Capitalism doesn't like disruptive technologies. Look at the foul combustion engine. We still use the combustion engine because it suits the profits of car manufacturers and oil producers.
You can't conflate innovation with the development of new technologies, capitalism is no the source of innovation. It is not true that companies have come up with most of the major new technologies.
Reach out to the innovation nearest to hand; the Internet - the World Wide Web and what you have is an "innovation" funded by DARPA, a branch of the US state. This innovation was developed by university campuses over the length and breadth of the United States, not by companies. And then, for the birth of the WWW you have a researcher funded by the European Union CERN facility. Tim Berners Lee.
The Jet, the computer, radar, genetics, nuclear power, you name it. These are all the products of STATE FUNDING. They are not the "innovations" of capitalism. Counter examples? The cornflake? Mr Kellogg and his healthy bowel movement. Coca Cola replacing cocaine with caffeine? Oh yes. Electricity generation and AC current.
What capitalism is good at is at exploiting these technologies. Just as it is good at exploiting the people it uses to make the products derived from these technologies and exploiting the people who buy the products of the technology. This was all dealt with by Drucker. Except that Drucker's euphemism for exploitation of technological developments produced by state funded individuals and organisations was: the maximisation of the "productivity of innovation."
Perhaps there is something good to be said for "farming people", greed is good, remember, something to be said for exploiting state funded inventions, for markets that gyp consumers into obesity and cancer and that fill the atmosphere with exhaust emissions.
But if there is an argument to be made in defense of exploitation, that single mechanism of capitalism that most defines it. If there is an argument that can portray capitalism as a defender of the environment and an enemy of global warming, then where is it?
You can't conflate innovation with the development of new technologies, capitalism is no the source of innovation. It is not true that companies have come up with most of the major new technologies.
Reach out to the innovation nearest to hand; the Internet - the World Wide Web and what you have is an "innovation" funded by DARPA, a branch of the US state. This innovation was developed by university campuses over the length and breadth of the United States, not by companies. And then, for the birth of the WWW you have a researcher funded by the European Union CERN facility. Tim Berners Lee.
The Jet, the computer, radar, genetics, nuclear power, you name it. These are all the products of STATE FUNDING. They are not the "innovations" of capitalism. Counter examples? The cornflake? Mr Kellogg and his healthy bowel movement. Coca Cola replacing cocaine with caffeine? Oh yes. Electricity generation and AC current.
What capitalism is good at is at exploiting these technologies. Just as it is good at exploiting the people it uses to make the products derived from these technologies and exploiting the people who buy the products of the technology. This was all dealt with by Drucker. Except that Drucker's euphemism for exploitation of technological developments produced by state funded individuals and organisations was: the maximisation of the "productivity of innovation."
Perhaps there is something good to be said for "farming people", greed is good, remember, something to be said for exploiting state funded inventions, for markets that gyp consumers into obesity and cancer and that fill the atmosphere with exhaust emissions.
But if there is an argument to be made in defense of exploitation, that single mechanism of capitalism that most defines it. If there is an argument that can portray capitalism as a defender of the environment and an enemy of global warming, then where is it?
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