u/Unique_Confidence_60

Lack of patents disincentivizes Innovation. I spend tons of time and money on r and d and then other companies come along and take it and sell it at a lower price because they don't have to recover the costs. Especially big companies with more resources. So why bother? However patents also cause monopolization of an innovation which is also bad. Neither situation is ideal. That's a flaw of the market. Maybe it would be better if we could limit the duration of patents more.

Instead, why not just have the government fund innovation and reward innovators and then make it freely available? Not corporate subsidies. Direct government projects. Have progressive taxes to fund it. Have the people choose what kinds of innovation they want and then allocate funding accordingly. Better innovation means more reward. More innovation and less monopoly power. More competition. Crowdfunding is one option but that's not gonna be enough for big innovations like new medical technologies. Maybe you can have confederations of coops fund it under market socialism.

Corporations like Walmart don't help people with their lower prices. They kill competition which leads to more unemployment and drives down wages. Walmart and Amazon employees are poor. Big companies make the general economy poorer. Cheaper prices are cancelled out by shit wages among the citizens of a city. They send the profits offshore instead of leaving it to stimulate the local economy.

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They have the scale to efficiently produce goods much cheaper. They vertically integrate which keeps regional suppliers. They can make deals with manufacturers to only sell to them. They can absorb the shock of economic downturns and weather lower revenue for a while which smaller companies cannot do.

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Some might say that deregulation and ending patents would solve this by allowing competition. Why would startups bother innovating, spending time and money on r and d when the big competitors can easily take it and make their efforts a waste?

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I don't see the libertarian solution of doing nothing and letting big companies run rampant as overcoming the inherent advantages of these companies destroying competition. Expecting people to go against their economic self interest to shop at more expensive stores is ridiculous. Especially when they're made poor by those companies to begin with. People aren't anticipating that years down the line saving money in the short term will actually hurt them. "Vote with your dollars." What dollars? Why don't we use anti trust laws?

No more subsidies and bailouts. Nationalize banking. Corporations love talking about free market until it's inconvenient. If anything, make it easier for small businesses to get started. Universal healthcare. Here in the US, we subsidize drug development with taxes, they get the patent and then we get gouged by them on the back end. We're paying twice.

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No more patents. Give everyone access to advancements. Let crowdfunding and government fund r and d. No more subsidizing companies' greed with food stamps using our tax dollars. Make them pay decent wages. Unions by law now.

Let me know if I'm missing something. I myself like the idea of liberating the workers from capitalist control but we might need markets to some extent or another. The argument goes like this. Consumer prioritizes what they need most based on price. Demand bids up price which leads to people supplying it for profit. More Supply leads to lower prices. Supply and demand adjust around equilibrium.

Producers need resources to meet demand like rubber, metal and wood. Producers innovate to create more with less resources. Should these raw resources go more to make pencils, computers, medical supplies, machinery? How much and where?

Producers bid up prices for these inputs which avoids them being used up too quickly. Price indicates which scarce resources are needed most and where because it reflects supply and demand avoiding shortages and excesses as best as possible.

Markets are dynamic and adapt to varied rapidly changing needs and wants of millions of people. People travel, population rises, unexpected things like disasters or accidents happen. People don't know exactly what they'll want or need in the future from day to day. Planning is too rigid to adapt or gauge the level of priority for resources like the market.

Of course, there are flaws like market concentration killing competition and distorting prices. Big companies destroying their inventory to raise prices. Wasting perfectly good food, housing and other necessities while people going without simply because they can't pay. Richer people have more votes with their dollars and poor people have barely any. Information asymmetry between buyer and sellers. Markets being slow or refusing to invest in new, capital intensive and risky technologies. Market failures. Thoughts?

Under mutualism, what stops a mutual bank from just deciding they're going to give themselves a massive amount of money? What stops a coop from deciding to make a profit instead of just selling at cost? What stops companies from just failing and big ones expanding and potentially developing into capitalism again?