> To the extent that capitalists expend effort not to serve our needs but
>to alter them, that is the typical capitalist response to a market: try to
>subvert that market by exerting monopoly power. The capitalist is always
>trying to steer the market economy towards his monopoly power.
so, how are you going to make them stop doing this? what changes in the current social institution otherwise known as a capitalist market economy are required to bring about a market economy where people are only ever "incented" (heh) to make what people need? what stops them from trying to remake needs to their advantage? the lowest cost to you is usually going to occur when the maker of a product can make a _lot_ because there is a big demand.
i'm currently working on a product for the company i work for. if I make it and sell it to the very small market we have the infrastructure to actually reach (we're a small company), the cost to the consumer will be incredibly high. so, the plan would be to eat it for awhile. in turn, we'll invest in marketing efforts, pretty darn unsophisticated ones comparatively. eventually, we should get enough customers and we can start making profits built on volume production. But, even then, after we hit a certain volume, there will be added costs to managing the distribution of the product to the consumer (costs we didn't have when we were smaller), and that will eat into our profits. unless of course we can get even more customers, effectively moving us past that threshold where an even greater volume of sales makes production profitable again.
Kelley