And, a recent tour of one of the Asian powerhouse’s vehicle plants has proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt, at least to Honda President and CEO Toshihiro Mibe.
“We have no chance against this,” Mibe said upon a visit to a Shanghai parts factory, commenting on its seamless automation across all levels of production. Logistics, procurement and all aspects of the process were so automated, in fact, that he did not spot a single human worker on the supplier’s floor.
Ford executives saying even three years ago that China was way ahead of the game
Toyota’s CEO has likewise said regarding not just his company, but the industry in general, “unless things change, we will not survive”
Compete or die
almost as if competition is what capitalism was always supposed to be about
No, thats what markets are about. Capitalism is about making money by stealing other people’s surplus labor value.
No, that’s what capitalism becomes when unregulated. Just as communism does the same when unregulated. The fact the US is on the literal same trajectory as Russia post USSR collapse is proof.
Open any Economics text book that defines what capitalism is, and by it’s literal definition, OP is correct. Capitalism, at its core, is about using capital + labor to make better products with better materials to compete in a market of others doing the same where consumers ultimately choose which company they buy from; in turn controlling which company thrives or dies. Competition is literally a key component of capitalism. It’s what most regulatory bodies were designed to protect (before they were captured). So without competition, we have something else that just looks like capitalism, but functions exactly like fascism.
I’m not defending capitalism by the way. I’m just pointing out what it is actually defined as versus what it has now become. I wouldn’t say Russia is Communist anymore by any means, so calling what the US and others practice now “Capitalism” is likewise mistaking what their system was in place of what it has become.
Wikipedia disagrees with you. Markets are just one component of capitalism.
The very first line is exactly my definition:
“Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and its use for the purpose of obtaining profit.“
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism
Wikipedia fully agrees with me if you read the very next paragraph from your link you didn’t quote, emphasis mine:
Yes I understand markets are one component of capitalism, I also understand that without them we don’t have capitalism as like you’ve said that’s a constituent component necessary for it to be defined as capitalism.
What market is there for Facebook? Google? X? Your ISP? Your government? Is it like 2 companies you have a choice between at most? Between Verizon or Quest? Between Facebook or MySpace? Between Democrat or Republican?
If there’s extremely limited choices in your markets, you don’t have markets. So you don’t have capitalism.
If you don’t have markets where things can compete for money based on their innovation, you get enshittification from the few companies who control everything. Which is very obviously where we are now.
In short, the enshittification of all things is because we no longer have competitive markets for consumers to use their money to buy what’s best. In its place, instead we have a CRAPitalist system that clearly doesn’t fit the definition of capitalism.
Which is my point. Which is why you cherry picked your answer from Wikipedia rather than reading more than the first paragraph.
So competitive markets are one part of a capitalist system, like I said… and capitalism is defined by using these markets to extract surplus labor value, like I said…