I don’t understand economics but why does there have to always be profit? If someone made devices that last 50 years they would go bankrupt? Make it make sense.
They don’t want some profit, or even sustainable profit. They want all the profit, and always more this quarter than the previous.
I do understand that if somebody created something that is cheap, lasts forever and there’s a limited (non infinite) need for it, they would eventually stop selling. That’s why they need to make things last less, or invent excuses to make you buy a new one.
The capitalist imperative is: make as much profit as you can as fast as you can.
The fastest way to make as much profit as you can is not to create the best possible product. Sure, that’ll get you far enough- but in capitalism there is never “enough”. For instance, you could use the capital you amassed to buy up all the competition and create a monopoly and hike prices to whatever you like because people will have no choice but to buy it from you, especially if it’s something essential like food, energy, housing, or what have you.
Of course, monopolies are illegal. Not because capitalism says so, but because society says so, in order to contain capitalism, which would otherwise consume society even faster than it already does!
Monopolies are just one ugly example, there are other ways of making super much profit super fast. Like, stealing! That, too, is illegal, because it goes against the very concept of living in a society, which itself is predicated on the idea that we are stronger and better and happier when we come together and pool our resources.
So basically what it all comes down to is competition and not just greed like most people believe. If you don’t make more money than the competition, you will fail. That’s why companies keep getting bought out all the time, they lost this game. Most people have no idea just how many companies they know are owned by bigger ones they may not know. The whole thing is conglomerating like the T-1000 after it had been shattered and melted. So rabid profit chasing is a matter of survival.
That is precisely correct, capitalism is in some sense like a story, I don’t remember who wrote it, in which human scientists ask a semi-omnipotent AI to answer some question, and the AI decides that in order to solve it, it needs to transform all the matter in the solar system into an even greater AI, and calmly treats human extinction as an irrelevant side effect.
“Maximize profit forever” is a bad algorithm if the goal is to sustain a thriving human society. It has no goal state. Just more, forever. Capitalism is fundamentally flawed in its core design and central idea, that somehow, by creating ever more “wealth”, everyone gets richer as a whole, while not taking into account the societal effects of some getting vastly richer than others, compounding over time unto infinity.
I could go on. But capitalism is a fundamentally broken idea that will implode on itself as a matter of causation as it plays out over time, it is logically and physically incapable of sustaining itself. We are seeing the late stage effects of it play out before our eyes right now.
Funny you should mention that! The Phoebus cartel formed in 1924 by major light bulb manufacturers, because they were at a point where they were producing light bulbs that could last for decades, and they realized that this would kill their profits because nobody would buy bulbs because they lasted so long, so they made rules to deliberately make the bulbs fail after about 1,000 hours and fined members for making bulbs that lasted too long, effectively creating the concept of planned obsolescence as a business model.
See? Capitalism promotes innovation! In how to profit!
I don’t understand economics but why does there have to always be profit? If someone made devices that last 50 years they would go bankrupt? Make it make sense.
They don’t want some profit, or even sustainable profit. They want all the profit, and always more this quarter than the previous.
I do understand that if somebody created something that is cheap, lasts forever and there’s a limited (non infinite) need for it, they would eventually stop selling. That’s why they need to make things last less, or invent excuses to make you buy a new one.
The capitalist imperative is: make as much profit as you can as fast as you can.
The fastest way to make as much profit as you can is not to create the best possible product. Sure, that’ll get you far enough- but in capitalism there is never “enough”. For instance, you could use the capital you amassed to buy up all the competition and create a monopoly and hike prices to whatever you like because people will have no choice but to buy it from you, especially if it’s something essential like food, energy, housing, or what have you.
Of course, monopolies are illegal. Not because capitalism says so, but because society says so, in order to contain capitalism, which would otherwise consume society even faster than it already does!
Monopolies are just one ugly example, there are other ways of making super much profit super fast. Like, stealing! That, too, is illegal, because it goes against the very concept of living in a society, which itself is predicated on the idea that we are stronger and better and happier when we come together and pool our resources.
Alas, I wax verbose.
So basically what it all comes down to is competition and not just greed like most people believe. If you don’t make more money than the competition, you will fail. That’s why companies keep getting bought out all the time, they lost this game. Most people have no idea just how many companies they know are owned by bigger ones they may not know. The whole thing is conglomerating like the T-1000 after it had been shattered and melted. So rabid profit chasing is a matter of survival.
That is precisely correct, capitalism is in some sense like a story, I don’t remember who wrote it, in which human scientists ask a semi-omnipotent AI to answer some question, and the AI decides that in order to solve it, it needs to transform all the matter in the solar system into an even greater AI, and calmly treats human extinction as an irrelevant side effect.
“Maximize profit forever” is a bad algorithm if the goal is to sustain a thriving human society. It has no goal state. Just more, forever. Capitalism is fundamentally flawed in its core design and central idea, that somehow, by creating ever more “wealth”, everyone gets richer as a whole, while not taking into account the societal effects of some getting vastly richer than others, compounding over time unto infinity.
I could go on. But capitalism is a fundamentally broken idea that will implode on itself as a matter of causation as it plays out over time, it is logically and physically incapable of sustaining itself. We are seeing the late stage effects of it play out before our eyes right now.
runaway infinite consumption at all costs … aka … cancer
Funny you should mention that! The Phoebus cartel formed in 1924 by major light bulb manufacturers, because they were at a point where they were producing light bulbs that could last for decades, and they realized that this would kill their profits because nobody would buy bulbs because they lasted so long, so they made rules to deliberately make the bulbs fail after about 1,000 hours and fined members for making bulbs that lasted too long, effectively creating the concept of planned obsolescence as a business model.
See? Capitalism promotes innovation! In how to profit!
https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel