That’s semantic nonsense. If something is less wasteful than its alternatives, its common to refer to it is being efficient or not wasteful. When you say something is not wasteful, you are not saying that it is completely free from waste, you are just saying it is efficient.
Cartels are an example of a trust, which are illegal in America and pretty much anywhere else with a free market. Cartels and monopolies are bad, but an economic system with good antitrust enforcement will root them out. And a singular cartel that managed to enforce planned obsolescence on one particular product over 80 years ago doesn’t carry very much weight with me.
Again, printers (well, really, printer ink cartridges) are a shady business, but the claim of planned obsolescence is pretty tenuous. Even the most extortionate ink cartridges will usually run until they’re dry. The only example of actual planned obsolescence in your link is of Brother toner cartridges that ask you to replace the toner when it gets low - which you can override with a menu option. So maybe you can get an extra 10-20% out of your toner cartridge with that setting with that brand… again, in the grand scheme of things this is a pretty small example.
You can nitpick inefficiencies in the massive, sprawling, international centuries-old system of capitalism all day, I’m sure. My fundamental point is that a system that is centered around producing goods and services at the highest margins possible is going to have a strong emphasis on eliminating waste wherever possible. When American Airlines found out that a lot of people weren’t eating the singular olive in the salads they served passengers, they removed it for savings of something like 100k in today’s dollars. Covid was a supply chain disaster, but that actually showed just how lean the supply chain actually was—goods were being produced at exactly the right rates for customer demand, so when those demands shifted slightly and some factories shut down due to unprecedented circumstances, there were some shortages.
Anyways, when I say that capitalism is not wasteful (or that it’s “efficient”, or “less wasteful”, or whatever), what I’m really saying is that is the least wasteful economic system when compared to the others. Certainly in the Soviet Union they used more resources to produce fewer goods than the United States (and less aligned with what people wanted and needed). If you have a real-world example of a system that can produce goods more efficiently than capitalism at scale, I would be interested to learn about it.
That’s semantic nonsense. If something is less wasteful than its alternatives, its common to refer to it is being efficient or not wasteful. When you say something is not wasteful, you are not saying that it is completely free from waste, you are just saying it is efficient.
Cartels are an example of a trust, which are illegal in America and pretty much anywhere else with a free market. Cartels and monopolies are bad, but an economic system with good antitrust enforcement will root them out. And a singular cartel that managed to enforce planned obsolescence on one particular product over 80 years ago doesn’t carry very much weight with me.
Again, printers (well, really, printer ink cartridges) are a shady business, but the claim of planned obsolescence is pretty tenuous. Even the most extortionate ink cartridges will usually run until they’re dry. The only example of actual planned obsolescence in your link is of Brother toner cartridges that ask you to replace the toner when it gets low - which you can override with a menu option. So maybe you can get an extra 10-20% out of your toner cartridge with that setting with that brand… again, in the grand scheme of things this is a pretty small example.
You can nitpick inefficiencies in the massive, sprawling, international centuries-old system of capitalism all day, I’m sure. My fundamental point is that a system that is centered around producing goods and services at the highest margins possible is going to have a strong emphasis on eliminating waste wherever possible. When American Airlines found out that a lot of people weren’t eating the singular olive in the salads they served passengers, they removed it for savings of something like 100k in today’s dollars. Covid was a supply chain disaster, but that actually showed just how lean the supply chain actually was—goods were being produced at exactly the right rates for customer demand, so when those demands shifted slightly and some factories shut down due to unprecedented circumstances, there were some shortages.
Anyways, when I say that capitalism is not wasteful (or that it’s “efficient”, or “less wasteful”, or whatever), what I’m really saying is that is the least wasteful economic system when compared to the others. Certainly in the Soviet Union they used more resources to produce fewer goods than the United States (and less aligned with what people wanted and needed). If you have a real-world example of a system that can produce goods more efficiently than capitalism at scale, I would be interested to learn about it.