@pansocial @nixCraft the nice thing about a market ecosystem is that the companies compete with each other and so price=supply/demand works. Cheaper production does make them lower prices because that's how they stay competitive.
And I think you misunderstood what I meant by profit being net value provided to society. Revenue is receiving money proportional to value provided to the payers. Cost is spending money proportional to value taken from the payees. Profit is therefore proportional to the net value provided to society. It doesn't matter what they spend the money on, they had to provide value to earn it and the monetary profits they receive are only a reward for it.
Supply and demand work reliably under impossible conditions that do not exist.
For example:
Consumers must be able to make an unmanipulated choice among a complete selection of commodities.
One cannot pick the right product if terms are unknown, they are misled, lack access, or lack the ability to withhold demand. Rationing or not having access to insulin kills 4 to 5 people a year. I'm sure each of them, and more would like cheaper insulin, but they can only buy it as cheap
as the market provides. If that means you barely make rent: "fuck you," says the business owner, "you demanded insulin and I provided it at a price the market is buying. Now let me invest in some fine art and stock buybacks."
Consumers demand is manipulated by market knowledge, availability, urgency, etc.
All of these are used against consumers to maintain profit. You get little say in what Walmart stocks. Target didn't drop the queer merch, bud lite lives, etc.
@pansocial @nixCraft "Supply and demand work reliably under impossible conditions that do not exist" is an insane take, just because both supply and demand can be manipulated to some extent doesn't mean they don't work lol. They work very well and pathological extremes such as the US's insulin problem (which only affects the US, which uses regulatory bodies to stifle competition and artificially keep insulin price high) are caused by either monopolies or regulations that make it hard or impossible for healthy competition to occur.
Anyway, I'm not gonna waste any more time arguing over economy on the Internet, if you don't believe that automating work makes its results cheaper then continue to pay manual computers for doing math for you and buy only hand-crafted goods as surely they should have the same price as mass-produced ones.
