Chapter 15: Capitalism and Science/Development
Proponents of Capitalism believe and claim that it produces superior scientific research and product quality compared to collective-based collaborative paradigms, because the profit motive stimulates competition, which motivates competing researchers, developers and producers to achieve their best efforts.
There is no doubt that competition does in some situations serve to inspire competitors to exceed each other and themselves to reach high levels of excellence and innovation.
Part of this is due to biochemistry, and parts of this phenomenon are due to psychological and emotional mechanisms. Certainly the human propensity for sports emerges from a side of human nature that enjoys some forms of competition to varying degrees. But like any aspect of our nature, we have better results if we examine closely where each facet of our nature truly furthers human happiness, well-being and quality of life, and where those same qualities cause harm.
For example, there is an aspect of human nature that is capable of fighting and killing. This aspect serves us well when we are faced with a direct and immediate threat; but that same side of human nature causes untold suffering when it is applied in context of a disagreement, argument or moment of anger. Similarly, the instincts of compassion serve us well in most everyday situations and even in many extreme situations, but cause harm when we encounter a psychopathic killer, terrorist, or sociopath who plays upon our compassion in order to scam, harm or use us. Likewise, we do well to examine how and where competition improves our quality of life and relationships, as well as how and where it compromises or degrades our quality of life and relationships.
In the area of scientific research, we only have to look at current and historical examples to see that scientific research thrives best and progresses fastest when there is free and open collaboration and interchange of information among scientists. Such interchange is essential for both collaboration and competition. Competition can stimulate extraordinary efforts when different teams or individuals have differing competing theories and each is motivated to validate their own. For that competition to have that beneficial effect, even the competing scientists need to be able to freely exchange information, since they will be eager to verify or falsify each other's results, to find the flaws in each other’s work. When researchers and developers are restricted from communicating and collaborating freely, scientists, society and science all suffer. Competition and collaboration are both severely handicapped. It matters not whether the restrictions come from government or from industry.
During the Cold War, scientists and engineers on both sides of the Iron Curtain were constantly frustrated by the fact that most of the time they were prevented by both the U.S. and the Soviet governments from sharing their knowledge, research and findings. Exceptions were few and far between. The mutual hostility and distrust of the political establishments became a major impediment to the scientific development of both countries and their respective blocs of allies.
The Space Race was a good example. Early U.S. efforts were dismal failures as time after time U.S. test rockets blew up on the launch pad or in the air. In the end the U.S. made it to the Moon first. Meanwhile the early Soviet tests were more successful but they had more fatal accidents. Each country's space program had their strong and weak points.
The Soviets favored land landings; the Americans favored ocean landings. The Soviets in those days surpassed the Americans in development of robotic space vehicles and exploration, while the Americans surpassed the Soviets in manned space vehicles and exploration. If the scientists on both sides had been able to collaborate and compete freely, openly and without restrictions, it is obvious that both space programs would have benefited. If the two superpowers had found a way to work together in a joint effort, undoubtedly Humanity would have set foot on the Moon sooner, and most likely space exploration would have evolved a lot farther than it has at present.
The same was true of medical research. The Soviets developed diagnostic capability superior to the U.S. The U.S. developed treatment capability superior to the Soviets. If the international community of medical researchers and practitioners had been able to collaborate freely, then patients in both countries would have enjoyed superior care to what they did.
This is true in every area of endeavor. The lack of ability to collaborate and freely share information creates wasteful duplicated efforts on the one hand, as each separate entity must invent the wheel on their own, and lopsided development on the other hand.
Even beyond science and medicine, both the Soviet Union and the United States suffered in other ways as nations and peoples from the Cold War’s lack of cooperation. Each country developed some ways of doing things that worked well and some that did not.
The Soviet Union did a superior job of fostering and supporting the optimal robust development of scientific research, engineering and the arts. Persons of ability and commitment to these fields were supported and given the best possible training and resources, and were put to work in their fields and encouraged to ply their crafts. They were not burdened with crippling student loans, constant need to scramble for funding, danger of losing funding, or having to work low-paying menial jobs outside their fields while seeking employment after obtaining their degrees.
At the same time, the Soviet government was suppressive and controlling to the point that there was no safe forum for free and open discussion, debate and dialog in most areas of public and private life. A comment critical of the government could land a scientist or artist an assignment in Siberia.
On the other hand in the United States, people of ability and commitment in the arts, engineering and sciences have always had to scramble for funds, work menial low-paying jobs, incur crippling student loans and experience constant pressure and inordinate stress just to get trained and earn a degree in their fields. Many in the Soviet Union were able to develop into contributing members in their fields, while in the United States many talented individuals were routinely held back due to financial constraints and barriers.
After finishing college, starting out with hefty student loans, these valuable contributors must hustle and struggle to find employment. Those who do not find employment in their field are generally never heard from or seen as they are forced to find whatever work they can in whatever field they can.
Those who do find work then find themselves censored and controlled by their employers in a manner no less devastating than what their Soviet counterparts experienced at the hands of their government.
The situation in the arts in the U.S. has traditionally been much worse than in the sciences and engineering. The pyramid is in few places more blatantly imposed than in the arts.
Those who become stars, enjoy celebrity status and high income. The vast majority of the rest of equally-able artists generally find themselves having to ply their craft on the side after a full day in a dead-end job that leaves little or no time or energy left over.
Even the "stars" are disposable, at the mercy of those at the top of the pyramid. For example, during the 1940's, 1950's and 1960's many artists and others were forced out of the country in the fanaticism of the McCarthy witch-hunts in which anybody even suspected of being a Communist or sympathetic to Communist ideas was censored, blacklisted and rendered unable to work or live in the U.S. Many fled to Europe. This persisted even after the “House Un-American Activities Committee” was shut down.
Beyond that, many artists in the U.S. have been censored and/or threatened with blacklisting simply because of displeasing a sponsor. Examples include Mary Tyler Moore who came under extreme pressure and was nearly blacklisted because she wore slacks, at a time when the sponsors believed that women should only be shown wearing dresses. The series Star Trek was nearly prevented from ever making it to the air because originally the Captain of the Enterprise was scripted to be an alien female, and sponsors of the Network objected to that. The script was changed, due to pressure from sponsors, to make the Captain a white human male. Similarly, the Smothers Brothers comedy show was canceled because of having offended sponsors and the government with their political commentary. There are many more examples.
Here we see that under Capitalism, even in a country that has Constitution that guarantees all citizens freedom of speech, the power of those at the top of the economic pyramid, the ultra-wealthy few, nullifies the Constitution. (See the chapter "Your Rights End at Your Workplace Door") Censorship is alive and well in every country under the Capitalist paradigm, even in those which present themselves to their citizens and the world as democracies that value and champion freedom and human rights.
Cold war restrictions on scientific collaboration are functionally identical to corporate restrictions and “closed shops.” Under the Capitalist paradigm, it is typical, routine, and expected that scientists, engineers and developers in competing companies (who are colleagues in the same fields) are forbidden from sharing professional information. If two chemists, software developers or mechanical engineers working at competing companies choose to openly share information connected to their work, they face imprisonment, huge fines and the end of their careers.
Just about every developer/engineer in the “private sector” must sign a nondisclosure agreement upon hiring, that forbids them from sharing any technical or company information outside the company or even outside of their team within the company. The penalties for violation are more severe than for many crimes in which people are seriously hurt or killed. In addition, the employer often explicitly asserts the rights to any and all innovations, inventions, ideas, processes, improvements or other contributions that the employee makes while working for the company, even those made at home and having nothing to do with the work environment.
Here we see yet again the parallel to Feudal society. The Lord reserves the right to claim as much as the fruits of the serf's and even the vassal's labor as they choose, and the serf or vassal has no appeal or recourse. Don't take the job or don’t like the one you have? You have the freedom to quit or not take the job but you won’t have money to pay for the right to occupy space. This is the illusion of a choice.
Under the Capitalist paradigm, we see wasteful duplication of efforts, giving rise to competing products that are all inferior to what would be possible if the developers involved were collaborating - and competing - among themselves freely as a professional or scientific community.
Since the researchers and developers in each company are forbidden from sharing their knowledge and work with their counterparts in competing companies, tremendous amounts of resources are wasted. Each company has to come up with its own steering mechanism, its own navigational algorithms, its own fuel injectors, its own avionics, its own sorting mechanism, its own signaling protocols between mobile devices and towers, its own cancer drugs, etc.
While most functionality will be similar among competing similar products and services - which underscores the wastefulness of all of that duplicated effort - each producer's version will inevitably have innovations lacking in the others. Some will have generally superior products that still lack important innovations present in other competing products, which may be inferior except for those innovations. Some products will even be completely inferior to the others, in which case their development and production is a complete waste of resources and effort.
This puts consumers in a position where they must choose between a car with better miles per gallon and power but with an inferior braking system and tending to need a lot of repair, versus a car with the best brakes in the industry but with poorer miles per gallon, reliability and power. This is just an example to illustrate the point.
When, however, development and production are freed from the shackles of “private” bondage to competing companies, when instead all of the researchers and developers in a field are free to collaborate with the goal of producing the best possible version for the good of all, the process will be vastly more efficient and the result will be a product or service that will embody the best features, technologies and production methods that the best minds in the field can produce.
The competition will then be between different ideas or approaches, rigorously tried and tested. Competition in the new Paradigms will serve to hone the edge of research and development. Competing teams will discover and highlight the flaws and weaknesses of each other’s designs, and will be free to adopt and incorporate each other’s successful features.
The result will be, for instance, a car with the best braking system, the best fuel efficiency and power, the best navigation, the maximum longevity, the best safety rating, etc. emerging in one product or service superior to what any company would have been able to produce in a Capitalist, closed shop environment.
When researchers, designers and developers are incentivized, reinforced and encouraged to do the best job possible instead of to get the product to market ahead of the other company, the results will be spectacular for all concerned. Pride of workmanship will displace profit motive as the driving force behind research and development. That, and the ongoing quest to improve the quality of life for self and others, knowing that one has made a positive difference.
We can already see this in action in the world around us. Here we will examine one example in detail; but the same dynamics and results can be seen in any area of endeavor.
Witness the contrast in the field of computer software between the traditional Capitalist closed-shop development environments of Apple and Microsoft on the one hand, and the openly collaborative (and competitive) world-wide Open Source movement with its flagship product, the (many incarnations of the) Linux operating system (along with Open Source applications like LibreOffice, GIMP, Audacity, Blender, GNUCash, and many more which are the Open Source applications equivalent to Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Pro Tools, Maya/Final Cut Pro, QuickBooks and other competing products, respectively).
This area of endeavor lends itself more easily than some to the completely open development paradigm involving widely scattered, globally collaborating participants, because the products are easily generated, shared and stored electronically, requiring only computer and Internet access and the necessary knowledge, ability and skill. No large-scale facilities such as factories, refineries, or generation plants are necessary for production. No fleets of trucks, ships or aircraft are necessary for delivery.
The evolution of this Open Source movement serves as a living practical example of the peer-based collaborative (and competitive) non-profit-motivated development and production paradigm, in contrast to the highly hierarchical, profit-driven commercial closed-shop development and production model that exists under the Capitalist paradigm. The same principles would apply to any endeavor, any kind of product or service, with adaptations of course to the specific needs of the technology and processes involved.
All three operating systems, Microsoft Windows, Apple OSX, and Linux, do pretty much the same things. Each has their advantages and disadvantages. Each has its fiercely loyal adherents and its equally fierce detractors. Any of these operating systems will enable you to use your computer to do whatever you need or want to do: write letters, do email, view and post videos, participate in social media, manage your finances, edit family or professional photos and videos, play music, etc.
There are, however, very important differences.
At companies like Apple and Microsoft, a limited number of developers are employed, determined by the "business needs" of the company. The company employs exactly the number of developers that the decision-makers at the top of the company believe will allow them to produce their product the quickest with the lowest expenditure (keeping in mind that salaries and employee benefits are categorized as expenditures, the quantity to be minimized in a Capitalist enterprise).
These developers are tightly controlled from the top down. Managers and supervisors constantly monitor their work and dictate their mode of operation. Often the rush to get the product to market out-creates the goal of producing of the best product, especially since both companies make money off of technical support, so the existence of preventable bugs is not an undesirable thing from a business point of view.
Windows and OSX each have their strengths and weaknesses. Developers at both companies are forbidden to discuss their work with one another across company lines. Thus, neither product is able to benefit from innovations and developments of the other.
Each company has its list of colossal failures: Windows Millennium, Windows Vista, Windows 8 and 8.1 were examples of Microsoft's major fiascoes. Windows Vista proved to be unstable, difficult to use, and suffered from widespread compatibility issues. In true Capitalist fashion, Microsoft, having the largest share of the Operating System market, resolved the problem by putting the burden of compatibility on hardware manufacturers. Effectively they said if you want to ship your computers with Windows, it's up to you to make sure your hardware is compatible with Windows Vista. There is hardware still out in the world that is only able to run Windows Vista and no other system.
Apple's screw-ups are more subtle but equally glaring: the El Capitan version of OSX made perfectly good WiFi connections become unusable, and Yosemite introduced still more bugs. Apple is also known for the deliberate, well-planned sabotage of their own products in order to force customers to upgrade. Two well-known examples are the crippling of iMovie by removing the time-line in Version 7 and above, rendering it useless for any serious video editing, and the notorious upgrade to iPhone iOS 11, which actively slowed its performance down to where it was useless, forcing users to buy new iPhones.
Apple being a semi-monopoly (Many computer manufacturers ship their products with Windows but only Apple ships hardware with OSX.), they are notorious for video hardware that suffers known weaknesses that ultimately force users to buy a new computer when it fails. Mac hardware replacement parts are only available from Apple at a high price. It is often cheaper to buy a new Mac than it is to buy a new video board for an existing Mac.
Once you have your Windows PC or your Mac up and running, you have few or no useful applications. Those must be acquired separately and always at a price, unless you avail yourself of Open Source apps.
Contrast this scenario with Open Source software development and the Open Source Movement which creates the Linux operating system in all of its variations, as well as many free Open Source applications that duplicate the functionality of popular commercial applications but which are distributed legally free.
The Open Source development paradigm is a sharp contrast to that of commercial software development. Whereas developers in commercial environments under the Capitalist paradigm do not own their creations and are prevented from collaborating outside their team and company, Open Source developers are volunteers in every part of the world who collaborate (and compete) completely openly and freely with no restriction. The creators of Open Source products own their work and share it freely.
When Windows and OSX are distributed (sold) to the public, the source code (what the programmers write before it gets turned into machine code that only the machine can understand) is not included. Source code is forcefully quarantined to the rigidly-controlled confines of the company campus.
Open Source, on the other hand, requires inclusion of the source code with the runnable program when distributed to the public free of cost. This wide-open freely collaborative effort has no profit motive. In fact, there is no profit in it. It is driven by pride in workmanship and belief in free sharing of information.
Competing Linux developers can freely see each other's program code, criticize it, be inspired by it, modify it, learn from it, and even use it if they wish. Such competition is truly based on the quality of the product, not on marketing or packaging. That which works well and is easy to use, survives. That which does not, either improves or falls by the wayside.
There are sites like distrowatch.com where anybody can download any version of Linux, install it, comment on it, even make contributions to it or start their own Linux version. The different versions are rated according to number of downloads. It is truly survival of the fittest in the most positive sense. Nobody's livelihood is in jeopardy, even those who do not create the best product.
The Open Source movement includes more than just the Linux operating system. Every kind of software that you can buy commercially, you can find in the Open Source community at a similar level of quality. In contrast to Windows or Mac OSX, most versions of Linux install with all or most of the applications that you are likely to need and with easy access to additional free applications in case you have additional needs. All Open Source software is completely free to use, copy and share.
Linux is in many ways superior to both Windows and OSX, though of course preference is a personal, subjective matter. Contrasting several areas of operating system functionality will illustrate, hopefully without getting too technical:
Windows Mac OSX Linux HW Compatibility Little to none without drivers which must be installed at factory or manually for each component. 100% because hardware and operating system both made by Apple. Not compatible with any hardware not made by Apple. Compatible with most hardware that will run Windows or OSX. Auto-detected during installation. More drivers available free online if needed. Security Many vulnerabilities, with millions of viruses and other forms of malware targeting Windows. Very few vulnerabilities Very few vulnerabilities Price $120 - $200 $129 for many years, dropped to $29, now upgrades are free Free Versions Windows 10 comes in: Home Pro Enterprise Mobile Mobile Enterprise Education IoT Core 1 version with downloadable add-ons Hundreds of versions including ones oriented towards education, multimedia production, different religions and ethnicities, small and Enterprise business, science, research, engineering, gaming, cyber-security, software /hardware development, and more
Installation Contents Operating System only with a minimal crippled browser, Contacts, primitive text editor and graphics program, calendar, calculator, Windows Media player, Windows Movie and very little else. Apps must be acquired separately. Operating System only with a buggy browser, primitive text editor, iTunes music player and store, iPhoto basic image editor/organizer, AppStore, calendar, calculator, DVD/video player, iChat, Contacts, and very little else. Most useful apps must be acquired separately Installs with dozens of apps including ones completely compatible with and functionally equivalent to all commercial apps such as Microsoft Office, Photoshop, QuickBooks, Adobe Premiere, Pro Tools (audio editing and production), games, circuit design, game design and more Installation Media Pre-installed or downloadable and DVD. Installation media can be used for installation only. Pre-installed or downloadable and DVD. Installation media can be used for installation only. Downloadable, burnable to CD/DVD or flash drive. Installation media can be used to install operating system and apps; system can also run from installation media to “test drive” before installing, serving also as a way to get up and running in a hurry in the event of hard drive crash.
In this thriving example, we see that the completely free, open, peer-driven nonprofit development and production paradigm that drives Open Source and Linux produces products that are as good as, and in many ways superior to, similar products produced under the Capitalist paradigm. Proponents of Capitalism are fond of saying that without profit motive and a hierarchical command structure, human nature is basically lazy, unproductive and uncooperative so there would be no real motivation to produce if not stimulated by the monetary incentives and fear-based hierarchy present in the Capitalist paradigm. This thriving real-life case study shows that assumption to be utterly false and baseless. This example is included to show that this peer-based, collaborative-competitive, profitless development and production paradigm is not just a nice-sounding but unrealistic theory. It is proven in the real world.
Detractors of Linux like to point out that Linux occupies a much smaller market share of the Operating System industry than Windows or Mac OSX, and that there is no central number for technical support.
This is a stretch because Linux does not advertise, as do Microsoft and Apple. Computer users tend to be very attached and loyal to whichever operating system they are used to. Windows, Mac, and Linux users all tend to be very resistant to change. Linux does not advertise, yet it is nevertheless widely used in the enterprise servers of many major companies, libraries, school systems, government labs and more. Linux is even at the basis of the widely used Android operating system present in most smart phones and tablets.
Historically, during the early decades of personal computers, when both Windows and OSX captured the market for mainstream users, Linux originated as the personal project of Linus Torvalds, a Finnish techie genius seeking to create a UNIX-like environment for his own use. This developed into the international Open Source movement, which in its early days was mainly a forum of, by and for techies. At that point in its evolution, it was not attractive to mainstream, non-techie users and it acquired a reputation as such. That reputation has remained in popular lore. As time went on, Linux developed a mission of equaling or surpassing Windows and OSX for mainstream use. Public awareness of Linux is driven by word-of-mouth, not by advertising.
Regarding technical support, it is true that there is no central tech support number to call. However, Microsoft free technical support is short lived and after it expires, technical support becomes costly. Apple maintains Genius Bars, which offer free technical support in their Apple Stores, but many issues lead to for-pay levels of support. Linux users do have for-pay technical support options as well, but there are an abundance of online user groups, forums and manuals populated by knowledgeable enthusiasts happy and proud to offer their assistance. In fact, pride of workmanship, open and unrestricted collaboration and free, healthy competition (as opposed to the Capitalistic style of competition) produce superior results and a higher degree of developer, producer and customer satisfaction than the Capitalist equivalents.
True Progress vs. Packaging and Presentation
Capitalist competition is driven by profit motive. The company seeks to maximize its profits and if it is traded on the Stock Exchange, its stock prices as well. This reinforces and incentivizes reducing costs of materials, manufacturing, labor, shipping, taxes, etc. as much as possible while maximizing prices of goods and services produced. In other words, in a Capitalist paradigm, a company must keep salaries as low as it practically can in order to survive.
Under Capitalism, marketing, packaging and sales are as important as the quality of the product or service itself, often more so. The goal is to generate the public perception of superior quality and desirability, independent of whether or not the product is in fact superior.
Another important factor is commonly called built-in obsolescence, which is practiced explicitly in order to force users to replace products more often than would be necessary if the products were manufactured at the highest achievable level of quality and user friendliness. Products are often deliberately manufactured with inferior quality in order to ensure frequent need for replacement.
The texts of product warranties are almost always long, written by attorneys in language difficult for lay people to understand and printed in tiny, hard-to-read fonts. Warranties are almost always measured in months, even in the case of products costing hundreds or thousands of dollars. Stories abound of devices that break down very shortly after the expiration of the warranty. This is no accident.
To make matters worse for mainstream users, in a recent escalating trend, many companies employ business strategies that are designed to force a higher cost, such as Microsoft's Office 365 which is subscription-based. You cannot buy the software and use it as long as you wish. The user must pay every month to keep using it. This is much more profitable than just selling the license to the software for indefinite use.
Since pre-365 Microsoft Office is expensive for most people's budgets, it is not uncommon for users to keep using an older version of Office for many years, since it serves their needs with no reason to buy a new version. The subscription model forces users to pay constantly and perpetually in order to keep using the product. As discussed elsewhere in this writing, as if it is not sufficient for the product to cease functioning if the subscription is not paid, it will also lock the user’s files so they cannot be accessed in any way until the fee is paid.
Often the resources and effort devoted to packaging and presentation rival or exceed those devoted to actual product or service development. In one case study, an insider at an automobile plant reported on hundreds of thousands of dollars spent to develop a car door that sounds solid and well-built, rather than to be solid and well-built. Frequently, restaurants display photographs that any impartial observer would notice grossly overblow and fail to represent the quality or quantity of food actually served, which is often severely inferior to what is represented.
There is no end to the verbal sleight-of-hand that is used. When telecom companies realized that a growing percentage of subscribers were increasingly reluctant to enter into two-year contracts, they came out with "contract-free" plans that were presented as an alternative to contracts. The end result, however, is no different. The subscriber ends up paying about the same amount per month as in a contract. Terms are configured so that if the subscriber leaves the carrier before two years are up, they are charged about the same amount they would be charged if they left a contract early. In practice, the language and packaging have been reworked so that the customer is led to believe that it is an alternative plan, when in reality it is the same plan wearing a different package.
We must also keep in mind, of course, that companies have their teams of attorneys on retainer to make sure that their tactics fall within the letter of the law so the company cannot be taken to task. Often functionality or “features” are included that are not fully functional or even functional at all, in order to impress customers into believing they are getting added value. A similar ploy is the inclusion of crippled "Demo" versions that are essentially useless unless one pays. Under the Capitalist paradigm, what is most strongly reinforced is "success," which means maximizing profits, market share and stock prices. Quality is not strongly reinforced.
At the time of this writing, another prominent example of built-in obsolescence is the practice, started by Apple with its iPhones but now adopted by Samsung, LG and other leading manufacturers of smart phones, of burying the battery so deeply in the devices that the user is more likely than not to destroy the phone in the process of changing a dead battery.
For years, it was a simple and inexpensive matter to replace a phone battery: they could be purchased from the manufacturer for around $50 - $100 or from Amazon for $20 or so. A new better Smart Phone typically costs $600 - $1,000. Many users are living paycheck to paycheck and prefer to replace a $20 battery rather than a $750 phone, as long as the phone still serves their needs.
Phone manufacturers and service providers of course pursue aggressive advertising campaigns; but now that almost all manufacturers are using non-replaceable batteries, users are forced to replace their phones when the battery will no longer hold a charge. There is no technical or functional advantage to this design strategy. It is driven purely by the core Capitalist imperative to increase profits, even if it means sabotaging their own products to drive sales higher than they would naturally be.
Advertising and marketing in every industry are extremely costly and enjoy huge budgets. Pharmaceutical companies are notorious for spending dramatically more on advertising than on research, even while they falsely claim that the exorbitant prices they charge for medications are necessary to cover the cost of research. A TV ad during prime-time costs millions of dollars for a commercial less than a minute long. Advertising and marketing executives are paid a premium. These expenses inevitably drive up the costs of products and services by a huge amount. In fact, the reinforcers in capitalist environment select strongly for high advertising budgets which are directly linked to higher prices.
The cost is passed on to the user/consumer, who pays a premium to cover the cost of marketing, advertising and packaging for products that are intentionally far inferior to what is possible. This further sustains and maintains the economic pyramid in which the vast majority of the employees of the manufacturer or service provider are paid sub-living wages while the CEO and others at the top of the pyramid make in day or an hour what their typical employees make in a year.
Some Capitalist apologists claim that advertising increases sales volume, which brings down prices since manufacturers can afford to lower prices and still remain profitable. This is, however, a specious argument. Studies exist showing that the most profitable configuration is a high advertising budget and high prices. It is also irrefutably logical that the high cost of advertising must be passed on to consumers. The social dynamics of Capitalism strongly reinforce raising prices as high as possible. It is also not at all uncommon for competing manufacturers to tacitly agree to raise their prices by large percentages and then compete over pennies.
This mode of operation would never survive in a truly free and democratic economy and government truly of, by, and for the people.
Space exploration is one of few frontiers that is largely unexplored and promises to expand our knowledge and possibly our resources and available living space. The exploration of space is a frontier that belongs rightfully to all of Humankind and any other sentient civilizations that may exist in the galaxy and the universe.
Technologies developed in that endeavor have already often translated into useful innovations to improve the quality of life on Earth. These are collateral benefits of space exploration.
Even the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States ultimately came to represent all of Humanity. The historic quote "One small step for a man, one giant leap for Mankind" sums it up. Had the Soviets been first to the Moon, the same or similar quote would have been expressed in Russian.
At the time of this writing, there is a disturbing trend towards privatization of space exploration and development: space flight for a price for the wealthy, space hotels and tourism, the projected private development of Mars. Both Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk (Both billionaires and powerful, ruthless neo-Feudal Lords) have expressed an intention to colonize the moon and Mars. All of these things are seriously being pushed forward by these commercial interests who intend to make space and other worlds the private playground and property of the ultra-wealthy Lords and the largest multinational corporations. These individuals speak in humanistic, altruistic terms of saving Humanity, expanding our living space, and spreading Earth-life to preserve it. In reality, however, that if they succeed in carrying out their plans, they will, in inevitable Capitalist fashion, claim those worlds as their own personal or corporate private property. If you go there, everyplace you go will be owned by them. They will become the functional government of those worlds. There will be no democracy and no rights for the serfs who live and work there.
This cannot be allowed to happen. Capitalism is a disease upon the face of the Earth and in the body of Humankind, one which must be stopped with all haste. Its reinforcers are rapidly magnifying and intensifying our most destructive range of behaviors in a feedback cycle which is on the verge of destroying hundreds of years of human rights progress and even the ecosystem that makes this Earth habitable.
Just as a drug or gambling addiction drives otherwise reasonable people to make choices that ruin their families and their lives, this economic paradigm feeds and amplifies the dangerous addictions to wealth and power that drive those at the top of the pyramid to ever more frenzied and dangerous excesses.
As is the case with any addiction, addicts must be taken out of the patterns of their addiction, go through withdrawal, detox, therapy, treatment and rehabilitation. In some cases, interventions are necessary. To do otherwise spells our collective doom and possibly the end of life on our planet. We have no right to go forth into space and visit other worlds as long as we are in the grips of this dangerous social cancer.
Medicine is yet another area that is severely crippled by being forced to operate under the Capitalist paradigm. This is because both clinical medicine and medical research are driven by "market forces," or in other words profit motive, far more than by the healthy quest for improved health and quality of life for human beings and the human community.
The purpose of medicine is to maintain and restore human physical and mental health to the best ability of the technology and skill of the practitioner. Unfortunately, under the Capitalist paradigm, the reinforcers for maximizing profits and stock prices are much stronger and more compelling than the reinforcers for putting patient well-being first, even though doctors take an oath to "do no harm."
People's health is naturally important to them. When one is sick, injured, or in pain, care becomes urgent. It is not something that can be postponed, like getting the computer fixed or repairing the dishwasher. This creates a very high demand, which in a Capitalist paradigm means, from a business point of view, that providers (doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, prosthetics manufacturers, and the insurance companies that are theoretically supposed to pay for these services) can charge a high price. People will have little real choice but to pay.
If you need a procedure to save your life or the life of a loved one, or if you or your loved one is in pain or in danger of losing an eye or a leg, then you will probably risk losing your house or your nest-egg to get the procedure done. "Private," for-profit medicine has engendered a culture of unrestrained price-gouging in every aspect of healthcare in the United States and all purely Capitalist societies emulating its example.
This is classic Capitalist supply-and-demand economics. This is what happens when “market forces” drive medical care and research. It is the Capitalist paradigm, functioning as designed. Believing that this situation can be remedied through legislation and regulation is equivalent to believing that a Bengal tiger can become an herbivore through sufficiently skillful training.
This incidentally applies to dentistry and law as well.
Even in undergraduate university pre-med departments, the gouging begins. This writer was witness to this up close. In the University bookstore, textbooks were divided and shelved by departments. There were a few textbooks that were used by classes in several different departments. The exact same textbook appeared in the Engineering, Science or Humanities shelves for about $100; but in the Pre-med shelves the price was around $200. One such book was also for sale in the general bookstore for about $40. The identical book could be purchased directly from the printer in Taiwan for $10, if one knew someone there.
The cost of everything is drastically higher for pre-med and pre-law, for medicine and law majors on the graduate level, than for other majors. This equally affects students of alternative medicine such as naturopathic, Traditional Chinese Medicine and other related disciplines. In Capitalist societies, just about any kind of healthcare, dental or legal professional walks into the world to start their career with their hard-won certificate and license... and hefty student debt upwards of a quarter to half a million dollars or more. Naturally, this drives up the cost of medical or dental care and legal representation in order for these professionals to be able to make a living while paying off their debt. And of course the reinforcers are in place to ensure that most practitioners will also raise their prices as high as they can get away with.
Some doctors in the United States have even gone so far as to charge patients a hefty monthly fee just to keep them as patients, above and beyond the charges for any medical services rendered. This is couched in the elite-sounding term of “concierge doctors,” a term carefully chosen to give patients the suggested impression that they are getting special status or treatment. This subliminally manipulates some patients into accepting this practice by appealing to their ego. In a Capitalist paradigm, there is literally no law or principle that discourages this practice. It is completely consistent with the core principles of Capitalism. Patients could force a change by boycotting these doctors, effectively removing all reinforcers for this practice; but in an environment where scarcity is carefully maintained, this is easier said than done.
Pharmaceutical companies are likewise notorious for putting profit far above patient well-being. These companies almost always justify this price gouging by claiming that it is necessary to cover the cost of continuing research to produce life-saving medicines.
Yet the true motives were clearly seen by all the world a few years before this writing in a well-publicized scandal when the Turing pharmaceutical company succeeded in gaining control of all rights to the life saving drug Daraprim, the only effective treatment for certain deadly protozoan infections, a drug that had been around for 62 years that they had never researched or produced. As soon as they gained that control, they raised the price of the drug from $13.50 per pill (already way beyond reach of most people) to $750 per pill. Even after public outcry, the CEO Martin Shkreli remained unresponsive and impervious. No criminal or civil charges were filed, because under the Capitalist paradigm, there are few, very limited or no laws against price gouging. Reinforcers are in place to maximize profits and stock prices. No similarly strong reinforcers are in place for putting the good of the patient first. This is only one well-publicized case, but it is symptomatic and representative of the culture and attitudes that pervade all aspects of the healthcare system in the United States and similar countries and societies. Shkreli did make it to prison, however, on an unrelated hedge-fund-related financial crimes. The same kind of thing is happening now with insulin products, which have been around for nearly a century. The costs have gotten so high that diabetics are risking their lives by skimping on insulin because they can’t afford enough to be safe as insurance companies cover less and less of the cost. People are dying. Yet the cost of production has not increased.
Because all things medical and dental have become too expensive for any but the ultra-wealthy to afford, costs are further driven up by the flourishing insurance industry, a lethal parasitic infestation of the healthcare system that drives the cost of living ever higher. People are forced to pay ever-increasing premiums every month in order to be assured of the possibility of getting healthcare that they could never afford in case of illness, injury or other health problem. All the while, those steadily rising premiums buy the patient less and less, with steadily rising deductibles, steadily shrinking coverage with more and more escape clauses to allow insurance companies to find more excuses to deny claims.
It is not hard to see the parasitical nature of the health insurance industry. In accordance with the Capitalist paradigm, insurance companies are businesses that can only survive if they very profitable and their stock prices are high. These corporations make many billions of dollars in profits every year, which is obviously above and beyond any claims that they pay and any research costs. Some patients are indeed helped, some are not, and some incompletely or insufficiently. But the staggering profits of these corporations are extortion money that comes from your pockets and mine, and those of hundreds of millions of other people and finds its way straight into the pockets of CEO’s and other billionaires.
To rub salt in the wound, every insurance company has employees whose job is to go through every claim with a fine-tooth comb to find any legal way to get out of paying, even when it translates to loss of life, quality of life or mobility for the patient. The cost of paying those employees is passed on to the insured people as part of what they pay for premiums. This is completely legal and acceptable in Capitalist societies.
Hospitals routinely inflate charges to an extreme and arbitrary degree: there are documented cases of hospitals charging $8 for an ordinary box of tissues, $10 for small plastic medicine cup and $50 for a pair of latex gloves. Once again all of the reinforcers in Capitalist societies are to make the most money possible and charge the most the market will bear.
When people are hurting, sick, injured, scared, their life and health hanging in the balance, that is exactly when empathy and supportiveness are called for. Instead, predatory greed unsheathes its fangs and bites deeply with no compassion.
It is worthy to note that Cuba, long maligned by the United States and its allies as a quintessential example of an inhuman society, is widely acknowledged as having one of the best healthcare systems in the world where all receive prompt quality healthcare as needed at no cost. This is in spite of being a small poor country, kept poor largely by the spiteful U.S. embargo that has impeded Cuba's ability to trade for decades.
Capitalism does not tolerate anything that resists its ways and domination. The right to free healthcare is written into the Cuban Constitution, as is the right to a place to live. Contrast this to the United States, one of the wealthiest countries in the world where the quality of one's healthcare is largely determined by one's place in the economic pyramid and decided by accountants and adjusters rather than by doctors. That is not to say that Cuba doesn't have its serious flaws, but it is important to learn from the successes, failures, and experience of all societies present and past, in order to create ever better paradigms.
Lines of scientific and technological research are often suppressed directly or simply languish unsupported and unfunded due to being perceived as unprofitable or as being a threat to more profitable lines of inquiry. Pure scientific research expands human understanding of our world, our universe, ourselves and how things work. In addition, it often leads to innovations that improve our quality of life in small and large ways. Unfortunately, it can also lead to innovations that harm our quality of life and cause great suffering.
There are always choices to make as to what directions of research to pursue and how to pursue them. Such choices help to determine whether the outcome is a more empowered, healthy, vibrant, fulfilled and thriving Humanity or a more oppressed, unhealthy, disempowered, stressed Humanity. Though we often cannot foresee the results of a line of research or development, the criteria we use to determine which lines of research and development to pursue and how to apply the findings, are what helps ultimately to determine what kind of world we live in.
Unfortunately, under Capitalist paradigms, reinforcers and incentives are directed by the drive to maximize profit. The impact upon the quality of life for human beings as individuals and as communities, and on the environment of the only world we have at present to live on, does not come into serious consideration except as it might affect profits and stock prices. Oh yes, and companies need to determine whether the costs of abiding by environmental and other laws is more cost effective than the costs of ignoring them and paying the fines. Many companies often choose the latter.
Often research that would clearly benefit human beings or the environment is either not pursued or is actively suppressed in favor of a different avenue of research that is more profitable. The level of corruption involved is staggering.
Consider the case of Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A., which is very illustrative of the degree of destruction, corruption and sabotage that companies are driven to under the Capitalist paradigm and the degree to which these societies tolerate such practices.
Until the 1930's, Los Angeles had a well-developed fledgling public rail and bus transportation system that would normally have developed and expanded as the city and its surroundings grew and developed into the metropolis that it is today. That natural process was prevented by a systematic and coordinated series of actions by the tire, automotive and petroleum industries that ensured that this public transportation system was destroyed and prevented from developing any further.
As intended, ever since then, inhabitants of the greater Los Angeles area have been utterly dependent on cars and live in ever-worsening congestion and traffic conditions that severely compromise the quality of life for all. No charges were made to stick and no one was ever taken to task for this, even though the facts of the case are public knowledge.
There are many other examples of high-level profit-motivated decisions being made which caused significant harm, either directly or indirectly through the prevention or suppression of research and development that would have resulted in significant benefit for the majority of people. One example has to do with energy production/conservation and transportation technologies.
Since the 1960's and even earlier, there have been a number of different technologies available for development in energy generation and transportation applications. These include, but are not limited to, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal generators, mechanochemical engines (See work by A. Katchalsky, A. Oplatka, and the U.S. Air Force), artificial muscles, Sterling engines, magnetodynamic systems, alternative renewable fuels, bioelectric technologies, passive energy building techniques that drastically reduce the need for heating and cooling, and maglev transportation systems. This is not to mention the potential viability of horses, bicycles and other human-powered transportation that are rendered dangerous and impractical by the lack of sufficient dedicated bicycle roads and much more.
There is a plethora of energy producing/saving and transportation technologies that, if developed and disseminated, could break our dependence on large-scale power generation by hydroelectric, fossil fuel and nuclear means. This would allow people all over the world to be more self-sufficient, empowered, secure, and free from a major constant demand to pay money, while at the same time vastly reducing the damage done to our environment by traditional large-scale power generation facilities and the use of fossil fuels.
By diversifying our power and energy-producing technologies, shifting emphasis away from large-scale facilities to distributed simpler, low-cost and low-maintenance small-scale technologies on the home, block, community and local level, we can vastly reduce and in some cases eliminate the need for massive dams, nuclear and fossil fuel powered plants and the like. This will render us less vulnerable to corporate manipulation, terrorist attack, geo-political manipulation, natural disaster and technological malfunction or human error. A lot of emerging work is identifying the issues, challenges and solutions involved in shifting from centralized to diverse distributed energy resources.
The tapestry of technologies will naturally vary widely depending on local geography, climate, geology, population, industry, agriculture and countless other factors. Obviously areas with long periods of sunny weather will favor more solar technologies than places with ongoing overcast conditions. Windy areas will lend themselves to windmills, wind turbines and the like while agricultural areas might favor using agricultural byproducts to create alternative fuels for small-scale power generation. And new technologies are constantly appearing on the horizon.
When each neighborhood, home, community, factory and farm is producing power using the technologies most suited to local conditions, some at any given moment will produce more than they consume and some will produce less than they consume, while others will break even. When all are linked into one grid, the overall effect will meet all or most of the energy needs of the majority of regions. There may still be some need for larger power generation facilities in some places, but that need will be a small fraction of what it is today, so such facilities can be smaller and fewer than now.
The advantages of widely-distributed small scale power generation are many.
Power generation is thereby placed into the capable hands and minds of all of the people, empowering them, freeing them from dependency upon and constant pressure to pay money to energy mega-corporations. This will help stimulate a greater sense of empowerment and connection in neighborhoods and communities, and reduce people’s feelings of isolation and disempowerment. This paradigm will also vastly reduce damage to the environment typically resulting from large-scale power generation.
The grid will be significantly more robust and secure than it is now. Failure of a few windmills or solar panels for any reason will have a much smaller impact on the grid than the failure of a major power plant does under the current paradigm. Failure, manipulation or sabotage of major facilities can incapacitate major sectors of the community or even take out whole regions. We have seen examples in the past half century, such as the 1989 Geomagnetic Storm which took out power in a wide area of the U.S. and Canada.
A distributed, diversified power system designed to adapt to a heterogeneous infrastructure will more readily lend itself to adaptations that will transform massive power surges from ion storms caused by solar coronal mass ejections from catastrophes into free energy to be captured, stored and harnessed. Research into energy storage in cryogenic superconductor coils is very promising in this regard, and could lead to a practical way to capture electricity from not just ion storms but potentially from lightning as well.
Currently virtually all people and enterprises are dependent on mega-corporations which set prices as they see fit. The shift to distributed small-scale power generation and the decommissioning of the Capitalist paradigm will place power generation mostly into the hands of the people using it. Profit motive and the unnecessary entropy that it generates will be absent.
Dependency on large-scale power plants puts power generation into the hands of large corporations which, in normal Capitalist fashion, seek to maximize profits and stock prices. This in practice translates into ever-rising prices and the cutting of corners that leads to failures down the line and to massive environmental damage.
There is no profit in taking measures to minimize environmental damage. Such measures translate into expenses, losses. It is often much more cost-effective to pay lobbyists to pressure legislators to reduce regulations on their activities.
There are strong reinforcers in place to prioritize short-term profits over long-term safety. It goes against logic, but examples abound: Fukushima (2011), 3 Mile island (1979), the BP Deepwater Horizon petroleum drilling platform disaster (2010), the Exxon-Valdez spill (1989), the recent Oroville Dam rupture (2017), all of which were due to known weaknesses that were exposed but steadfastly ignored. When pressure is high to see immediate and sustained profitability, it is easy for the human mind to rationalize ignoring possible future disasters that would cost time and money to address in the present.
In nearly every sphere of human endeavor, diversification is a more effective model than dependency on one specific resource or methodology.
In agriculture, at least until recently, farmers have known the benefits of growing diverse crops instead of only one. Certain crops complement each other. If planted together or in rotation they keep the soil supple and prevent need for purchased fertilizers. Permaculture is a rapidly developing agricultural modality that will become increasingly important. This approach has the added advantage that, if one crop fails for any reason, it is extremely unlikely that all crops will fail at the same time. Farms will not be wiped out by the failure of one crop. This practice weaves a combination of edible species into a tailored micro-ecosystem in which the species sustain and support one another and keep the soil supple and balanced.
In manufacturing, it is common to produce a variety of products rather than devote all resources to only one product, which if rendered obsolete would drive the entire facility or enterprise extinct.
Even in the Capitalist paradigm, investors routinely invest in a "diversified portfolio" strategized so that even if some of the stocks decrease in value, others will increase so that over time the overall increases outweigh the decreases.
It is instructive to observe how power generation based on large facilities costing enormous amounts of money in order to generate even more enormous amounts of money, is highly profitable even though it disempowers and degrades the quality of life for most people while leaving the society highly vulnerable to any act or event that disables these facilities.
Distributed diversified small scale power generation will empower and improve the quality of life for the vast majority of people. It would not be profitable for a large corporation bent on enriching itself in the energy field.
It is time for we the people to change this situation by joining together to implement inexpensive do-it-yourself small scale power generation on a vast scale. In so doing, we can render the energy corporations obsolete and unprofitable while improving our quality of life and strengthening our security. We can begin even before the actual Transition.
Pure scientific research always suffers under the Capitalist paradigm. There are no reinforcers or incentives in place to support such endeavors. By its very nature, pure scientific research is unpredictable. Its potential to yield profitable, exploitable technologies is limitless but also nearly impossible to forecast.
For example, on the one hand space exploration generated many technological innovations that lent themselves very well to profitable applications. On the other hand, Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, astronomy and astrophysics, paleontology and archeology, etc. have rarely yielded findings that led to massively profitable applications.
Under a Capitalist paradigm, companies with the financial ability to fund large-scale pure research have always opted to fund applied research that they deem likely to lead quickly to profits. Pure research, like the arts, is largely dependent on funding from government sources.
In democratically Socialist countries, this is usually sufficient for meaningful research; but under Capitalism, the corporate infrastructure and power structure generally dictate government policy more than the people themselves, always exerting their influence to discourage government spending on projects and undertakings that do not enhance their interests. Such projects are generally funded by tax money which the ultra-wealthy and corporations fight hard not to pay. In addition, potentially profitable outcomes from such research would be less profitable to mega-corporations if discovered and published in the public domain, which renders it freely accessible to all.
A good example of the results of this pattern was the Supercollider in Texas which was de-funded and never completed after it was already halfway built, under a regime highly responsive to Corporate interests and those of the ultra-wealthy. This project would have greatly expanded the frontiers of physics for a long time to come, but did not directly lead to avenues for corporate revenues. There was not enough prospect of profit perceived in the ability to probe the understanding of the fundamental fabric and workings of matter, energy and the Universe.
Yet, pure scientific research adds to the quality of life in the long run and enriches the human community in ways that cannot be quantified in monetary terms. Once again we see that Capitalism actively suppresses the advancement of the greatest good and of human knowledge and expression. It is a system that has been extensively tried and shown itself to be nonviable and destructive.
It is past time to deactivate this paradigm and create new ones that benefit from human experience and strive to reinforce cooperation, empowerment, mutuality, and thriving, in a culture of mutual respect and valuing of each individual in a cooperative setting.