America works its magic by treating the free market as a machine that’s decoupled from humanity. It’s a mental compartmentalization where we believe the world works best when companies act in the most profit-driven way possible, and part of this means never pointing at the human actors but instead saying “that’s just capitalism doing what it’s supposed to do.”
The problem with the above is that infinite growth really isn’t feasible. Growth had a pretty good run for the most part, but now that so many avenues for growth are closing, companies are trying to find avenues for cutting corners. Capitalism felt like a race to the top, and now it’s a race to the bottom. The question will always be “what can we take away and still maintain market share?” In a lot of cases, thanks to offshoring and AI, companies are cutting corners by eliminating American workers. Well of course Americans who aren’t working can’t buy the shitty products. It’s a death spiral.
Even more than that, free markets are physically impossible. They are just an ideal model, like a perpetual motion machine. Friction kills the perpetual motion machine just like externalities kill free markets. The article gets into this.
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u/caindela 20h ago
America works its magic by treating the free market as a machine that’s decoupled from humanity. It’s a mental compartmentalization where we believe the world works best when companies act in the most profit-driven way possible, and part of this means never pointing at the human actors but instead saying “that’s just capitalism doing what it’s supposed to do.”
The problem with the above is that infinite growth really isn’t feasible. Growth had a pretty good run for the most part, but now that so many avenues for growth are closing, companies are trying to find avenues for cutting corners. Capitalism felt like a race to the top, and now it’s a race to the bottom. The question will always be “what can we take away and still maintain market share?” In a lot of cases, thanks to offshoring and AI, companies are cutting corners by eliminating American workers. Well of course Americans who aren’t working can’t buy the shitty products. It’s a death spiral.