The title is a rough recollection of a quip I read the other day. It caught my eye because I tend to agree. Must be something in the air, just ran across this article. Interesting to ponder.
How 'Maintainers,' Not 'Innovators,' Make the World Turn
http://www.citylab.com/design/2016/04/how-maintainers-not-innovators-make-the-world-turn/477468/
This is a can of worms RC -- such a politically charged topic, particularly here in the US. I guess I'd take it a little farther and say capitalism does nothing to look out for the long term interest of the common good. On the other hand it is the engine that keeps everything moving. So, it needs to be regulated, and some of its energy needs to be channeled in directions that make a economy (or society) sustainable in the long run.
I think I came across the article with your title quip last week too.
The article you link to is perhaps correct, but the "capitalism is not so good at maintenance" is, I think, limited.
I am no apologist for capitalism (proud member of the vast liberal conspiracy), but people confuse "capitalism" (private ownership of the means of production) with "free market" (minimal government intervention) and it's important to distinguish one from the other and their effects. The market, free or otherwise, creates a set of incentives and capitalism tries to make money off capital given a certain set of incentives.
Neither of these inherently lead to high innovation and low maintenance. Nor, for that matter do they lead to pollution and environmental destruction (which is the aspect of the "maintenance" problem I've thought about most).
The issue is with incentives, how communal resources are divided and how use of them is paid for. In the case of the environment, the free market tends toward environmental destruction because
- clean air, for example, traditionally had no value so pollution had no cost
- military costs of having an 11-carrier fleet, which we would in no way need but for our need to keep oil flowing around the world, is not costed into the cost of petroleum
- we "pay" for pollution in maintenance on buildings, on asthma visits to hospitals, in lost production and so on
So the incentives, cost distribution and method of paying for energy lead to high levels of pollution because of the "tragedy of the commons," the fact that big polluters and the benefactors of those polluters get to use the "commons" for free or rates way below market rates. Of course we all use electricity, but these "commons" costs are not distributed according to our usage. In fact, often quite the opposite in that a coal plant is more likely to be in a poor neighborhood than a rich one with big, power-sucking houses.
This is true of air, water, and many other resources that we have not traditionally valued and it is an especial problem with resources that cross geographic borders. When I was kid we saw all the mountain lakes of the Adirondacks die because of acid rain coming in from coal plants in the Midwest. It was a major issue, reported frequently, studied in school, in the mainstream media and so on. I was surprised when I moved to the Midwest to realize that almost nobody I talked to there had even heard of it.
Similar with the maintenance problem. When the US deregulated electricity, it created all sorts of incentives for production and few for distribution, which caused capital to flow into production. But that's actually a distortion of the free market leading capitalists to react in a way that makes sense. Had the incentives been biased toward distribution, we would be looking at beautiful upgraded grids with not enough power to flow through them.
Anyway, I don't think these are "capitalist" problems per se, but more commonly "tragedy of the commons" problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
And speaking of which
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/18/inside-americas-infrastructure-problem
QuoteThere's also what Erie calls the "edifice complex": what politician doesn't like opening something new and having a nice press op at the ribbon-cutting? But no one ever writes articles saying, "Region's highways are still about as good as they were last year."
So maybe this should be titled "Representative democracy is great at innovation, not so good at maintenance."
Quote"Representative democracy is great at innovation, not so good at maintenance."
Is that what we have here? Only slightly joking on that one. I wouldn't say our political system has been very good at either in the last 50 years.
Well.... there is that.
Although, the one thing that the Trump and Sanders success has shown me in the face of the massive financial backing of the other candidates is that we can't blame the entire problem on politicians being bought by large-money interests. We are, sad to say, electing the representatives we want which, given the dysfunction in the system, may be scarier than the idea that we've been disenfranchised.
Lack of maintenance might also be an American habit. I remember seeing a documentary about a bridge in New England. There had been a bridge there since colonial times. Like 8 bridges in all. Each one either was allowed to collapse or had to be condemned due to lack of maintenance starting from the first bridge which was a privately owned toll bridge to later publicly owned bridges after the road became state owned.
Just finished a book I was given at Christmas, that covers this topic, and has really coloured by political views:
http://www.scholaries.com/47-Summary_23_Things_they_don%E2%80%99t_tell_you_about_capitalism
Its worth a read.
A a summery the above link is quite long. But the one I remember very clearly is:
There is no such thing as a free market.
The basis of the book is that Capitalism needs to be checked, otherwise the rich get richer, the poorer get poorer, and a countries economy will bubble, crash and burn. That most successful Economies were not built on a free market approach, well, there are 23 points.
It is written by a Korean, and so his insight is unusual for me.... I do not know any Koreans.