I worry that capitalism is using us in a similar manner.
Neoliberal capitalism has given us a lot of very cheap, very technologically advanced stuff. An extremely basic integrated circuit in the 1960s costs the same as an entire iPhone now, accounting for inflation. Accounting for inflation, automobiles are as cheap as they've ever been, and have many more features that work much better than they ever have.
But ... the edges wear thin. A Raspberry Pi (computer) and a Raspberry Pie (food) may be purchased for around the same price. A varied and healthy diet can be quite expensive (though there are deals to be found if you can travel to get them). Companies want to "add value" to food with extensive processing that increases the engineered taste factors to make us consume more. Housing is insanely expensive in many areas. Health care in the United States is not designed for any humans - not doctors, nurses, other professionals, and certainly not patients.
Neoliberal capitalism won't innovate on these areas. Are we just stuck with what we have? Certainly government mandates could change the game, but just like the Romans, people think the system is working because they can buy a smart phone and a gaming console and some cheap snacks and go for a ride in their fine automobile.
We can't see what the collapse will be, and we can't see what's next. I wonder how many Romans talked like this? I don't believe that our doom is inevitable, but I also think that progress requires specific intention, and progress can be very easily disrupted.
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I have a thesis that the economic benefits of integrated circuit microchip and the economic benefits of neoliberalism cannot be distinguished. They both feed each other. I don't see myself putting enough effort into researching it and writing it up, but I strongly believe that thesis.
I'm not sure what you're complaining about, exactly. A raspberry pie is mostly service, not product - you get it for things like convenience and company and time. You can tell because the frozen version is much cheaper. And if you want to go further lower, you can actually make pies at home for pennies - all you need is a sack of flower and a bunch of frozen fruit. And capitalism even makes it easy for you to do it - if you decide it's something you really want, you can invest a couple hundred bucks in home equipment to do most of the work.
I'm sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but a couple of reads of your comment and I still think you're complaining that things go well :)
The complaint seems to be that things like raspberry pies are cheap while nutritious food is expensive. The market optimizes for that consumers want without accounting for invisible costs like poor health outcomes from routinely eating calorie-dense nutrient-sparse food. Likewise affordability of healthcare is not optimized for in the US; the incentives in that market drive it towards high but subsidized prices. Someone who is well-employed benefits from health insurance that make prices reasonable-ish, but anyone not subsidized by their employer or government is effectively left out of the market.
This is not a state of affairs where a free market will sort things out. In the food case, the prerequisite of rational agents in the marketplace is not met; people are bad at making good long-term health decisions and will vote with their dollars against their best interests.
In the healthcare case the real transaction is not happening between the consumer and healthcare provider, but between the provider and employers or governments and no party has incentives to change this (except maybe the government following the will of the people). This relationship provides employers a way to attract and retain talent and makes a lot of money for providers.
I find a lot of the criticism of healthcare today to be misguided.
Why would healthcare be inexpensive? Go into a clinic today and there’s a legion of professionals who attend to each patient. Each of them has years of training, even the clerk at the desk.
They use a whole battery of expensive equipment. Multi-million dollar machines to literally see inside your body.
Every piece of tubing, bandage, needle, plastic fitting, etc is sterile, and used only once. They are made in a facility to exacting standards which is in turn monitored and supervised by another network of professionals with reams of policy dictating how the equipment is made, accounted for, and an army of lawyers behind the scenes as well.
The facility itself has exacting standards for cleanliness, emergency power, disaster-resistance.
The medical records are held in computer systems which abide by HIPAA requirements, again with a team of engineers and cybersecurity professionals ensuring that standards are met.
Healthcare is expensive because it’s expensive. The alternative is suffering with untreatable injuries or just dying, which we take for granted because we don’t see it that much anymore. We don’t have country doctors working out of their house charging a few bucks for a visit.
Are there inefficiencies? Is there waste, fraud and abuse? Are there greedy pharmaceutical execs making billions of dollars on the backs of unsuspecting pill poppers? Could we do things better or cheaper? I’m sure we could, but I don’t think there’s some kind of grand conspiracy to make us slaves to our employers vía medicine.
I'm not just talking about the cost, I'm also talking about the experience.
The alternative isn't a lack of healthcare, it's a compassionate experience that understands that we are people, not bags of money. Individual medical centers may live up to that standard, but the industry does not.
> I don’t think there’s some kind of grand conspiracy to make us slaves to our employers vía medicine.
There doesn't need to be a grand conspiracy, just aligned incentives. The result is the same.
It's also true that modern cutting-edge healthcare is expensive any way you slice it. In free market capitalism it is up to each person to bear that cost. This means that some people will not be able to afford treatment or will be plunged into crippling debt. I'm of the belief that if we can treat someone with a health problem then that treatment should be available to them either for some marginal cost or for free. Basic human needs can not be subject to market pricing as consumers are essentially under duress when making purchasing decisions; they cannot choose to forgo lifesaving medicine should the price be unreasonable.
Interesting that my comment sounds like a complaint.
The Romans had a huge blind spot because of their economic system.
We have a huge blind spot because of our economic system.
What is that blind spot? What's in that blind spot? We're in the last stages of the information revolution. The maturity of the information revolution will continue for as long as civilization does; we are continuing the industrial revolution even now.
The Star Trek Original Series and Next Generation both showed a "post-scarcity" society. What is most scarce in our society that prevents a post-scarcity society? What does an economy look like in post-scarcity?
We have Science Fiction, it's entirely possible that ancient Rome had futurists too.
Think of my comment about RPi/Pie in terms of economic revolutions. A society that can make a pie only needs a few things that are relatively easily gathered. An adult human could reasonably invent a pie in any age, from the Stone Age until now. That such an incredibly simple food may be underpriced by advanced technology requiring millions of cumulative person-hours of technical progress is simply astounding.
> What is most scarce in our society that prevents a post-scarcity society?
Nothing. We could have had post-scarcity society since 1950s at least (Haber Bosch process means enough food for everybody, everything else is optional and/or could be achieved by redistribution). Yet we refused to do it cause we value marginal improvements in our comfort more than survival and lack of serious suffering of others. We're already making things scarce on purpose (see NFTs and art in general). People want things that are scarce even if that's the only property of these things, and they value these desires enough to deny other people resources they need to live.
Thinking that this will somehow change in the future just because of some new technology making more stuff non-scarce is naive. We'll invent something that doesn't exist yet just so that we can have it while others can't. There will never be post-scarcity as long as people are people.
>Neoliberal capitalism won't innovate on these areas.
Wouldn't you put the transition from agriculture based economy under neoliberal capitalism? We went from 90% farm employment to 10% while massively increasing output.
Tech folks don't think food production is exciting so they miss all the innovation.
As to housing and health care, we don't have "neoliberal capitalism", we have highly regulated, captured, markets. If you moved to zero zoning in SF you'd start to have innovative building.
The quality of food is better in a modern market like whole foods today than what you got 50 or 100 years ago. Or if you like it super fresh, in pretty much every city you have organic produce at multiple local farmer's markets. Or look at restaurant options today vs even 40 years ago. Coffee today vs Folger's. Fair trade chocolate vs Hershey's. Access to fresh fruit, year round, via global supply chains. I don't know what hasn't gotten better. The worst thing about food today is abundance of cheap (value?) junk food, but that's an accomplishment in its own way.
> I worry that capitalism is using us in a similar manner.
That's the entire point of capitalism. Reinstitution of feudal economy, or even worse, slave economies, through economic system. In post Civil War US and post-emancipation Brazil, the slave economy was reinstituted through 'free market' precisely using capitalist methodology. Former slave owners kept wages low, which forced now-freed slaves to work for even less economic return than before. Because now the slave-owners did not even have to feed their slaves and keep them healthy enough to work. They could just discard them when they couldn't work.
> but just like the Romans, people think the system is working because they can buy a smart phone and a gaming console and some cheap snacks and go for a ride in their fine automobile.
I very much think that people don't think that the system works. Only those who are in or above the top 10% of the society. The rest are aware of the brutal reality of the system and they are unwilling participants in it for that reason. Exactly the same with later Rome. Which is a reason why Rome fall so easily and so fast - there was no difference in between their former Roman masters and their new feudal overlords as far as Romans were concerned.
A lot of these are demand-side problems. Apart from a small slice of the population that is educated about nutrition, people actually want the cheap, tasty, processed food. In places where more highly educated people are concentrated, you actually do see innovation around conveniently getting people healthy food, farm-to-table, etc.
Yes, capitalism will happily cater to your worst vices. But then again, it will just as happily cater to your best virtues. I'd call it a problem of information and education, not a problem of capitalism.
Neoliberal capitalism has given us a lot of very cheap, very technologically advanced stuff. An extremely basic integrated circuit in the 1960s costs the same as an entire iPhone now, accounting for inflation. Accounting for inflation, automobiles are as cheap as they've ever been, and have many more features that work much better than they ever have.
But ... the edges wear thin. A Raspberry Pi (computer) and a Raspberry Pie (food) may be purchased for around the same price. A varied and healthy diet can be quite expensive (though there are deals to be found if you can travel to get them). Companies want to "add value" to food with extensive processing that increases the engineered taste factors to make us consume more. Housing is insanely expensive in many areas. Health care in the United States is not designed for any humans - not doctors, nurses, other professionals, and certainly not patients.
Neoliberal capitalism won't innovate on these areas. Are we just stuck with what we have? Certainly government mandates could change the game, but just like the Romans, people think the system is working because they can buy a smart phone and a gaming console and some cheap snacks and go for a ride in their fine automobile.
We can't see what the collapse will be, and we can't see what's next. I wonder how many Romans talked like this? I don't believe that our doom is inevitable, but I also think that progress requires specific intention, and progress can be very easily disrupted.
---
I have a thesis that the economic benefits of integrated circuit microchip and the economic benefits of neoliberalism cannot be distinguished. They both feed each other. I don't see myself putting enough effort into researching it and writing it up, but I strongly believe that thesis.