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Unmanageable Complexity: Control under Capitalism
  • As continue of my post in http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/14239/big-emerging-market-hoverboards-#Item_12

    Suppose that we have some production/reselling control system (in the interests of consumer good) implemented in capitalism society.
    On paper it is always all good and useful thing.
    Almost each of them will state consumers safety, satisfaction and core interests as their top priorities.

    What (almost) every reseller/producer want in capitalism? To maximize their profits. And they act accordingly. This is just economic science. Maximizing profits always lead to conflict with interests of consumer, consumer is interested in minimized profits and best value for the price. Contrary to popular books, market is not symmetrical thing, as you do not have all information and are unable to compare every product objectively.

    To calm you down capitalism induce various control systems.

    Control system with all this kind stated goals is clearly big hurdle on the road of reaching above stated economic agents goals.
    So, such control system becomes enemy of economic agents if it follows this ideals.
    As result (and usually by design) such control systems are in reality completely different things.
    Most of them are just tools used by more powerful economic agents (monopolies or just very large corporations) to make their life even more easy.
    Some are useless things that do not affect real situation and just exist on fees they impose on weak or not very careful agents.
    Sometimes collective capitalist (state) just use them as some form of tax (for monetary purposes) or block (to restrict competition). Most time this is very fuzzy boundary between this and corporation owned control systems.
    Control systems existing in highly developed imperialist states are much more clear and less corrupt as they get good salaries from their owners directly and can enforce weak agents. It is not the advantage for weak agents as mass media lie to you, it is big disadvantage.

    What does this mean?

    Any of such system will never go against core interests of capitalist economic agents (look at the various stories of printer companies and their encrypted cartridges business model, you can quickly find and pick hundreds of similar things).

    Yet, they can be used as modern kind of baseball bat if powerful players want to impose something on more weak economic agents.