nathan tankus wrote: > I actually don't think one need to go to lack of competition for an > explanation. If you think of it in terms of average socially necessary labor > time on a world scale, The socially necessary labor time it took to build a > car in the united states was very below average in the "world market" because > the technological innovations hadn't yet been defused across the world. As a > result the American car companies were actually out competing others. In the > late 1960's and on the technological innovations became more generalized and > what Schumpeter would call "innovation rents" disappeared.<
the key point here is that it's wrong to see monopoly and competition as polar opposites. Instead, as Marx said, competition promotes monopoly and vice-versa, as part of a dynamic process. Schumpeter seems to have gotten his theory from Marx, though I'm no expert on the history of economic ideas. > As an aside I think marx had a lot of interesting and suggestive > thoughts on trade theory and balance of payments but I think they've > been underdeveloped severly in a lot of the Marxian writings I've > encountered. Shaikh has an interesting paper on comparative advantage, arguing that we should think in terms of absolute advantage instead. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
