Louis Proyect wrote: > The most interesting points were made around the question of innovation. > Kotz makes a convincing case that competition such as the kind that > exists in the Adam Smith model is HOSTILE to technical innovation. > Capitalist firms would under-invest normally because their competitors > can easily mimic the new improvements without undergoing the same > expenditures. In reality, monopolistic firms are generally the ones that > promote R&D, especially those that receive tax subsidies or have ties to > the military.
I think that's right. U.S. agriculture is quite competitive on the ground (as it were) and individual farmers have never been significant inventors or innovators (unlike the gentleman farmers of the British agricultural revolution). Instead it's been the US Department of Agriculture and its extension services and ag universities like Cal State Chico -- or in recent decades, the oligopoly of agribiz corporations. Of course, this case indicates that innovation isn't always a good thing: the USDA's Earl Butz and the agribiz corporations have created the Frankenstein's monster of industrial livestock processing. (BTW & FWIW, I learned half of my agricultural economics from a Chicago product.) > Bell Labs was a major innovator for many decades, but as > soon as the phone companies were broken up, Bell Labs switched to market > research from pure science or engineering. However, AT&T was very slow about introducing inventions, which is a point against monopoly. They did, however, make phones that seemed built to withstand a small A bomb. Since they owned the phones (and we only rented them) and had a long planning horizon, AT&T made them durable. Nowadays, our phones are built to be recycled quickly under the assumption that we'll buy a new one soon. The cell phone companies' planning horizon is only long for marketing. The prevailing crap about raising profits every quarter -- and screw long-term planning -- seems a product of the competitive capitalism of recent memory. > The implication for > socialists is clear. Socialism, rather than capitalism, is potentially a > source of rapid modernization and progress rather than capitalism. On this topic, socialism has three main tasks. Not only is invention to be encouraged but the bad inventions (e.g., industrial livestock processing) have to be separated from the good. Third, the good ones have to be put into practice. The USSR's bureaucratic socialism wasn't very good at this last one. > Kotz > mentioned that the most extensive development of these ideas is > contained in Pat Devine's articles and books. My dad! ( ;-) ) Boy, am I lucky that Pat and Mary Margaret didn't name me Patrick. It's bad enough that my birthday is St. Patrick's Day. (In reality, my parents were James and Eleanore.) -- Jim Devine / "In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite." -- Paul Dirac _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
