When enough is too much

June 17, 2023

How would it be if there was enough to go round, so that nobody had to do without? Great, you might think. Surely that’s the whole point of productive industries?

Nope. Not in capitalism anyway, where the whole point is to produce profits, not product. If there’s too much product, the price falls, and so does profit. The solution is to cut production, even if people need your product.

Thus OPEC cuts oil production by a million barrels a day to keep profits high.

And a plant in Finland was so efficient the price per kWh fell briefly to zero. So they cut the power to users.

That’s capitalist logic for you!