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by RealityVoid 1538 days ago
IMO, this is an obvious weakness in the capitalist model. Money is supposed to be a social reward for solving problems for people. But they turn this on its head by inducing scarcity on something that is inherently NOT scarce. This is, IMO, anti-social and should not be rewarded by us as a society. We should reward things that create solutions, not things that create artificial scarcity. It's corrosive to capitalism itself.

I do not have a solution for this, but the fact that it's a problem is obvious to me, and the fact it will only get worse with time is also obvious.
2 comments
nybble41 1538 days ago
> an obvious weakness in the capitalist model... by inducing scarcity on something that is inherently NOT scarce

Which is actually NOT part of the capitalist model at all, but rather social engineering (i.e. socialism) where the government circumvents capitalism for the sake of inducing a particular desired social outcome. In the capitalist model property rights only exist as a consequence of natural scarcity. Copyright does not exist in the capitalist model.

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gruez 1538 days ago
>Money is supposed to be a social reward for solving problems for people. But they turn this on its head by inducing scarcity on something that is inherently NOT scarce.

I don't see how the first sentence contradicts the second sentence. Audi is solving problems (a hot car) for people, by providing a product (an AC). The fact that they're "inducing scarcity" or whatever is orthogonal to this.

>I do not have a solution for this, but the fact that it's a problem is obvious to me, and the fact it will only get worse with time is also obvious.

The fact that you don't have a solution for this suggests that this is a necessary evil that has to exist for society/the economy to work properly. I find it pretty undemocratic and unjust that the government has forces me to make payments to it (ie. taxes). That doesn't mean it's "corrosive" to a democratic/free/just society.

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RealityVoid 1538 days ago
In my view, it is not orthogonal to it at all, we should maximize utility for society instead Audi is incentivized by intentionally diminishing it.

> The fact that you don't have a solution for this suggests that this is a necessary evil that has to exist for society/the economy to work properly.

My, or your lack of imagination as to a solution for this does not prove a solution does not exist, nor does it prove we should not search for one. If everyone along history thought like that, we would still be living in caves.

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gruez 1538 days ago
> In my view, it is not orthogonal to it at all, we should maximize utility for society instead Audi is incentivized by intentionally diminishing it.

If you're talking about utility, the standard argument in support of it would be the same one used for copyright/patents, ie. "even though there's utility to be gained by prohibiting such restrictions and granting access to the product for everyone, the lack of scarcity will eliminate the profit motive from future endeavors, and will therefore eliminate future investment/research making us worse off in the future"

>My, or your lack of imagination as to a solution for this does not prove a solution does not exist, nor does it prove we should not search for one. If everyone along history thought like that, we would still be living in caves.

That's true, but at the same time it seems rather pointless to complain about how something is "corrosive to capitalism" when there isn't an obvious solution. Going back to my previous example, I'd love to live in a world where we can get public services (comparable to today's levels) and not pay any taxes. However, if there's no viable alternative in sight I'm not going to complain about it. I also recognize that even though there might some yet undiscovered funding model that doesn't involve compulsory payments, it realistically doesn't exist or is hundreds of years away, so searching for it seems like a fools errand.

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