I've been thinking a bunch lately about technological increases in productive efficiency, and about some of the different ways that the capitalist pigs scheme to retain control over newfound profits through their manipulation of the means of production.

For example, I remember reading years ago that because of the increase in productivity associated with the modernization of washing machines, modern laundry detergent products are actually way more effective than they need to be (and that their marketing implies). When the bottle tells you to fill up the cap to the marked line, that's actually way more detergent than you need to use for a regular ass load of laundry. Like you literally need somewhere like a third or half of the "recommended" amount of detergent that it says on the bottle lol.

This is because the detergent producers’ profits are tailored to the status quo of their production; if consumption was suddenly halved, the company would have a crisis of overproduction that would eat into their profit margin. obviously this didn't simply happen all at once - but the small increases in efficiency created by the technological boom was not met with an appropriate rise in wages.

I want to start trying to investigate more examples of these situations and products that have been bent to the bourgeoisies' benefit rather than the proles'. I think that trying to become aware of these things is the first step to agitating around concrete ways that people can reclaim value created by these ‘hidden efficiencies,’ as I’ve currently taken to calling them. I'm also very open to suggestions for names that are more clear lol.

What are some hidden efficiencies you’ve noticed in your area of study, profession, or interest?

  • Owl [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I'm about to fall asleep so I'm probably not explaining this that well, but:

    Coke and Pepsi have their own fully separate huge infrastructures for mixing, bottling, and distributing their drinks. That's already one layer of redundancy, but any soft drink not owned by them has to rebuild the entire distribution network, requiring another set of redundancy each.

    And of course that's a huge capital outlay that you can't finance with just a slightly better cola product, so instead the slightly better cola product just doesn't exist. Products are limited to ones that either fit into the portfolio of an existing manufacturer, or which for some outside reason have funding for an entire factory.

    But there's nothing actually different between a Coke plant or a Pepsi plant or a Jarritos plant. You could give any of them a jug of syrup and stack of labels and they'd make whatever the others do. They could take a batch of your crazy uncle's pickled beet syrup, ship batches of that across the continent, and call him back if it turns out people are asking for more. They already have this capability, it's just less profitable than selling the syrup recipe they already own.

    If the soft drink mixing, bottling, and distribution infrastructure was all merged, it'd be entirely possible (practically easy) to have more variety of sodas distributed everywhere. And I think that's interesting, since people keep saying capitalism gives us the greatest variety of treats.

    Roughly this same thing happens with the sugared grain product manufacturers. Also media streaming services.