A market is in many ways like an ecosystem. Those that perform well will secure advantage, and gain an edge over the other “players” in the market. Players in the market are locked in constant competition – this is easily observable in the current day. Companies fiercely battle it out in boardrooms and offices to procure their position in the market. They know what the stakes are – if you lose, you’re out of business. What does that imply? Well, it’s not a pleasant fate – you’ll need to find another job, if one is even available. You’ll most likely have to relocate – if you own a home you’ll have to find a buyer before you can move to a new job.
The “pressures” present on all of us in the marketplace are ever-present: there is constant demand for goods like food, shelter, and the tools to make it all possible. The world can be a swirling maelstrom of uncertainty, and unpredictable events can occur that change the face of reality as we know it. But as civilization has advanced through history, we have found ways to make our existence in nature much more comfortable. Industrialization means that with the massive production available with technology, we can support a very large population.
But if a market is like an ecosystem, then that larger population will result in many changes. A larger food supply will be necessary to support it. With the aforementioned industrialization, we seem to have enough food to support a population seemingly without limit. Reality keeps us grounded, however – there are no practical infinities in reality. The planet has a finite amount of land and water on its surface. Even with our technological aptitude, we simply will not be able to support an infinite population of people. We can stretch the limit of what the planet can support with GMOs and the technologies of the future, but the hard truth is that it is not infinite.
Our proficiency for tools has allowed us to secure more resources than any other species on the planet. But there are other externalities that have revealed themselves through the course of history – a larger food supply with a larger population means that you can reproduce more. With a constantly available food supply in the form of farms, humans also applied their technology to competition between groups. The extinction of the Neanderthals, and their assimilation into the Homo Sapiens species was likely because of early technology – the Homo Sapiens, with their larger brains, learned how to throw projectiles like spears and rocks. The advantage of ranged weaponry proved to dominate.
Thankfully, over thousands of years, we’ve developed other systems and institutions to allow our minds to rule our bodies, instead of just letting our primal nature dominate. The Rule of Law, Money as a medium of exchange, and an advanced infrastructure are all luxuries of the First World – artifacts of our colonial history.
But I think it’s important to consider that during the time of the Roman Empire, people thought that it was the greatest thing that humanity had ever seen and that it would endure forever. Time has proven otherwise. Regression is always possible – just because we’ve been moving forward in terms of quality of life thanks to our ancestors, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t possible to fall back into the Dark Ages.
The Cold War era after the end of the Second World War was primarily defined by the battle of two competing “wealth distribution systems” – Communism and Capitalism. Communism has died a slow and painful death, but it is most likely a positive thing that it has left it’s mark on history for all to see – the Gulag Archipelago, the Khmer Rouge, the millions dead of starvation – all reminders of what can happen when ideas become too powerful.
But, with no opposing force to Capitalism, it has run rampant through the world, most observably in America. The union movement has been shattered, leaving workers to accept whatever petty wages that their managers will give them, padding their own salaries because of “inflation” and “cost of living”, oblivious to the fact that the workers are subject to the same things. The solution to automation and a disappearing middle-class? “Learn to code” – as if every factory worker-turned-truck driver is going to take to the keyboard like a fish to water.
Here is my point: the competitive nature of the economy means that people will try to keep pushing the limit. Of course, competition can result in a great deal of innovation from economic competitors. But, for a moment, I would like to consider the “losers”. What happens to the employees that lose their position because they don’t provide enough effectiveness in the company’s perspective? This was the fate of many in American manufacture, following globalization and the development of automated factory production. They find themselves back in the job market, without benefits and possibly without savings. Of course, they would be more successful if they retrained, but this is not always possible or practical. It is not always a question of “willingness” either – most people cannot afford to be lazy because they have to earn an income to survive. Income assistance or welfare is not enough to cover all expenses of food and shelter in the modern world – rent or relocation costs are often too great.
So what happens to the losers in a Laissez-Faire Capitalist economy where companies can buy and sell anything that can conceivably be marketed? Like law and order in the form of private prisons, the population’s health in the form of healthcare insurance, and even the food that they eat that slowly makes them unhealthy? Well, for the most part, they don’t seem to do well in life. Childhood poverty is the number one factor for success in adult life – so if your parents are out of a job because the economy has shifted, you’re pretty much screwed. The inverse situation is being born into a wealthy family with a billionaire somewhere down the line, so you can basically survive off of trust funds and investments made by your grandparents.
The cost of education in America is another problem – only the rich can afford access to the best institutions. The poor feel out of place if they attend a major university with a scholarship. The accumulation of wealth into the hands of only a few, combined with the power of international commerce, means that billionaires can become more powerful than the government and turn them into their cronies. In my opinion, this doesn’t look like Democracy. This looks like Feudalism – the aristocracy controls the institutions of society with their wealth and influence. While the underclass toils under them, taking any scraps dropped from the table in the form of “job creation”. The effects of unbridled Capitalism are clear – the poor suffer in thousands of ways while the rich find ways to take the lion’s share of the fruits of their labor. Why?
Box of Soap 