>>105769263Capitalism always takes the path of least resistance to greatest profit allowed. It is an amoral system, controlled by often immoral people. It only "works" when there are strong regulations that level the playing field - if you and I are making the same widget, I treat my industrial waste properly at significant cost, pay my workers well, and make a fantastic product with great QA, but you discharge untreated waste into the river, pay chinkoid or jeet near-slaves to be locked into your factory 3 to a bed, and make something "good enough" but at much lower price, you can sell it slightly below what I do and still make a huge profit. In a system where there are regulations saying
>No anon, you can't offshore with slave labor, dump toxic waste in a river, etc.. we're going to fine you a fortune more than you're making by these practices or maybe even pull your business registrationthen it at least kinda sorta levels the playing field, but if you figure out that all you need to do to keep that from ever happening is buy a bunch of lobbyists and regulatory capture to ensure nobody ever comes knocking is a cheap solution to let you keep pushing out shit for cheap and a huge ROI, then everyone who's trying to compete is fucked because the field is not actually level in any way (atop the damage done to health, the environment, workers etc) .
This is a feature, not a bug of capitalism. Capitalism held in check by external regulators in say.. Nordic states is the aberration and is only one election away from the decline above happening. The "level playing field' status is not the end game ideal Capitalism solution, its the first guy who gets to the pile of money uses that money to basically pull up the ladder for everyone else. That's what we see here. Thew shitty little addictive apps and the data mining (isn't it strange how privacy laws haven't advanced AT ALL since social media and surveillance capitalism arose?) makes them money.