As a matter of building off previous posts, and to ensure the “permanance” of content amidst numerous evolving conceptual ideas, I’ll add some additional ideas / thoughts through separate posts. This way, if there are interesting articles I read along the way that are relevant to a past post, I’ll add a commentary such as this one.
Recently (clearly not today, as I am hardly able to maintain a regular time to write), I came across an article by the New York Times by Peter Coy discussing how big boy pharma companies are making bank (well specifically, profits) off the pandemic.
My quick takie is largely centred on the continual “extreme” narratives around this sensitive topic, which continues to pit people against power, as has happened on many occassions across human history. In this case, Coy does note that the high margins are indeed attributable to several major companies, with high pricing power, and able to make these prices stick . Whichever the case, it would appear that the anti-big business trend (namely, walmart, amazon, etc) shall continue as part of the broader ongoing socio-economic trend of inequality and whatnot.
Of course, one can also ask “what are profits?” to which the accounting course I had attended earlier this year provided a far more obfuscated answer than straight, hard cash. Anyway, I immensely dislike accounting - a lesson I had learnt this year.
The Engine of Capitalism
But what really caught my eye in a big way, was Coy’s succinct characterisation that “Reaching for more profit by tring to escape commodification is the engine of capitalism and innovation”.
Such is the beauty and clarity of thought of (I suppose) a well regarded journalist, the equivalance of which I tried to articulate through several thousands of words. Specifically, on the premise of differentiation = escaping commodification.
Of course, my latter posts would probably add to Coy’s sentence that “Reaching for more profit by tring to escape commodification is the engine of capitalism and innovation and intangible bullshit".
As noted in my economic posts, the modern capitalist engine is less driven by Ford’s ingenious Model-T eninges, and more so by flying unicorns (which the world has come to idolise)
Morality of Profit
The article also sparked a natural follow on question on the Morality of Profit, which I’m sure has been debated to death in some 18th century old white man’s room, but it was the sort of spark that left me as a curious bystander rather than an engaged thinker.
For future rerefence (maybe), the article got me thinking about some sort of social judgement around some economic themes:
- Pricing power
- Opportunists (good/bad?)
- Diminishing competition (Bad?)
- Taking advantage of the weak (bad?)
- Raising prices raising supply (good?)
Coy ponders at the end of his article that: “Profit seeking is good, Profiteering is bad; But who gets to decide which is which?".
Indeed so, but I’ll probably need several rounds of drinks with an economist before I reach some sort of drunken epiphany on this.