Lately, I’ve been wondering about capitalism and competition. As I have mentioned in other episodes (links below), competition only occurs when resources are limited. Also, capitalism requires competition to protect consumers from monopolies. While I argue in older episodes that this protective feature often doesn’t work, the fact remains that capitalism requires…
Tag: economics
Growing Smaller is a Worthy Goal Part 2
Here is Part 1 of this two-part series. In it, I focus mostly on the Growth part of the equation In Part 2, I want to focus on the Smaller portion. As I said, I used to be an entrepreneur. In my small town, I struggled to generate enough traffic to…
Growing Smaller is a Worthy Goal
I used to own a brewery. In our rural location and with our small customer pool, we struggled to be profitable. My partners and I disagreed about how to best approach profitability. One had an MBA and swore by the neo-capitalist, Econ 101 approach to maximizing revenues. Following this popular approach,…
Are all Leaders Narcissists? (KEW Episode 124)
The words ‘leader’ and ‘narcissist’ bug me. I think these two words are overused. I also don’t think we really know what they mean anymore. Maybe we never did. Maybe the words have been usurped by the very people defined by them. Let’s start with leadership. What is this, exactly?…
FLASHBACK! KEW Episode 39: The Growth Fallacy
“I meant no harm I most truly did not, but I had to grow bigger so bigger I got. I biggered my factory, I biggered my roads, I biggered the wagons, I biggered the loads, of the Thneeds I shipped out I was shipping them forth from the South, to…
KEW Episode 39: The Growth Fallacy
With respect to economics, people often say that you have to grow to stay in business. I heard this a lot when I tried to run my business at a static level of production (i.e., no growth). I found that we actually HAD MORE MONEY left over when we controlled…
FLASHBACK! to KEW Episode 6: Competition
Often I think competition brings out the worst in people. In ecology, natural selection can be thought of as a solution to competition and the problems it creates. In fact, competition is the mechanism that, when avoided, leads to speciation and biodiversity. In sports and economics competition is often viewed…
KEW Episode 6: Competition
I’m not a big fan of competition. I’m talking specifically about two types of competition we hear about often The first type of competition is within the construct of capitalism. People are constantly referring to how competition ‘regulates markets’ and ‘prevents monopolies’. I guess in this economic sense competition is…