Comment on The Only Solution Capitalism Has Is to Sell Us More Useless Junk: Ad makers will never say the quiet part loud, but they increasingly know that we're unhappy and looking for solutions.

• treadful@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Modern infrastructure is not built by markets. University materials research is not driven by markets.

  It kind of is, though. Modern infrastructure is built by companies. Universities acquire materials, labor, as well as share knowledge through marketplaces of ideas and information.

  “Market” is really just a construct describing social interaction. You can’t really blame it for a problem since all it is is a description of reality.

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  • frisbird@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    You don’t know what markets are then.

    Modern infrastructure in China is built by state owned enterprises and funded by the government. There is no price competition, and the infrastructure is not sold on the market as a commodity.

    “Marketplaces of ideas and information” would be places where you could purchase ideas and information and resell them. That’s what a market is. That’s not how universities work. They receive planned funding for planned research and conduct planned research according to forward looking plans without regard to the market demand for specific outcomes. Granted IP markets are layered on top of that but they pervert the entire process and they are totally artificial.

    The idea that you think markets are not actual systems but just a descriptive word used to refer to various non-marker realities indicates that you are fully saturated with neoliberalism and need a detox.

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    • treadful@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Markets are not uniquely neoliberal nor capitalist.

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      • frisbird@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        No. But describing all social interactions as “markets” is distinctly Neoliberal brain rot

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• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Please don’t confuse actual technological progress with markets.

  Consumer goods are delivered through market distributions for nearly every post-industrial society on earth.

  The government could distribute widgets, but it doesn’t.

  Modern infrastructure is not built by markets.

  Construction crews, materials purveyors, architects, electricians/plumbers… All come through the market system. That’s why Americans have to turn to Spain or Japan every time they float the idea of expanding HSR. That’s why only two companies in the world build civilian airliners. That’s why our telecom network is an oligopoly.

  Whut?

  Teqball’s a lot of fun.

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  • frisbird@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Th exception proves the rule. Department of Transportation is not market driven. DPW is not market driven. Army Corps of Engineers is not market driven.

    And that’s just the US. Look to the rest of the world and you’ll see that most infrastructure is not market driven at all.

    And even in the cases where they have to get private companies to do the build, the INFRASTRUCTURE ITSELF is not market driven, it’s the talent that’s market driven.

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