So, I'm currently taking a break from politics stuff mostly as I managed to burn myself out on it yet again, but I did have a strike of inspiration that is causing me to want to write a quick article.
So, as I've stated before, I'm a supporter of human centered capitalism. Andrew Yang coined the term and I largely do agree with his framing of it, but I have believed something similar for a while, and take it in a slightly different direction.
As I said before, my own framing is this: is the economy made for humans, or are humans made for the economy? I notice a lot of people on the economic right tend to believe in the concept of markets with almost a religious faith. Basically, whatever the market decrees and wherever the pieces fall is just, and we should defer to the laissez faire results of the economy with the force of objective morality. Clearly whatever the market decides by its natural mechanisms is okay, and if that means that people are excluded from markets due to lack of resources, or need to work long hours being productive enough to justify their own existence (aka "earn a living") or starve to death, then that is a okay as far as markets go.
But....again, that's not human centered capitalism. In such a scenario, the economy isn't existing for people, people are coerced to fit in with the economy somehow, and the economy is a cruel mistress that basically enslaves most people to ensure maximal productivity for its own sake, rather than looking around and seeing whether this system makes sense.
I am a supporter of capitalism, ie, "markets", as opposed to socialism, ie, state or collective ownership of the means or production, which normally amounts to a command economy, but markets need to be applied to human ends, and I am perfectly fine with distorting them in order to achieve results that better serve human ends.
The theory behind markets is that while many buyers and sellers come together and exchange goods and services with each other for money, that somehow, the public good is being achieved here. That's the point of it all. To achieve that public good. We should not force people to be slaves for the accumulation of some rich person's private capital, the system needs to work to achieve human ends. And the government has an active role in regulating the economy, or introducing distortions in order to achieve the "proper" result.
Markets don't exist in vacuums. We like to act like they do, and that the econ 101 model of markets is always correct, but it's not. Government actions ensure the safe environment for markets to exist to begin with, and the rules underlying those markets are often enforced with rule of law. Governments protect the private property of the rich. Governments protect IP laws that are sometimes anti competitive. Governments actively manage the labor market to ensure a balance between inflation and unemployment. Most people dont question such actions. But the second you ask the government to say, break up a monopoly, or regulate things to ensure things like environmental protection and fair treatment of workers, people lose their crap. But such things are also variables that influence markets, and there's no reason why we shouldn't do such things if it leads to preferable results. I even support things like UBI, giving workers the freedom as the power to say no. The government establishes a property rights system that protects the rich and ensures the poor have to work to get their needs met, well, everyone acts like that's natural, but giving everyone a UBI to ensure people aren't coerced and can enter markets as free people as econ 101 theory indicates is suddenly bad? I mean, really. I even support, in the case of extreme market failures, that government runs an industry itself, either directly or indirectly, such as with healthcare or education. Ultimately, we should be focused on whether the end result makes sense for the people. The system should be designed around human needs, we shouldn't have this system in which we act like it exacts perfect justice in its natural form, people need to conform to it, or be punished.
That I feel is the difference between the right and the left worldview wise to some extent. The right often insists on creating their little perfect systems, and then imposing them on people to horrifying results, insisting with all of these oughts how humans should act, and then when the results don't work, blaming them for their moral failures. This is the same crap they accuse the far left communists of doing. You know all that stuff about great in theory, good on paper, discounts human nature, blah blah blah? Yeah, that's the right, actually. The left, at least the more liberal left, wants to make those institutions serve people. It looks at where humans are, and tries to make systems around human needs and human nature. Ie, institutions under liberalism and other related ideologies like social democracy and my favored social libertarianism, are supposed to serve the people. Hence, human centered capitalism. There's nothing just about free markets and unjust about government intervention. Nor should we assume the opposite, as the socialists do, that we should abolish markets and have nothing BUT government intervention (yes yes, i know im boiling socialism down to "when the government does things" here, but again, socialism is, in the context of this article, a centrally planned economy, market socialism is actually a version of capitalism as far as I'm concerned as it's a market based system).
And yeah, I just wanted to write all of this stuff down while it was fresh in my mind. I don't understand why having a system designed around human needs is so controversial. Then again, that's the power of propaganda for ya. People develop these fancy ideological systems based on models in their head, and they believe them as if they are objective models of morality, when nah, it's just another subjective morality. The only morality that to me is objective is that which makes peoples' lives better while respecting individuals' freedom and autonomy to the greatest extent possible. Even then some would simply simplify that to "makes it better", but I added that caveat as some people would use that logic to design a "perfect life" no one could reasonably object to when the result is quite tyrannical and leaves people with little or no liberty.
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It was ironically a debate over the GPU market that caused this. A lot of hardware subs have an obnoxious right wing bend due to PC gaming being more and more a hobby of the affluent, as more and more mainstream gamers are getting priced out of the market. I pointed out how the market was broken and got a "well ackshully" comment going on about how because people are buying GPUs the prices are justified and blah blah blah. And I...fundamentally disagree.
Here's the thing. The ideal free market has many buyers and many sellers, to a point that no one seller dominates the market and dictates its course of action.
But the GPU market has traditionally been a duopoly for the last 20 years or so, with a third player only recently joining into the fray. One company (nvidia) dominates 88% of the market share and effectively sets the prices. The other main company (AMD) makes CPUs and only half heartedly competes in the GPU space. While AMD has aggressively undercut Nvidia in the past, they seem to be less incentivized to do so this time around, wanting to allocate more silicon to their booming CPU industry. So they're just satisfied to do the bare minimum to halfheartedly compete. And while in my experience, they lowered prices enough to sway me to buy their products, they still havent done a whole lot to make inroads with GPUs in the same way they have with CPUs. Ironically, I keep saying we need them to do with GPUs what they did with CPUs with ryzen, but to be fair, once they got the upper hand they started overcharging to the point intel's pricing structure looked attractive.
Intel is that third player in the GPU market. They've previously made IGPs but this is their first real attempt to capture GPU market share, and need to sell products cheaply to get anywhere. Their products aren't the best, even for the price they're questionable as they're quite immature and lack a lot of the "it just works" aspects you'd expect from the other two companies, but they're trying.
The fact is, it's hard to make a GPU company. You cant just open one. it requires billions in R&D, so you need to be a big company to get your foot in the door, and due to IP laws you cant just copy your competitor, but make your entirely new product by yourself. And a reason nvidia is so far ahead is they have all of these exclusive features other companies can't just copy, so they need to spend billions making their own derivative versions of these features (so AMD ends up with inferior features overall, and intel is just...all over the place right now). This allowed nvidia, the one company with their crap completely together, to push their advantage and charge high prices to protect their profits, with the other companies not being in a significant position to undercut them. Even though AMD is cheaper, buying them often requires some sacrifices a lot of gamers aren't willing to make, but I personally am, in order to get a cheaper product.
So, you have an industry, that requires billions in money to start your own company, with uncertain returns, and IP laws protecting the market leaders, stopping the market from being more of an actual free market, and as a result, prices are high, competition is weak, and in response to lower demand, they simply reduced supply rather than reduce their prices. This is full on anti consumer behavior. I'm sorry, but the whole "well if people are priced out of the market then that's fine because markets are always right" approach, is freaking ignorant and ignores how we got here. I know a lot of people will claim that well, its harder to turn a profit these days, but that's because of nvidia in part too. They went all in with these super expensive proprietary technologies it has significantly increased the costs of GPUs, and people are just following where nvidia took the market.
It isnt just the lack of features that turned people off from AMD, mind you, it's also that they're a damaged brand. Every generation they overhype their products and act like they're problem free, and then they can't even get their drivers right half the time. So people expect a smooth experience, AMD drops the ball again, in part because they're in that inferior market position of not being able to make enough money to make a better driver team, and yeah. it's just a mass. AMD marketing is obnoxiously bad as it overpromises and underdelivers, AMD's fanboys are insufferable on the internet, and most people just associate AMD with making inferior products. Even in the CPU market where they're solid and rapidly increasing market share, they still got only 30% to intel's 70%. Because people just trust intel as a name brand more. AMD has serious problems and needs to rehabilitate their image. I dont think their products are AS bad as people say, but yeah, let's just say I've had experiences where I understand why they're the inferior brand.
But yeah. That's the state of the market. You got one company who just dominates everything, has their crap together, and makes very good, but very expensive products and holds a de facto monopoly, and two weaker companies who also specialize in CPUs, treat the GPU market as secondary, dont invest a ton in it, and make worse products that are cheaper.
How do we fix this? Well, I think breaking AMD up COULD be a solution. AMD bought out ATI back in the 2000s, and their lack of interest in consumer GPUs is reflected with the poor state of AMD's GPUs. We could do anti trust stuff against nvidia for being TOO strong, and them having TOO much market share. We could deregulate the IP end of things to make more space in the markets. Really, having one company with so many proprietary technologies that it just destroys the competition is BAD for the market. We could look into price gouging.
We could even look at the issue up stream. Like, a lot of the cheerleaders of these companies point out that companies like TSMC and samsung who control the larger microchip markets, and who these companies get their stock from, also dominate the market in their own way, making it very difficult for companies to supply silicon to make chips.
And another thing, I know trump had a tariff on GPUs that's supposed to go into effect at some point. They should scrap that. It's just more "lets make crap in America" BS which is well meaning, but again, if work is a means to an end, we shouldnt circlejerk so hard about JERBS, and we should focus on ensuring people get cheaper products. Give people who are unemployed a UBI. Most of them won't be able to afford GPUs on it (maybe at the family level), but hey it's a step in the right direction.
The fact is, this economy needs to be structured around human needs. The market has to work for the people. While yes, profit motive is essential in motivating these companies to work and make stuff in the first place, we shouldnt let markets get to positions where they descend into uncompetitive oligopolies with consumer unfriendly practices. We shouldnt be okay with pricing people out of the market and then circlejerking about how it's okay because "the free market decreed it so" or whatever. Economies work for people. And if they arent working for people, well, at some point something has to give where the underlying conditions of the market need to change to make it for the people. Are you okay with people being priced out of markets while de facto monopolies make money hand over fist? I sure as heck ain't. We need to go all Teddy Roosevelt on these people sometimes.
Anyway, I know this is a massive digression from my original point, but I felt like including the original topic of discussion that inspired this here.
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