29 Jul 2024 9:11 am
Innovation simply does not work like it used to.LowIQTrash » 29 Jul 2024, 12:41 am » wrote: ↑ @Cannonpointer I have to separate your responses otherwise it’s too long to reply in one sitting.
1) My understanding is that we are using some measure of economic transactions as the gauge for SoL.
Yes, that inevitably means we don’t capture nuances like broken communities, the disintegration of families and neighborly ties, the historic rates of mental illness, addiction, and depression, etc.
We are merely entertained with the task of ascertaining capitalism’s contribution to our current levels of PPP.
2) It’s true I have not proven a causation, merely a correlation. However, I have 2 counterpoints to this:
First of all, it is difficult to prove anything. So while I may fail to satisfy this burden, it does not bother me. I merely see a strong thread of evidence that capitalism has contributed to our high PPP, irrespective of its negative attributes you mentioned.
Second, as I mentioned in a previous post, if you attempt to hold as many other factors constant, you will (usually) see capitalist countries or nations outperforming their non-capitalist counterparts.
In the same era. With the same genetic stock. Etc.
Now if you want a more thorough proof, which I will not provide because I am on a smartphone / too tired at midnight, I would entertain the idea of Marxist theory here. Marxist economics posits that wealth accumulation hyper accelerates under the capitalist phase, as its predecessor feudalism is done away with. This allows investors, merchants, and other money grubbing facets of society to try and take as much of the pie as possible (“market expansion”). This leads to creative changes in productivity and automation since capitalists try to crank out as much products as possible to maximize profit. (Leading to the LTRPF - long term tendency of the rate of profit to fall)
Ford was a capitalist, yes? He invented some of the most efficient production / assembly line techniques that lasted for decades. Surely that is but one example of what I’m trying to prove.
This is more of the realm of economic theory which I am rusty in, maybe @FOS can chime in. He is not pro-capitalist but I believe he would support this contention (that the desire to corner markets would drive innovation that leads to economic profit approaching zero and consumer surplus expansion).
There has been a huge explosion of information over the past hundred years. Far more than any single individual can keep up with. This has resulted in increased specialization and extremely niche areas of expertise.
Single individuals simply cannot produce significant innovation anymore. If fact it would take a lifetime for them to simply learn about ehat is already known on the subject.
National socialists recognized this, and their culture of innovation revolves around collaboration and teams, rather than the work of single individuals. That is why they were years ahead on us in nuclear fission power, jet propulsion, and indeed we had to kidnap their scientists to manage rockets.
The German team was in fact impressed with how much Richard Goddard managed to do on his own...but he was nowhere near constructing a functional rocket. And the incentive structure of the usa with individual profit and glory is simply not conducive to teamwork and collaboration...we cannot manage to do that well.