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0 pointsTeMPOraL9y ago0 comments

Because it demotivates people.

The thing about capitalism, which I feel is not widely understood, it's that as a participant, you're meant to compete, but you're not meant to win. The need for money to sustain your lifestyle is what drives people to productive work; competition is what drives companies to optimize. But the moment someone wins - a person becomes rich, a company becomes a monopoly - they actually become a problem. At best, they're no longer working and optimizing. At worst, they can disrupt lives of a lot of people.

The promise of great wealth is phony by design.

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5 comments · 2 top-level

Chris20489y ago· 2 in thread

You are supposed to win, but then adjust your goals, i.e. aim higher. This is a different thing.

TeMPOraLOP9y ago

No; in designing a robust system, you can't rely on what people are "supposed to do" out of their own initiative. As it is on the market, the moment you win and the external incentives pushing you to "aim higher" disappear, you become a wildcard - i.e. a problem.

Chris20489y ago

> out of their own initiative

aiming higher is human nature. The system is based on this evolutionary fact (sometimes called 'greed', or self-interest), not on directing human behaviour.

The market is also based on mutual self-interest. There are no 'external incentives' other than access to higher/more expensive goals.

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taneq9y ago· 1 in thread

Thinking about it, the real problem is that the market is finite in size. In an infinite market, being a monopoly is impossible (although anticompetitive behaviour should still be discouraged). The problem comes when one fish gets too big for the pond.

TeMPOraLOP9y ago

I can't really imagine an "infinite" market. The biggest one I can imagine is an ultra-global one, where every living human anywhere can buy anything from anywhere and get it reasonably quickly. In such a market, monopolies would be global monopolies.

Actually, come to think of it, the market for digital services is quite "ultra-global" already.

Either way, whatever the market size is, monopolies in a given market is the the victory condition - the goal - for the monopolist, and a failure mode for the entire market. Hence how it works is that the idea of "the win" is dangled in front of you so that you work, but it's meant to be snatched away in the last moment, so that you never reach it.

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