Whether big or small. We all have that one thing from Scifi we wished were real. I’d love to see a cool underground city with like a SkyDome or a space hotel for instance.

  • Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz
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    7 hours ago

    you start looking for ways to increase your margin on each tomato you sell

    That happens unconditionally under capitalism, there’s no set profit margin where the owner says “I’ve made enough money, time to lower prices and raise wages”.

    Competition only exists within a very narrow context within capitalism. If you want the capitalists to do x y z, you don’t deregulate, you simply restrict them from doing anything else and prepare to use every means the government has at their disposal to punish the ones who violate the public trust.

    There’s a reason China manages to operate a healthier capitalist system within a very clearly defined bird cage.

    • blarghly@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      Wrt your China example, I will default to my null hypothesis here - China is on the upswing from opening itself to global trade, and has 1 billion people. Any argument in favor of China’s prosperity must demonstrate that they are doing well beyond what we would expect in these circumstances.

      That happens unconditionally under capitalism, there’s no set profit margin where the owner says “I’ve made enough money, time to lower prices and raise wages”.

      And sure. But eventually someone will start trying to undercut others by accepting lower margins.

      And of course, this is why we should have and enforce laws against price fixing and collusion.

      None of this changes the fact that, even if governments took on the construction of new housing themselves and dedicated themselves to solving the housing shortage, they also wouldn’t be able to build enough new housing fast enough because of their own regulations on how housing must be constructed.

      • Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz
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        4 minutes ago

        You don’t need need to explicitly collude (though many compabies do) for companies to realize if they lower prices or invest in better technology, so will other companies, and then they’ll all be worse off. We observe this in any mature industry under capitalism.