Issodhos @aol.com wrote:

>Interesting perspective.  Thanks.

Glad you thought so. The heart of the question is competition, according to
that article, written about a hundred years ago it would seem.

The writer points out that capitalism, which is predicated on and justified
by free competition, inevitably trends toward increased monopoly, simply by
the development of increasingly sophisticated machinery of production.

It is therefor reactionary to blindly protest about this, to demand free
competition, because that is already impossible. For the most part.

Free competition under capitalism is a wonderful thing to behold, but as
the article points out, the vast majority of the population simply don't
have the necessary tools and have little chance of acquiring them. The only
free competition they can engage in is the race to sell their labour at the
cheapest price to those who do own the tools.

The software industry is interesting in that its evolution has been so
staggeringly fast. In less than 20 years it has progressed from a stage
where free competition was not only possible, but standard. Thousands of
people, individual developers all across the globe, were developing a huge
variety of software applications for a hungry market.

But the computer industry could not expect that it would last forever. The
same process applies as that described in the article for the wider means
of production. As it becomes more sophisticated, as the tools needed to
produce the tools become more powerful and harder to produce from scratch,
free competition becomes ever less practical.

It is all very well to insist that the player which has developed the most
sophisticated tools necessary, simply give them to anyone who needs them to
compete with him. But capitalists would argue, with some truth, that if the
price of success is to be stripped of rewards of success, to facillitate
continued competition, then it is a no-win game for them.

In simple terms, capitalism tends toward monopoly. The ultimate goal of all
capitalists is to totally dominate their competition, thus freeing
themselves from its evils. It is futile to pander to the reactionary
squeals of those who cannot compete against more efficient producers.
Resistance to the inevitable trend of capitalism, in the name of preserving
capitalism, is futile.

And while we're on the Star Trek theme. ;-)

Fans will be aware that this series is about a fictional future society
with an economy based on "replicators", which can produce an abundance of
material needs literally out of thin air. As well as transport people and
produce via "transporters", by means of simply dematerialising them and
"replicating" them in another place. Of course it is not hard to see that
such a society must be a socialist one, since all the necessities of life
and a great deal more besides are freely available to anyone with a
replicator. Obviously a competitive economy become meaningless when the
cost of production is virtually nill for all items.

One cannot help but see the analogy between the Replicator economy of the
fictional Star Trek series and the software industry. After all, I can
"replicate" a software package as easily and quickly as Captain Kirk can
beam down to the planet surface. There is only one kind of economic system
that makes sense here and increased competition is not it.

Competition makes sense when things are scarce, maybe even when there is a
limited supply. But trying to create a competitive economy based on
commodities which are potentially unlimited and can be produced for
practically nothing is going to involve a great deal of tinkering designed
to create artificial scarcity.

But is the human race really going to maintain artificial scarcity, in an
effort to preserve an outdated economic system based on scarcity? It seems
insane, it is clearly immoral, sickeningly so.

Beam me up Scotty.

Bill Bartlett
Bracknell Tas