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Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

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Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#71

Post by esafak »

dangus wrote: post #29
stuart78 wrote: post #15

The Amazon case in this article seems to fall flat in the same way the Apple as Monopoly argument does. It works only if you ignore the fact of categorical choice (Android in the case of Apple). No seller is forced to sell on Amazon, as demonstrated by the thousands of Shopify and Etsy-hosted sellers out there. Yes, within the world of Amazon, Amazon sets the rules, but if the users leave, so will the sellers. Shopif…

Walmart.com is another seller marketplace that does big volumes and works similarly to Amazon. Still, I think Amazon is doing some pretty anticompetitive things, and the FTC lawsuit against them seems like it has merit in my layperson’s eyes. Nobody else besides Amazon can get a random product to my door in under 12 hours for any reasonable cost. If I buy the product direct from the manufacturer I often get charged s…

Amazon built its own logistics network to improve its service and margins. I don't think they ought to be punished for it. To do so would be to deny economies of scale.

Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#72

Post by brnaftr361 »

globalnode wrote: post #59
echelon wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple as Monopoly argument > competition is what's supposed to protect us from rentier nobility Google and Apple won smartphones, and now they get to tax everyone forever. Innovation in that space is dead, as both companies leech off of their earlier success. That's so fucked. An enormous amount of innovation capital is going straight into Apple and Google's pockets for what amounts to a distribution racket. For so…

We need a little more institutional oversight for the benefit of everyone else. But it seems government is in the clutches of big tech and special interest groups with big money. So I wont hold my breath on that.

I think it's too much oversight that allows these sort of behaviors. Too many moats that are too deep and too wide.

If GIMP could ship with the Photoshop key map and have nigh 1:1 behaviors these things become commodities and thus must compete for distinguishment. As it stands Photoshop is there almost exclusively as a product of inertia and so Adobe can leave it to stagnate.

Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#73

Post by stuart78 »

dan-allen wrote: post #63
stuart78 wrote: post #15

The Amazon case in this article seems to fall flat in the same way the Apple as Monopoly argument does. It works only if you ignore the fact of categorical choice (Android in the case of Apple). No seller is forced to sell on Amazon, as demonstrated by the thousands of Shopify and Etsy-hosted sellers out there. Yes, within the world of Amazon, Amazon sets the rules, but if the users leave, so will the sellers. Shopif…

Like how a serf could move their crops to a more generous lord. It’s a false dichotomy that you either have one monopolistic company or perfect competition. Like almost everything, it’s a spectrum. Apple and Google aren’t monopolies, they’re oligopolies. That’s better but a far cry from efficient competition. Compare their 30% App Store cut to online stock brokers which charge single-digit percentage fees and also re…

Commerce led by mega aggregators has a long history in the US. Walmart and Sears to name two that were dominant in earlier generations. Both of those companies pushed suppliers to adhere to high / punishing standards as well. While those companies were dominant in their time, a key part of the reason all three have done so well is that they serve the actual customer better than the alternative. Sears was like the internet on paper. Walmart radically expanded the inventory available to shoppers across the country. Amazon does both of these things 10x more efficiently.

I am not naive to the many valid critiques of all three, but the customer benefit is an important part of the discussion that seems consistently forgotten. It is so critical because customer preference and changing market dynamics are what ended the reign of both Sears and Walmart and they are what will do the same to Amazon. But until then, Amazon has figured out how to deliver stuff to my door quickly and inexpensively.

One small example. When I was young I loved music and in my medium sized town there was one record store with two locations. It was fine, and they would order in anything you asked for, but limited inventory available browsing. In the 90s Best Buy, Barnes and Noble and a few other now-forgotten big box retailers came to town. The impact was immense. Inventory went up ~100x over this period and price went down. And the breadth was amazing. Huge classical and Jazz sections, neither of which had much presence at the independent shop. The independent shop survived too. They had Ticket sales, hippie merch and a more specialized catalog. Wonderful differentiation in offerings. Now markets have shifted many times over since those days. Some retailers (including the record shop) have adapted others have not. So it goes.

Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#75

Post by jojobas »

defrost wrote: post #45
jojobas wrote: post #7

Capitalism is dead, says a millionaire on track to become a billionaire.

He'll be lucky to hit a billion. The million was media money, book returns, and he declared nearly half a million paid back in taxes. Near as I can tell the ire was generated due becoming rich from books describing the Greek plumment into very not rich, leading to calls of Yanis being a champagne socialist profiting from the misfortune of many. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/greeks-sneer-as-yanis-var... The full…

So, he became rich by exercising capitalism (investing his time and insight in writing his books and getting handsome returns, owning a "substantial property portfolio" etc).

Anyone would be lucky to become a billionaire, people already reporting ~1M euro annual income require much less luck.

Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#76

Post by Exoristos »

oraphalous wrote: post #20

Conversations about capitalism have become pointless... I'd rather eat mud. When people start arguing one way or the other about the goods or ills of capitalism, both sides inject definitional or theoretical aspects that include an entire mountain of pre-supposition, that I barely understand what anyone is talking about. It would take hours to unpick what the hell they mean by the term... which I thought generally sh…

"The right to own property, and to trade it without coercion." Talk about a completely ideological, avoidant, and ineffectual definition.

Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#77

Post by Exoristos »

emporas wrote: post #67

I have listened a lot of Varoufakis's speeches some years back, in Greek as well as in English, when i had no idea of economics. Varoufakis was always very critical of the tendency of capitalism and market forces to create powerful companies and wealthy individuals. Lately he is all about Amazon, Google etc. In my opinion, it is a mistake to try and understand what's the purpose of money, by focusing on the consumpti…

Meaning we should focus on money as a tool of coercion, rather than as a means of permission?

Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#78

Post by emporas »

Exoristos wrote: post #77
emporas wrote: post #67

I have listened a lot of Varoufakis's speeches some years back, in Greek as well as in English, when i had no idea of economics. Varoufakis was always very critical of the tendency of capitalism and market forces to create powerful companies and wealthy individuals. Lately he is all about Amazon, Google etc. In my opinion, it is a mistake to try and understand what's the purpose of money, by focusing on the consumpti…

Meaning we should focus on money as a tool of coercion, rather than as a means of permission?

Meaning, we should focus on our desires and what products or services satisfy them better. Money is an automation of what desires need to be produced more in the future, so as to be offered in bigger quantities and/or cheaper.

Edit: Nvidia by receiving higher evaluations of money lately, tries to expand production and increase the volume of GPUs produced. So now they are tackling the problem of lithography [1], which is a long standing problem many chip companies tried to solve in the past and failed. It is an expensive problem, but as soon as an abundance of our money is given to Nvidia, they try to solve the hardest problem imaginable.

i.e (Money given -> Production increased) , in an automated way using money. Money is an automation.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxyM2Chu9Vc

Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#79

Post by [deleted] »

stuart78 wrote: post #15

The Amazon case in this article seems to fall flat in the same way the Apple as Monopoly argument does. It works only if you ignore the fact of categorical choice (Android in the case of Apple). No seller is forced to sell on Amazon, as demonstrated by the thousands of Shopify and Etsy-hosted sellers out there. Yes, within the world of Amazon, Amazon sets the rules, but if the users leave, so will the sellers. Shopif…

[deleted]

Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#80

Post by drewcoo »

djrobstep wrote: post #69
oraphalous wrote: post #20

Conversations about capitalism have become pointless... I'd rather eat mud. When people start arguing one way or the other about the goods or ills of capitalism, both sides inject definitional or theoretical aspects that include an entire mountain of pre-supposition, that I barely understand what anyone is talking about. It would take hours to unpick what the hell they mean by the term... which I thought generally sh…

> the right to own property, and to trade it without coercion Trade requires coercion. Without coercion to stop you taking a particular object, there would be no need to trade for it, you would simply take it. Without coercion to stop you living in your house if you stop paying rent or mortgage, why would you keep paying?

Ownership requires coercion. Threat of violence is used to defend property "rights."

Trade requires ownership.

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