One thing that irks me about firms in (capitalist) markets is that they don't share information.
Capitalism is supposedly an efficient driver of innovation, but how efficient can it be when efforts are surely duplicated far more often than would happen if firms were collaborating?
So, how do you structure companies and inter-company relationships to foster both innovation (through competition?) and collaboration? Anyone have any info on this?
I realise "companies share information" is utopian as hell but that's me; I don't care about maximising wealth for me or my company at the exclusion of others, I care about benefit to society.
I've thought about this previously, when I did some analysis on some new legislation. I would've liked to have shared it with other companies, but doing so would have removed competitive advantage.
So (capitalist) competition is in this regard actually limiting efficiency and productivity.
There's some reason to care about own/own company's wealth instrumentally then: it allows it to benefit society more or, imo more importantly, allows it to continue doing so for longer by allowing it to weather larger disruptions. For the same reason preserving competitive advantage seems instrumentally desirable.
This all obviously assumes that spending wealth is necessary to get dinner services the company or its employees need, but I don't see how that could not hold in any world vaguely similar to current Europe.
Obviously that creates a rationalisation-inducing trap: how much wealth is enough? How do we weigh continued survival of the company (and thus increased fraction of companies that try to benefit society) against preserving secrets? (Or do we try to e.g. share them with other similar companies only?)
I'm curious whether you have a different viewpoint on this.
