Economy

I listened to this Paul Krugman discussion with Lina Khan as I was making breakfast, and of course competition in the context of tech firms and AI was central. And in that context, the discussion was perfectly rational. That the absence of competition is a net negative. But that's because it's embedded in the larger construction that is our economy, which is structured, mostly, on the concepts of capitalism. But what purpose does an economy serve? It provides an abundance of things we don't need. It extracts resources from the environment and creates waste that becomes problematic. Waste is an "externality," a cost of a good or service that is not captured in its price. Is that a "good" economy? A "functioning" economy? And what is "growth"? How is "economic growth" a good? Can economies defy physics? Is economic growth sustainable? Capitalism focuses on private ownership and private wealth. What is "ownership"? It's an abstraction. An illusion that is propped up by laws and customs.…