The Poverty of Capitalist Innovation

It's absolutely true, capitalism breeds innovation. Landfills in the United States are full of proof. Not just that the innovations themselves are trash (though a lot are), the disposable nature of what capitalism produces is one of its primary innovations. Things that last don't need to be replaced. Meaning less long term profitability. Things that don't break easily don't need repaired as often. Meaning less opportunity to make money. Landfills aren't a byproduct of capitalism, they are at the heart of the very idea of capitalism. While we hide our landfills out of sight, they should really be enshrined as temples, as they are the physical embodiment of what capitalism truly is.

Another amazing innovation of capitalism is turning poverty into big business. Not simply keeping people in poverty so they have little choice but to devote their lives to work, that is about as old as western civilization. But turning poverty itself into profitable resource for those with money. There are so many ways that the wealthy and politicians have personally invested in the continuation of poverty it is mind boggling. 

One major and extremely disgusting example of this is the criminal justice system. The vast, vast majority of US prisoners were born in poverty and were living below the poverty line when arrested. There's one very obvious and one not so obvious reason for this. Obviously, a person with nothing is more likely to steal in order to have something. A hungry person is more likely do whatever it takes to eat. Someone with little to no support from society at large is more likely to associate with a support system that engages in criminal activity. 

But also... it is politicians and wealthy people who have decided what is a crime, and how those crimes should be punished. The crimes wealthy people tend to commit are defined differently, and punished differently. And being capitalists, they used the system to find ways to profit off the incarceration of poor people. And once they figured out how to profit, they did what capitalism not only allows for, but insists upon. They rigged the system to maximize profits. Spending as little as possible on the care and rehabilitation of prisoners, while simultaneously extracting as much wealth from the prison system as possible.

This dovetails nicely into another spectacular capitalist innovation. A law enforcement invested in poverty. Police need crime to justify expanding budgets. Regardless of how you may feel about police, what their role is, what their role should be, it should be a concern that as an institution, they are actually invested in the continuation and spread of poverty. When poverty goes down, the crime their budgets depend on also goes down. Because capitalism insists that even a service like policing give a return on investment. That it is an exchange. It is as much a business as Walmart. And like Walmart, other businesses (like those who make supplies and provide technology them) have grown and adapted around the capitalist model of policing in order to profit off of it. Which increases the number of wealthy people whose continued profits depend on the continuation and growth of poverty. They are invested in poverty. 

And while individual officers may genuinely want to help poor people, and I am certain some do, they will always support the system that requires poverty. So their individual feelings don't matter much because they themselves will always betray them. Capitalism has innovated every aspect of law enforcement into an industry, and one that requires poverty to function.

A quick somewhat related aside: If you have ever wondered why a crime like rape is so rarely prosecuted and even when it is has far less punishment than much less harmful crimes like destruction of public property, it is because rich men commit sex crimes, but they very rarely destroy public property (other than bombing critical infrastructure in other countries...).

Beyond law enforcement, there are predatory businesses. In most poor areas, the majority of the businesses extract as much money as possible from the people living there, while providing very little in return. Payday loans a very clear example. Their entire existence is to take advantage of people in desperate need and lock them in a cycle of debt. Nothing would cripple the payday loan industry more than social safety nets that actually prevent desperation. So there is an $18 billion industry whose profits depend on restricting social programs and stopping the healthy self-determined development of poor communities. An innovation born from capitalism, that cannot survive without it.

Banks in poor communities aren't much better. Credit card companies either. Credit scores were invented to wring extra money out of the poor. The people who invented and make use of them don't care what their own personal scores are. It literally makes no difference to a wealthy person what their credit score is. They only exist to justify charging poor people more and giving them less in exchange. People with wealth are given interest on their accumulated wealth, so that just having money makes them more money. Poor people pay interest because of their lack of wealth, so not having money costs them money. A system intentionally set up by the wealthy to extract as much as possible from the poor. And it is very much a defining capitalist system, those with capital maximizing their profits. It isn't bad people misusing capitalism to personally profit, it is bad people using capitalism as intended.

Think about being born into poverty in the United States. People and corporations and even systems of government, with literally trillions worth of combined resources, have a vested interest in you staying in poverty. They need your kids to stay in poverty, and their kids. Their entire economic systems depends on it. 

If you instead were a child born in a country where US corporations hold any kind of influence, the situation is much much worse. 

Next time you are in a Walmart or similar store, or scrolling through Amazon, look around and try to see how many of the products serve little to no purpose, and pretty much exist just so someone could make money. If those products ceased to exist, they would have no impact on the quality of life of the community. And then, maybe take a moment to observe how much of the variety of useful products is unnecessary. Sure, it is nice to have the freedom to choose from a wide variety of plates to eat off of, but functionally a plate is a plate and if there were a smaller variety, what is the real impact on your life? Now what is the cost of overproducing such a wide variety across the multitude of products being sold? 

Lacking the profit motive that drives capitalism, a lot of bullshit innovations would stop happening. So, it is kind of true, that under another system there would be less innovation. But... people would still want to cure cancer and other diseases. People would still want better, safer, faster modes of travel. Cleaner energy. People who marvel at architecture would still do so and still be driven to create their own, or improve upon what they see. Tinkerers will tinker.

Innovation would not cease. Most likely the opposite. Profit driven innovation kills creativity, because everything is limited by cost versus profit analysis. Those with the resources direct innovation to one end and one end only. If it betters society it is only by happenstance as a byproduct of the fact it also makes wealthy people wealthier. And most likely whatever benefit it offers is severely limited in order to maximize profits. If resources were not restricted, if profit not the motive, and people freed from the stresses of poverty, nothing is left to limit innovative potential. Yet the drive to create, to improve, to help, to participate would still be there. Just untethered.