In the following article, the effects of capitalism on university research are discussed. Are our universities becoming too profit-oriented? Do we only go to university to make money, or to discover the universe? Are we losing our fundamental curiosity to money-making schemes and shallow materialistic goals? http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/dec2008/id20081217_814717_page_2.htm
there's 3 questions that yu quoted there - all of which are pretty basic - which one do you think is the basic one? ps I have one answer to all three: It depends (Q1 on the university and the individual researchers at that university, Qs 2 & 3 on the individual)
Capitalism as we know it is the economic system of the Industrial Era. Huge concentrations of surplus wealth ("capital") were needed to launch projects such as steel mills and railroads. Government invented the corporation to make it easier for entrepreneurs to achieve those concentrations. In general, our complaints about capitalism are not about the basic capitalist mechanism of accelerating the creation of surplus wealth, which you have to admit sounds like a splendid idea. They are specifically complaints about the artifact of the corporation and its distortion of the free market and its attendant culture. Your complaint about university science is really about the corporatization of university science through grants. The money-making schemes you refer to are the end product of a banking system that has been hijacked by corporations. And the "shallow materialistic goals" are largely driven by advertising--yes, more corporate machinations. But have faith, the Industrial Era is ending and we're living through the paradigm shift to a post-industrial or information-based economy. Most of what we know about economics will probably become obsolete in two or three generations. Look carefully at today's corporations and you don't see the robust, risk-taking, technology-pioneering, civilization-building heroes of the late 19th and early 20th century. You see ancient organisms dying off as others scavenge their corpses, with a few exceptions such as Microsoft and Fedex, who provide the support for Information Age enterprises. You probably wouldn't recognize or understand the economy of the 22nd century. It will have its faults, but they will be new faults that we can't predict. Let go of your complaints about the Industrial Era. It's coming to an ignominious end. Capitalism may survive, but in a new form.
Great post Frag. How do you see the role of the really big vested interests in areas such as energy and certain areas of technology and engineering coping with some of the major challenges and discoveries that are coming over the next few decades (or have already been worked out but have been supressed to favour those vested interests?)
No. Even Marx said Capitalism will bring humanity to new heights as far as things go. It will be at the pinnacle that socialism will be the right way to go. Just when life expectancy is highest and living is best... Then socialism should take over. Maybe he was right who knows.
They'll hang on for a while and maybe even keep getting away with suppression for a bit longer. But I don't think they'll be able to hold it off for very long. In the long run democracy will prevail in the places where it's established, and sweep away the powers who try to hold their people back. Smaller countries are already getting a head start on the action; I hear that Estonia is a powerhouse of software development, from a friend whose son emigrated and launched a business there. The USA is already in an economic decline, precisely because those "vested interests" have tried to hold back the future. If we don't get our act together and modernize, some other country will take over our leadership position. Maybe Estonia, stranger things have happened and it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of folks. (I'm being really nice to Estonians in case I have to work for them some day.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!) The clever ones among the capitalists now in power will find a way to make the transition and continue to be powerful in the new economy of the Post-Industrial Era. But there may be far fewer of them. There simply might not be as many huge concentrations of wealth as we're used to, because they won't serve an economic purpose in the more distributed and lightly structured information-based economy.
Not complaints, just plain observations. There are certain problems with public corporations, in particular. Crown corporations are more democratic in that the government needs to be more accountable for the proceedings to retain legitimacy. Public corporations are largely undemocratic. You need money to have a say. They have a lot of power, but they are controlled by a very small part of the population. Hence, public corporations are notorious for not taking the needs of the population in regard. They are literally profit-making machines - not value-making machines. Hence the actions of public corporations are not congruent to the population. Not only that, there are too many limitations of liability. So they can pay themselves whatever they want and they can destroy the environment if they feel like (though, yes, we have made some progress on that issue).
I think you're making the common mistake of equating capitalism with corporatism. Capitalism is simply the distribution of the management of the tools of production ("capital," a fancy word for "surplus wealth") further out toward the people who do the producing, rather than concentrating that management in a ponderous, bureaucratic, relatively unaccountable central authority. What most people complain about, which I assume is what the posts on this thread are complaining about, is the distortion of that system by corporations. As corporations become larger they come to resemble governments: ponderous, bureaucratic and unaccountable.
This is an effect of having universities being for-profit systems. Universities should be publically funded and education should be free. Then we can tax the corporations and spend on any research we deem valuable.
You Nailed it Fraggle! In giant corporations nobody tells the boss when he is screwing up for the same reason that nobody tells presidents of nations or Mike Tyson when they are screwing up. It might be more lucrative to discreetly flatter the boss and let him think that he is practically a god than to give him good advice. The people at the top of any organization like to think they they are brilliant and more qualified to make management decisions than the people below them. This assumed brilliance is the only thing that justifies them earning the vast sums of money that they earn. But what incentive do the workers have to perform well if they will not be rewarded when they perform better? What incentive do mid level mangers have to perform well if they are simply responsible for implementing their superiors plans and our discouraged from using their own minds to improve on their superiors plans? I think big corporations have the same strengths and weaknesses that communist governments had and function like corrupt communist governments. Only the pressure of competition makes them perform a little better than communist governments. Poor performing companies should go out of business and good performing companies should grow. Consumers should be informed and make informed purchases. There should always be competition. Teddy Roosevelt was right to bust up big corporations. Nothing should be to large to fail and Anti trust laws should be enforced more aggressively than they were ever enforced. I am not sure what can be done to create informed consumers but informed consumers are necessary if market capitalism is to really be efficient. Yelp and other consumer gossip sites are good for replacing the function that human gossip played in old style local market economies. As consumers purchases become more and more technical it is not clear whether consumers will be able to be informed. In no sector is this more evident than in Health care.
I a few years they will make a cell phone that can pick up a signal from the moon....but we won't be able to get there...ever...while capitalism pervades.
Yes to all. Nothing like a little grinding soul-crushing machine constantly wearing down every facet of your spirit to stifle creativity. Regarding public accountability: look, every single civilization since at least the Babylonians has spent some proportion of its GDP on basic research.
