The degrowth movement wants to intentionally shrink the economy to address climate change, and create lives with less stuff, less work, and better well-being. But is it a utopian fantasy?
Do you have any actual proof that the profit motive has any positive links to innovation, or are you just taking it for granted? The first cell phone was invented in the USSR, and Frederick Banting sold the patent for insulin for $1, to name two counter-examples. What innovations have come from the profit motive?
Likewise, I doubt the claims of market efficiency. 10% of Americans were food insecure in 2021. Hundreds of thousands are homeless. To me, this is a drastic failing of resource allocation in the richest country on earth. When push came to shove during WWII, even the US ran their war industry as a command economy because corporate graft could not be tolerated in an existential crisis. Socialist countries consistently outperform similar capitalist nations; compare Cuba to any other Caribbean nation (or even China to India; while I assume we would disagree about what China’s doing, I think we would agree that it’s more government-directed than US-style “free-market capitalism”).
I’m curious what would justify whether something should be nationalized to you. Surely it’s not just to do with profitability, as you give healthcare as an example. Is it to do with how essential something is? If it’s the latter, then surely that would justify the nationalization of food, decommodification of housing, etc.
To your point of “regulate businesses to ensure good behavior”, surely you must realize the reason we don’t already have those regulations are that private businesses bribe politicians to prevent such regulations.
I’m curious what would justify whether something should be nationalized to you.
It would be whether there can be sufficient competition to prevent anti competitive behavior. Healthcare inherently has less competition since you shouldn’t be deciding what treatments you get, the doctors should. But you can also get less competition due to extreme barriers to entry, such as trains, mobile networks or internet.
Do you have any actual proof that the profit motive has any positive links to innovation, or are you just taking it for granted? The first cell phone was invented in the USSR, and Frederick Banting sold the patent for insulin for $1, to name two counter-examples. What innovations have come from the profit motive?
Likewise, I doubt the claims of market efficiency. 10% of Americans were food insecure in 2021. Hundreds of thousands are homeless. To me, this is a drastic failing of resource allocation in the richest country on earth. When push came to shove during WWII, even the US ran their war industry as a command economy because corporate graft could not be tolerated in an existential crisis. Socialist countries consistently outperform similar capitalist nations; compare Cuba to any other Caribbean nation (or even China to India; while I assume we would disagree about what China’s doing, I think we would agree that it’s more government-directed than US-style “free-market capitalism”).
I’m curious what would justify whether something should be nationalized to you. Surely it’s not just to do with profitability, as you give healthcare as an example. Is it to do with how essential something is? If it’s the latter, then surely that would justify the nationalization of food, decommodification of housing, etc.
To your point of “regulate businesses to ensure good behavior”, surely you must realize the reason we don’t already have those regulations are that private businesses bribe politicians to prevent such regulations.
It would be whether there can be sufficient competition to prevent anti competitive behavior. Healthcare inherently has less competition since you shouldn’t be deciding what treatments you get, the doctors should. But you can also get less competition due to extreme barriers to entry, such as trains, mobile networks or internet.