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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.'"
Home farming is killing the hunting and gathering industries.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
fearing change is contrary to the genuine intent of capitalism. So it is in error to say capitalist are fearful of change. But control freaks... that's different.
Once the average home can contain everything needed to produce consumer items, there will be no more reason for big business.
Imagine a set of 3d printers, automated chemical labs, vapor-deposited chip fab in your garage. Maybe even a programmable genetic engineering machine and a computer controlled hydroponic garden to produce your food. You'd never go to the store again.
It's generally not the people who create things, make things, or provide useful services who fear change. They can adapt. But if you've spent your life's effort working your way into control of a particular set of cash registers, change is very threatening indeed.
Can you imagine where we would be now if companies like the RIAA, AT&T, Time Warner and other big media/telecom firms had fully realized what the Internet would turn out to be like 20 years ago? I shudder to imagine what they would have made it instead of what it is now. I'm so grateful for their lack of imagination.
The larger the government is, the more is can be used as a cudgel to take down smaller competitors by big business.
Reduce regulation, reduce the power the federal government wields and inherently big business only has the power of whatever intellect they have multiplied by the money they have on hand.
The smaller government is the more small businesses will thrive.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
Reducing government regulation only leaves a power vacuum that big players in the private sector (transnational corporations, etc.) would gladly fill. These new overlords would gladly oppress the public if it meant a secured source of profit, and they wouldn't have to worry about the pesky constitutional limitations our government operates under.
Reducing government influence is the same as reducing public influence. I don't want to return to the Gilded Age just for promises of a more efficient capitalism.
The incumbents prefer the status quo because that's where they make their money. If you're entrenched then change is bad.
Now apply this premise to fossil fuel companies.
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No, a handful of high level suggestions would be useful. I rarely even get that. Though I am not surprised to get an offhand dismissal from an AC. That said, when people scream about "reducing regulation" it rarely has anything to do with bills that benefit corporations.
And I expect better from /. as well, which is why I'm baffled that the GGP got modded +4 with such an empty post.
No, actually, it's the "no true scotsman" fallacy:
Assertion: No capitalist would fear change.
Counterexample: But these [examples listed] capitalists fear change.
Rebuttal: those are no true capitalists!
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Unsubstantiated vagaries. I wanted one example, can you not even provide that? If you are so concerned, obviously you have specific examples you have selected as evidence for your case.
Such as? Let's go at this another way, name a company that has been shut down or kept out of a market because of regulations?
It does matter. Suggesting that you can just arbitrarily drop half the regulations in existence implies that no one rule has any more value than another, which is totally disingenuous.
This is true. 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.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
It's not that the "No True Scotsman" fallacy doesn't exist; it does. But sometimes it turns out it really was an Englishman.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Is it a NTS though if the alleged fallacy-rebuttal is in fact part of the definition of something? If by definition fear of change truly is contrary to the genuine nature of capitalism then it is not a fallacy to genuinely assault the legitimacy of claiming the title "capitalist" applies.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Hidden behind the scenes of this discussions is the inherent and unquestioned assumption that capitalism is good.
Note that I'm not saying it's not. I'm just saying that there is an entrenched belief here even stronger than religion. The arguments all seem to be "whose definition of capitalism" and "One True Scotsman" type of arguments. But under it all is the (again) unquestioned assumption that capitalism (appropriately defined, of course) is the One True Way of resource management.
Again, in this I'm not questioning capitalism, I'm questioning the degree to which it has become a base assumption.
So here's a bit of a progression...
1 - Democracy and elections are good - not because they generate the best government, but because when properly executed, they peacefully remove and replace the government. Sometimes the replacement is better, sometimes worse, but at the very least, the replacement process is less disruptive and wasteful than a bloody revolution. If democracy were really working well, principally if the electorate chose to educate themselves well, governance would get incrementally better, where "better" is defined by a majority of the people. Things may not be happening that way, currently.
2 - Capitalism is good - not because it does the best job of distributing resources, but because when properly executed, bad players in the system exit and others take their place. If the market were properly transparent, and properly policed, even if only by its participants, the job of distributing resources would get incrementally better. Things may not be happening that way, currently.
There is nothing sacrosanct about the "profit motive". It's a nod to human nature, recognizing that personal gain can be highly motivating. Other than that motivational factor, "profit" is simply inefficiency in moving goods from supplier to consumer. The real idea behind the "free market" is that it harnesses chaos - a sort of natural selection of a wide array of ideas. When incumbants are able to suppress emergents, the free market is failing.
It's amusing/astonishing/sad that people rail at the thought of economic central planning by a government, yet accept economic central planning by entrenched market incumbants. It's not the government that's the enemy, it's the central planning, by whatever party. Some amount of chaos must exist, some continual level of instability, or the system isn't really working.
Food for thought...
In a world with nuclear bombs, genetically engineered virii, and other results of high technology becoming widely available, "human nature" is no longer good enough. If we don't start doing better than "human nature", we'll probably stop doing. Thinking about it a little, we're more likely to crash our society, crash our population, lose our technology, and be lucky to work our way back to a feudal steam age. (The easy energy is gone. The easy resources are gone, perhaps accessible in landfills, perhaps locked up in alloys that need high energy and high-tech to get out.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Is it a NTS though if the alleged fallacy-rebuttal is in fact part of the definition of something? If by definition fear of change truly is contrary to the genuine nature of capitalism then it is not a fallacy to genuinely assault the legitimacy of claiming the title "capitalist" applies.
That's what I call the "No True Scotsman Fallacy Fallacy". The fact is that a Scotsman is one by birth, and so there's an easily described definition of a Scotsman. You are or you aren't, and a simple birth certificate check will ell.
"Capitalist" also has a definition, but it's not as cut and dry as "Scotsman". Still, it's pretty obvious that while anyone can claim to be a capitalist, some people are so far outside the definition that they clearly aren't. That's not a fallacy.
Here's how I usually handle it. It seems that most people who use the NTSFF are lefties. Fine. If Joseph Hazelwood claims to be an environmentalist that means that some environmentalists like to get drunk and trash wildlife refuges by spilling millions of gallons of oil in them, right? No, it would mean that he's a crackpot.
Oddly, Nobody pulls out the NTSFF when you put it in those terms.
Do you have ESP?
When confronted with this fact they either ignore it, minimize its threat, offer up irrelevant counter arguments or offer up solutions that make no sense whatsoever, such as eliminating government altogether.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
By the same token, there are two types of communism - a pure type where all resources are shared by the people for the good of the people. The other is what we end up with, and is closer to fascism.
The dream market will never exist. It will always degrade into something else.
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.
you're a moron
you believe the only choices are the extremes?
how about capitalism with social safety nets?
how about socialism with a capitalist engine?
moderation, the middle way, is true wisdom
but don't let that stop you from painting me as another extreme just because i stand against your extreme
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
LvM and other free market advocates depend upon human beings behaving like human beings have never behaved, in any time or culture before. and people never will behave in the way LvM and free market advocates requiring them to behave in order for their sophomoric fantasies to exist
ergo, the grandfather post to this hits the nail dead on the head: we need a strong central government and strongly regulated markets in order for them to be truly free. free as in fair and just, as in the big guys and the little guys acting with equal potential, as in the big guys not colluding and taking advantage of the little guys, which is what would actually transpire, and has always transpired, in truly "free", as in natural and unregulated, markets
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it