This "rentier" trend is a genuine thing of course. For instance the imperative to privatise utilities. An interesting example here in Australia is the recently privatised and state owned electricity utilities. (Not all of them have yet been privatised.)
The electricity sale price of each utility is heavily regulated by an "independent price regulator". The regulators are set up by the same state governments that owns the electricity utilities, or recently sold them. But a big problem is that the rules allow the utility to price its product high enough to recoup a fair return on its investment. This is fairly standard across the mainly privatised energy monopolies in this country, but it is not market capitalism, it is 100% monopoly capitalism. The energy monopolies have all tended to "gold-plate" their system, investing in unnecessary plant and equipment, knowing that this will justify them raising prices to match. Electricity prices have jumped enormously in the last few years as a result.
This is classic "rentier" capitalism in the anti-Star Trek view. But really, it is just a form of monopoly capitalism. And monopoly capitalism has been a trend since capitalism was a baby.
Though it may be accelerating somewhat as it becomes more and more difficult for capitalists to find profitable investments? Because that would seem to me to be the basic flaw with the anti-Star Trek vision of "rentier" capitalism. If all profit is ultimately derived from labour, then "rentier" or profits must ultimately be parasitical on capitalist enterprises that exploit labour power. So it impossible to have a stable economic system based almost entirely on "rentier" profits.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas
On 13/10/2013, at 1:36 AM, "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> The society described in anti-startrek is NOT a capitalist society: the core
> of capitalism (according to Marx) is NOT profit but labor as a commodity.
> That is what the late Jim Blaut could not grasp, and it makes nonsense of
> his theories.
>
> Carrol
>
>
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