Slashdot Mirror
Capitalists Who Fear Change
bill_mcgonigle writes "In his essay 'Capitalists Who Fear Change,' author Jeffrey Tucker takes on 'wimps who don't want to improve.' From DMCA take-downs on 3D printing files to the constant refrain that every new form of music recording will 'kill music,' Mr. Tucker observes, 'Through our long history of improvement, every upgrade and every shift from old to new inspired panic. The biggest panic typically comes from the producers themselves who resent the way the market process destabilizes their business model.' He analyzes how the markets move the march of technology ever forward. He takes on patents, copyrights, tariffs, and protectionism of entrenched interests in general, with guarded optimism: 'The promise of the future is nothing short of spectacular — provided that those who lack the imagination to see the potential here don't get their way.'"
Not really. The goal of a capitalist is to make money. If you are successful and at the head of your market then fear of change is natural, as change is not likely to benefit you. If on the other hand you are new and not yet established then change is likely to provide opportunites for advancement and is less likely to be feared.
What regulations would you reduce? I hear that all the time but little to nothing in specifics except ways that put more power into corporate hands / push costs off on to the citizens of the country.
SteveFoerster opined:
Too many people on all sides of the ideological map don't understand there's a gigantic difference between capitalism and corporatism. In one, you actually have free markets, and inefficient businesses actually lose money and go under. But in the corporatist system we have, executives of giant corporations (which rely on limited liability that couldn't even exist in a real free market) cozy up to policy makers for mutual advantage. They're as different from each other as either is from socialism.
Man, am I sick of this argument.
"I fiercely defend free-market capitalism! But we don't actually HAVE free-market capitalism ... we have corporatism, instead. And, er, Ludwig Von Mises!"
Give to me a break.
We will NEVER have free-market capitalism. It's a mythical state of being, like pure communism. We will always have a tilted playing field, because human beings are not perfectable. People are crooked - or, at least, enough of them are that any economic system that depends on "fair play" to work WON'T.
Full stop.
The libertarian utopia is as much a pipe dream as the communist one, and for the same reason: both depend on humans to act in perfectly logical, reasonable, and predictable ways. They won't. They can't. Humans are irrational, short-sighted, emotional beings, not robots. Just as they're not content with "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," they're not willing to compete without seeking an edge, literally by hook or by crook. YOU may be willing to compete on a level playing field - but it only takes a few scammers and con artists to upend that field to the point where EVERYONE starts scrambling for an unfair advantage.
That's why regulated markets exist. Because humans lie, steal, and cheat - predictably so. Regulators come into being in an attempt to address those problems. Do the regulators get coopted, or misidentify problems and therefore apply inappropriate strategies to correct them? Oh, hell yes. That's because those regulators are themselves human beings, for which see above.
And around and around and around it goes.
FUCK Ludwig Von Mises. He isn't talking about the real world. The real world is crooked, unfair, and messy - and it's never magically going to change into the ideal, free-market condition about which libertarians, Randroids, and other such shut-ins so endlessly hyperventilate. Pull your collective heads out of your determinedly-individualistic asses, and DEAL WITH IT. There IS no ideal free market economy. There never WILL be an ideal free-market economy. And any philosophy that depends on the existence of an ideal free-market economy is a PIPE DREAM.
Grow the fuck up.
Check out my novel.