[p2p-research] The Production Bubble: Why Capitalism Withholds Solutions and Gets Away with It

[Patrick Anderson]

Ryan Lanham wrote:
> Wheat is going to be under pressure because it is a
> hot wet summer in the US...so volumes will again be high.

Hey Ryan,

Thanks for the response.


We need to question our long-standing assumption about how markets must work.

When you say wheat will be "under pressure" because of "high volumes"
you are saying Prices go down as Supply goes up.

This is the Econ 101 argument that Abundance is Bad and Scarcity is
Good because of how Supply reduces Demand.

It is assumed that we must keep Prices above Cost because of our
previous assumption that the Means of Production (the farms for
example) are not owned by the Consumers who need that product.



But let's open our minds to allow a new way of thinking about this.

Imagine 10,000 Consumers buy a large wheat farm from a farmer who is
going bankrupt.  They re-hire that same farmer and his employees to
continue working there.

At the end of the season the Owners/Consumers do not buy the wheat
from themselves (this is different from a co-op), but instead
*already* own the product as a side-effect of their ownership in the
Land and Tools.

Overproduction is not a problem in this model.  These Owners don't
need to destroy the grain or worry about prices at all because they
are not even 'playing' in that arena.

They can dump the excess by selling it 'at-cost' or even by giving it
away to the poor if they like, for it does them no harm.

This Mode of Production does not promote Scarcity because the reward
for investment is the Product itself instead of trying to keep Price
and Cost during the usual post-facto exchange of the goods.


This approach is the only form of organization I have found that does
not otherwise *require* scarcity be perpetuated.