> Yeah, that’s the magic of capitalism. You make society more efficient and get paid for that.
you get paid for giving people what they want, not necessarily making society more efficient. It's more profitable to sell a car to everyone than it is to sell them bicycles, even if the latter is "more efficient" in terms of space, mineral and fossil fuel resource usage, pollution, health of users...
and God forbid you just tell people to walk.
I used to work at H&M - getting low quality disposable clothing from Bangladesh isn't "more efficient" then buying a sewing machine and making your own clothing, at least not if you consider transport or environmental costs. But people are lazy, and they're easily bored, and they like "new" looking things, so H&M keeps on selling clothes.
I guess basically what I'm getting at is tragedy of the commons. You let people mindlessly pursue their short term interests, it doesn't necessarily lead to efficient behavior at the aggregate level.
Arguably what has made society more efficient, at least for automobiles, has not been "capitalism", but government regulation - safety, environmental, and cutting down on drunk driving. If you consider "dying en route" to be "inefficient", then you'd agree that while just building nicer looking cars with bigger tailfins to please the market didn't really do much to reduce this inefficiency, government mandating bumpers and seatbelts and airbags did.
> buying a sewing machine and making your own clothing
But why stop there?! Cultivate your own cotton, make your own cloth. Mine and smelt your own iron. Cut the woods and build your tools, then build your sewing needles from scratch.
Funny enough during communism here it was close to impossible to find modern sewing machines - they were the product of the evil capitalist countries, of course. So the old foot-operated Singers were selling at quite the premium.
And yes, we did walk quite a lot - car production and gas distribution in a planned economy meant tens of years on waiting lists.
you get paid for giving people what they want, not necessarily making society more efficient. It's more profitable to sell a car to everyone than it is to sell them bicycles, even if the latter is "more efficient" in terms of space, mineral and fossil fuel resource usage, pollution, health of users...
and God forbid you just tell people to walk.
I used to work at H&M - getting low quality disposable clothing from Bangladesh isn't "more efficient" then buying a sewing machine and making your own clothing, at least not if you consider transport or environmental costs. But people are lazy, and they're easily bored, and they like "new" looking things, so H&M keeps on selling clothes.
I guess basically what I'm getting at is tragedy of the commons. You let people mindlessly pursue their short term interests, it doesn't necessarily lead to efficient behavior at the aggregate level.
Arguably what has made society more efficient, at least for automobiles, has not been "capitalism", but government regulation - safety, environmental, and cutting down on drunk driving. If you consider "dying en route" to be "inefficient", then you'd agree that while just building nicer looking cars with bigger tailfins to please the market didn't really do much to reduce this inefficiency, government mandating bumpers and seatbelts and airbags did.