless egotism that's the problem.
"Radix malorum est cupiditas" isn't a joke, it's the wisdom of the ancients telling us that greed and want both leads to evil. All things in moderation, even moderation itself.
One world gvt... Think they are gonna fix that pothole?
A small to medium farmer owning his land KICKS ASS.
So, do they want to central plan garage sales? Bartering?😎😆😃😉
The late, great Robin Williams in Moscow on the Hudson...
https://youtu.be/VHIcmoY3_lE
Hmmm.... but could it have anything to do with the US Petrodollar and military interventions that made sure we could make dollars and the rest of the world makes things that dollars buy? Russia actually has to trade something of value--oil--to get something back and then they had to sell it in petrodollars. And wasn't Yeltsin the drunk who couldn't get re-elected so US oligarchs bought up the whole media and shoehorned him in with Putin as his running mate?
I'm not a fan of any centralized gov't whether communism or socialism or so-called representative democracy but surely you're not confusing our gov't with freedom? We have rampant wasteful consumerism, for sure, that we can't escape. Aisles and aisles of poisons in every flavor you've been programmed to crave. But we can't afford real food.
Maybe I'm not reading this closely enough, or just have on my anarchist glasses ;-)
It’s incredible to me how often I hear people assert that things like healthcare, energy, the post office, etc. are so important that government needs to provide them. But in countries where the government took over the production and distribution of the most important material good for our survival (food), the result was…not much food! The lesson from countries like the USSR and Venezuela is that there are some goods and services that are so important, their production and distribution should be handled by markets, not government.
I think you quoted Macbeth. Nice! Not sure though.
Here's the irony of the current shit:
The USSR generated large productivity increases in the 50's and 60's by moving people from rural areas and putting them into factories.
In the end, that totally failed to generate incentives for improving productivity or for innovation except in military areas where they put the preponderance of their resources.
Ultimately, when people were not forced to buy the goods Soviet industry produced, they basically went out of business.
Now the Russian economy is held up not by the benefits of centrally planned industrialization but by high natural resource prices.
We are HELPING Russia with our follies in Ukraine!
the future of shopping, it makes me realise my month or two of supplies is wholly inadequate and i need to buy a farm :(
EGM calls this dynamic the pareto optimization of markets.
It would be nice to live in a free(r) market again.
If things continue on their current path in the U.S., assuming there are any people left alive here, in 80 years when Amerikan communism has failed, a U.S. politician may be visiting a Russian grocery store and marveling the same way Boris did. I agree SC, we have to get busy changing our world asap. I always say, if every one of us would just do one thing (it could be almost anything) to secure liberty for ourselves, we might not change "the" world, but we absolutely can change *our* world. Thanks for the post. I'd forgotten about Boris's visit.