This is the standard Supply-Demand Curve taught in every Keynesian Economics book ever.
And, of course it seems quite logical.
The price goes down, more people will be able to buy it.
The price goes up, more manufacturers will want to produce it.
But, this is not the world we live in.
Monopolies exist in many places simply because no one wants to (or can) compete with economies of scale.
Such as, all of our toasters are made by the CCP.
They may have different names on the label, but they all trace back to a mere handful of points.
This Supply-Demand graph is closer to what exists today in developed nations for toasters.
The supply curve is a flat line. It goes from the minimum amount of toasters needed to keep a manufacturing building in existence and goes to the maximum amount of toasters that manufacturing facility can make without increased tooling.
Not until a sustained demand is shown for a long period of time, will a group open up another toaster manufacturing plant.
So, there is a very specific minimum amount of toasters and a maximum amount of toasters.
And almost nothing can change this.
What is worse is demand.
In developed nations there is really no actual demand for toasters. Everyone who wants one, has one. And, if you really wanted one, you could probably knock on three doors and if you are decent at asking, get a toaster.. or three.
Toaster purchases are done mostly because the old one is looking worn and shabby by people who wish their kitchens to look fabulous... or sometimes because the crappy shit they sell now-a-days breaks, and so you need a new toaster.
The price is set by marketing and adjusted through sales or coupons.
It has no bearing on the actual production cost.
(A complete toaster is about $1 to manufacture. Including those fancy ones you see for $100+ at the expensive stores)
Demand is set by how much advertising is done.
Magazines, especially those ones that show kitchen remodels.
Sales fliers showing this fabulous toaster at the awesome price of 10x the cost to manufacture!
Movies and television.
Without the planned obsolescence and getting people to buy a new toaster because they want the new stylish toaster, there would be almost no toaster sales. We would have to change to some model of manufacturing where you made a new toaster on demand.
The Supply-Demand curve taught in economics courses is really bogus and misleading.
There is a real cap on how much stuff a person can consume. Even if it was all free. So, those graphs of demand going parabolic as price goes down are bogus. You can only eat so many hamburgers, even if they are offered for free.
And manufacturing today is not something where you can just throw another person at it and get some more.
It is very constrained by the assembly line setup. It is all decided years before a good is ever manufactured. It has very set-in-metal minimums and maximums
Plus, competition is really an illusion in this current marketplace.
All the different brands are often all made in the same building. Sometimes with the same parts.
All this is a reason why Distributed Manufacturing will be a key feature in the future.
If you have some guy, who can go out in his garage and build you a toaster, at the time you need it, then we can work with lower minimums. The overhead of the toaster making stuff, in your garage, is very minimal. Also this equates to the toaster's cost being directly related to how much it cost in materials and how much time this guy puts into it.
On the other hand, we can also scale up toaster manufacturing by adding more garages into the network. Say that "EMP" destroyed all the toasters and we needed to make 300 million of them, one for every American. Then we could do that. We could easily replicate the garage building process in another garage.
If you are wondering where is "the end of capitalism" in this article, well, you need to understand what capitalism refers to. It is the gathering of capital to create the assembly line to make the toasters. With a distributed manufacturing, very little capital gets placed in any one garage. And we stop having a consumer economy and one more based on real need... and a real ability to fill that need.
I really like hearing your ideas about distributed manufacturing. It would make sense that at some point when the Ponzi house of cards collapses that we would see the consumerism go, and the economies of scale with it. Couple this with the tech we already have and what's yet to be invented and this is very possible. Proof of concept can be seen with a lot of YouTubers whose content revolves around project vehicles or designing and building cool stuff. I watch them from when they're tiny and quite unsophisticated, using basic hand tools etc., then they tend to upgrade their shops over time, get lathes and mills, cnc plasma tables and the like until they have a full blown manufacturing facility for making one off parts. Supply chain issues are really accelerating this. It's so much easier to take a few minutes and make something than it is to drive a couple hours to get it, or wait days to have it delivered across the country. I think this kind of thing is very possible to spread to everyone if the need arises. Not everyone has the justification for such things now. You can just go to the store and buy something or wait for it in the mail if your livelihood doesn't depend on it. That may change at some point.
It has never been easier to manufacture stuff in your garage.
But, it has also never been harder as everyone expects sleek plastic housing and tons of bells and whistles.
Todays stuff is almost impossible to work with, modify or fix. (as opposed to the 50s, where most guys tinkered with their cars)
Definitely. A couple years ago I tried repairing an electric pressure washer. I had to partially destroy the housing to get it apart. Once I got inside, no user serviceable parts. It cost me $30 off of craigslist and I used it for years, so tossing it wasn't a big deal, but to your point, this is the way they do it. It's cheaper just to buy a new one. I wouldn't be able to compete with that.
THIS. So many people don't realise this. Car manufacturers have this down a tee. Tool manufacturers, too.
My Ford Focus shares so many components with the same model year (and later) Mazda 3. You can use the engine mounts from one on the other, for example. There are many other shared components, too.
VW does this across its range of brands, Skoda, VW, Audi, Polestar, Porsche. Its all about the marketing simply being different for the same junk.
Glad we could connect over the economics of toasters. :)
Sometimes I pause to think and for "all the advancement of engineering and design", we still only have two or three suppliers in certain fields for certain things. Boeing and Airbus for large commercial jets, for example.
It feels like we should be so much further in front of the "Technological" curve if only we slowed down to speed up, instead of just trying to constantly be fast.
real free market economy, agorism will kill crony capitalism/ etatism/ corporatism
capitalism and socialism will go away too. These words are wrong. But, that is hard to explain till the new words come out.
This will be like going from DOS to Windows XP.
Maybe i will try to write a post about it, but that is difficult... cause no words.
use philosophy
learn to articulate and express yourself
there are reasons why ideas and philosophy exist
if there is no word, create one for what you mean
can't be that HARD?
or close your mouth and look through what people already have been working on since 100 years (austrian school, praxeology, agorism)
have fun reading
Unfortunately, this strikes a nerve.
It is not because i haven't read. It is not because i haven't tried my hardest to explain things.
All my life i have been in a position of trying to explain what doesn't exist and the impossible.
It has left me feeling useless. Not smart enough.
And my brain loses words.
Try as i might.
It is like trying to talk about bitcoin 20 years ago.
Can't even talk about solutions yet, can only talk about talking about the problem and pointing out problems with current paradigms and thinking.
okay, I can feel you very strong
still, I strongly recommend not putting your life force into alien pre-formed thinking patterns, very widely shared memeviruses
it is all part of the disintegration agenda - post-modernism, post-humanism
philosophy is sadly also very monopolized - as everything, thanks to the money monopoly
people have been talking about the philosophy behind bitcoin over 60 years ago
you know the roots of cypher punks (the real, not modern pop) ?
modern programmers take ideas out of very old cypherpunk literature..