Nation-state desires & institutional desires are human desires. Capital can't "fire" capital owners, that's just a non-sequitur, the very concept of capital ownership is both defined and enforced by human beings. Other capital owners and consumers, ie. humans, fire them. Yes, entire industries are reconfigured and nation-states are redrawn because some humans want them to be reconfigured.
This seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of what people mean when they refer to organizations as entities. One might group together the common interests of an organization as a whole for the sake of simplifying discussion, but that in no way implies that an organization is actually some kind of inhuman entity that functions without humans. When people say "the government wants X" or "Britain doesn't like Y", they don't mean it literally. Government is nothing without the human politicians and officials it's comprised of and/or the human citizens that recognize its authority. A hundred dollar bill is worth nothing without humans to want it and the things it can buy. Suggesting that capitalism can produce non-human economic value contradicts the most basic definition of economic value.
And no, I don't think only humans have desires, but the capitalist economy we have created is based on human desires. Horses clearly have desires too, but thus far they have not invented an economy to serve horse desires. It wasn't non-existent horse capitalism that replaced horses, it was human capitalism.
> Of all the firms in human existence maybe a fraction of a percent are still around. You think the 'owners' of capital wanted that to happen?
Yes actually, I don't know why you think that's somehow undesirable. A lot of firms fail to adapt to human desires & needs so humans drop them. I'm honestly confused at the implication that capital owners want a lot of "firms" to exist when they're only a means to an end.
>One might group together the common interests of an organization as a whole for the sake of simplifying discussion, but
the same applies to you. You're a system of competing interests which we call "themacguffinman" solely for the purpose of simplification. You're nothing but an organisation of cells, systems and drives and the interaction of a lot of parts that we slap a label on for practical purposes. When we say something like "Britain likes X" we actually should take it literally, because Britain is a very real thing. Just like your body sends immune cells to kill themselves to fend off a disease, Britain sends her soldiers to die for a quasi empty rock off the coast of Argentina. Britain has territory, but none of her citizens have one. Britain has interests that are older and different than the interests of any of her people.
The world actually makes a lot more sense when you let go of the very atavistic idea that humans have any sort of special ontological status or have some level of realness that other entities don't have, it's just systems all the way up and down.
People actually intuitively understand this when they discuss the so called 'AI alignment problem'. They just don't understand that all the AIs are already around and we're solving alignment problems with entities with non-human desires and interests all day already.
> Britain has interests that are older and different than the interests of any of her people.
Well no, Britain's interests are literally and technically and metaphorically and whatever-ly not older than the interests of any of her people. Britain did not exist in any way, shape, or form before any of her people. The humans of Britain sent other humans of Britain to die for the sake of humans of Britain. Britain doesn't have territory, the rulers and leaders of Britain have territory. Someone always benefits.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of systems thinking. It can be useful to describe the collective interests of an organization as a whole system, but they're still human interests. Sending immune cells to kill themselves to fend off a disease is still in the interests of cells, just like the humans of Britain sending humans to die in a war is still in the interests of humans. And just like humans can't have interests without cells, organizations and economies can't have interests without humans.
I'm also not saying that humans are special or unique in the way that they can have interests, I'm saying that the capitalist economy we live in is defined by human interests and cannot somehow become non-human. Human interests will always be involved because that's how we define the system of capitalism & economy. Suggesting that our economy could somehow replace all humans makes as much sense to me as suggesting that a body of water could some day replace all of its H2O molecules.
I'm going to go ahead and say that of course increasing inequality caused by capitalism is a major concern for many humans which seems to be what you're getting at. This talk of Britain & capitalism functioning without humans is distractingly nonsensical. No, capitalism can't get rid of humans because a capitalist economy without humans is not a capitalist economy. No, the importance of horses is not comparable to the importance of humans to a system literally defined by interactions between humans.
> Yes, entire industries are reconfigured and nation-states are redrawn because some humans want them to be reconfigured.
I think you're missing the point that if necessary, the humans involved can be swapped out until ones with the 'right' desires are in place.
> but that in no way implies that an organization is actually some kind of inhuman entity that functions without humans.
An organization doesn't have to be capable of functioning without humans to be an inhuman entity with inhuman motivations and so on. The human components just need to be fungible and more easily steered by tweaking incentives etc. than the organization is.
For that matter, epiphenomena like regulatory capture really don't occur at an individual level much, but largely at the interface between governments/agencies and corporations, or even higher-level entities like industry trade groups and consortia.
This seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of what people mean when they refer to organizations as entities. One might group together the common interests of an organization as a whole for the sake of simplifying discussion, but that in no way implies that an organization is actually some kind of inhuman entity that functions without humans. When people say "the government wants X" or "Britain doesn't like Y", they don't mean it literally. Government is nothing without the human politicians and officials it's comprised of and/or the human citizens that recognize its authority. A hundred dollar bill is worth nothing without humans to want it and the things it can buy. Suggesting that capitalism can produce non-human economic value contradicts the most basic definition of economic value.
And no, I don't think only humans have desires, but the capitalist economy we have created is based on human desires. Horses clearly have desires too, but thus far they have not invented an economy to serve horse desires. It wasn't non-existent horse capitalism that replaced horses, it was human capitalism.
> Of all the firms in human existence maybe a fraction of a percent are still around. You think the 'owners' of capital wanted that to happen?
Yes actually, I don't know why you think that's somehow undesirable. A lot of firms fail to adapt to human desires & needs so humans drop them. I'm honestly confused at the implication that capital owners want a lot of "firms" to exist when they're only a means to an end.