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Where was this graphic when I was arguing with people about pharma companies “inventing” all their own medicine and deserving to keep the patents
Always.
In audio we have Max-Msp, create by Miller Pucket as a research project at IRCAM and then gave away to be commercialized by a private business. Pucket when ahead an re-created an open-source version of Max, Pure Data, but at that point that point most institutions had already adopted Max.
Dante is the biggest audio networking protocol out there. It’s everywhere now. It was developed in Australia, entirely with government funding, and later privatize to Audinate.
There’s tons of other examples.
In Québec, we have Hydro-Québec, a nationalize energy organization that gives energy sovereignty, low prices on electricity, and billions in profit. But guess what our entrepreneur-friendly prime minister wants to do.
Fuck capitalism.
Indeed. In germany, people have started a “democratic revolution” under the “terrorist organization” the next generation. They’re starting to build “illegal” citizens assemblies which ask people on the streets what they really want instead of “representative democracy”. Turns out, people want circular economy, outlawing of lobbying and so on.
“privatize the profit, socialize the loss”
Yeah, money is not made, it is extracted. You can’t simply distribute innovation cheap, you need to hold it hostage so you can “make money” extracting it from people. Anything that distributes money/help to people is “destroying money” from the pov of people who extract it.
I mean to an extent, but it’s private actors who turn these ideas into factories pumping products all over the world. That, and iterative improvements, are where capitalist innovation lies. I’m no fan of capitalism, but this is one of the few things it has going for it.
Sadly, this is a common misconception. Capitalism has no inherent benefits in terms of innovation. The people innovating innovate no more or less because they are pitted against each other. The reason people are able to innovate is because they have education and expertise. It is pretty clear that, given the chance, even more people would try and innovate on stuff they like. That isnt the case because they would need to find a job in the field first and even if they were able to do it, capitalists would claim it for them. I can iterate on this for hours but the fact stands that the innovation of capitalism is a myth.
given the chance, even more people would try and innovate on stuff they like.
Innovation is needed for stuff nobody likes too, but that aside: People would innovate on stuff they like, but would they (and could they) organize the labor of thousands of people necessary to turn their innovation into real industrial production? Smartphones were built by passionate people with a vision, but the factories pumping out millions of them a year were built and staffed because there was money to be made. So-called capitalist innovation is a description of the fact not that capitalism encourages technological progress, but that capitalism provides a way for said progress to spread throughout society in a way no other economic system does.
Could a university, govt, charity, or any other non-profit organisation organise the labour of thousands of people?
Yes.
Exactly. One of the big lies of Capitalism is that it’s somehow impossible to organise labour without it.
Yes, now which of those do you think would be a good model to build a post-capitalist economy around? I’ll build my counterargument around that.
Yeah, no. That is just capitalist propaganda and has no actual scientific base. People already organize in small and large groups, all around the world. People who do this too well get attacked and even killed. Currently, people are being brainwashed into thinking the only way to live is under capitalism, which is essentially mass induced stockholm syndrome. People will actually believe other forms like socialism didnt work because for some reason iphones are better than nobody starving or being homeless. the more interesting part of that is that socialist, communist and anarchist movements have been violently destroyed because they developed too well.
People already organize in small and large groups, all around the world.
Yes, but you’re missing the point. Put such an organization of people in charge of a factory with equal (or equal-ish, you get the point) distribution of profits and they’ll pump out goods just fine, okay great. But do they have any incentive to take those profits and use them to build another factory? If not, then who builds the second factory? That is the crux of the issue here.
socialist, communist and anarchist movements have been violently destroyed because they developed too well.
Which ones? I’m not aware of a socialist society that survived long enough for such a statement to make sense, other than “socialist” USSR-style states which are… yeah no.
because for some reason iphones are better than nobody starving or being homeless.
Of course not, but the fact remains that you’ll be outcompeted by the people with iPhones. You deliberately used an example that society could live without, but what if instead of the iPhone we use, say, the cotton mill? The steam engine? Do you see the problem now? Put a state with one of these next to one without and there’s only one way for that to turn out.
Edit: I am not doing vanilla capitalist apologia here, so please save me the vanilla responses. I’m trying to make a very concrete point that you’re really not engaging with.
Listen, I get that you’re used to being among fellow systemists but this group is not that.
I’m not missing a point. If people need a second factory, they will build a second factory. YOU’re missing the point that people are perfectly able to do this on their own. Without a competitive incentive, helping others to make another factory becomes a nonissue.
Many. I’m not wikipedia. if you genuinely want to learn something, look at anarchist, communist and socialist communities on lemmy, maybe read on the anarchist faq or the other hundreds of places where alternative systems are taught. andrewism on youtube has some nice videos on the matter.
Again, capitalism is the only system that cares about competition. of course the person with the iphone is gonna outcompete the others. that IS THE POINT!
You’re absolutely doing capitalist apologia and I’m not only saving you the “vanilla responses” I’m saving myself any further of this stuff. Please stop arguing for arguments sake. This community is not for capitalists. if you want to learn, start asking informative questions or ask for books and other resources instead of trying to explain why capitalism is somehow the better system, which BY FAR it is not.
If people need a second factory, they will build a second factory.
Literally no. See: The massive swathes of the world where factories are needed and yet not built, so everyone is forced to pay through the nose for imported goods.
helping others to make another factory becomes a nonissue.
No? Labor is never a “nonissue”; it’s literally labor. Even in a communist utopia someone with a good product idea would need to provide something to get me to build a factory to manufacture that product. Capitalism has mechanisms (flawed as they are) for choosing good ideas and getting workers to pour their labor into materializing said good ideas. This is not something that can be taken for granted; the lack of such mechanisms is what killed places like the Ottoman Empire and Qing China.
Many. I’m not wikipedia. if you genuinely want to learn something, look at anarchist, communist and socialist communities on lemmy, maybe read on the anarchist faq or the other hundreds of places where alternative systems are taught. andrewism on youtube has some nice videos on the matter.
So basically “read theory”. If there are many examples, then it shouldn’t be difficult to provide even one.
Again, capitalism is the only system that cares about competition. of course the person with the iphone is gonna outcompete the others. that IS THE POINT!
The heck? Societies have competed with each other economically, politically and militarily for as long as societies existed, and guess what? Having worse means of production makes a society weaker on all three fronts, and therefore more liable to be pushed around, defeated militarily or colonized. This isn’t rocket science; this is literally the lived reality of half the world. Advanced means of production enable a society to dominate societies with less advanced means of production; that’s how European colonialism happened, and it’s why the West and China are the top dogs of the modern world order. You cannot just handwave advancing the means of production as something that is unnecessary or will take care of itself and expect to be taken seriously. I’m not even batting for capitalism here; screw capitalism, but whatever alternative will take its place needs to satisfy certain conditions to not be colonized by the capitalist world order. If your communist utopia can’t develop new technologies and turn them into real economic activity on the ground at the same pace as a capitalist economy, capitalists will collapse the whole thing faster than you can say bourgeoisie. Arguments against capitalist innovation/“innovation” usually address the former, but I have never seen the latter addressed. If you have a response to that other than “read theory” then be my guest, otherwise I hope you notice you’re not providing anything of value to this conversation.
As I already told you, capitalist apologism is not valued here. This conversation is over. Good luck pushing your ideology somewhere else.
Capitalists love wanking on about innovation, but it always ends up being innovations in great new ways to raise the top line, lower the bottom line, and make things worse for everyone else.
A lot of the time it ends up being that, but for a counterexample you have modern electronic devices. I mean the laptop I’m using to type this certainly wasn’t developed by a government grant. And then we have massive elephants in the room like, you know, the steam engine.
Modern computers wouldnt exist if it wasnt for the massive funding from the military and NASA.
A loooot of the research necessary to make our cutting edge chips still comes from academia
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