Barriers to Entry

Also, and aside from the overall bust and failure of the system, the system has manifested its impudence and sheer stupidity in a couple of peculiar ways recently. For one, the system claims to be a capitalist system. But no rational or sane capitalist would incur a national debt like the one which faces the American system today. Second, the Republican House sought to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism through a resolution. What the Republican House failed to realize is that anti-Zionism is anti-occupation, not antisemitism. And history, international law, and reality all tell us that occupation backfires over the long run. It backfires on all the parties involved. Moreover, there are many Jews who are anti-Zionism. Take Bernie Sanders for instance, or Norman Finkelstein and Jill Stein and many of the Jewish figures whom we now find on social media. Are these Jewish figures antisemitic? How can a Jew be truly antisemitic? But that is what the logic of the system suggests, namely, that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, and as a result, it is a failed and stupid logic. 

And as mentioned before, rather than getting caught up in petty culture wars stoked by polarizing politicians and the loudest and most obnoxious people in the public sphere, we have to zero-in on the issues that matter. And the issue that matters the most is the basic change and transformation in the overall organization and structure of both government and industry. There is traditional corporate power on one hand, and on the other hand, there are new entrants into the organization and structure of both government and industry as a result of globalization and technology. Traditional power wants to keep things the way they have always been, while the new entrants want changes. Moreover, the new entrants have already overcome the one and only obstacle which stands in their way, namely, barriers to entry. And what enabled them to overcome this one and only obstacle is globalization and technology. To borrow from Naim:

“To understand the workings of market power…a single quantitative measurement is not enough. Rather, the extent of market power and, with it, the stability of an industry’s structure and the advantage of shelter that its dominant firms enjoy are best gauged by looking at the presence and effectiveness of barriers to entry. And when we do this, a salient trend quickly becomes clear: across the board, the traditional barriers to entry that shaped industry structure for the better part of the twentieth century have grown porous or fallen altogether.”

Naim added: “Axioms of corporate organization have been overturned. As a result, market power is no longer what it used to be. The antidote to business insecurity and instability is losing its effectiveness. And the advantage long considered to be built into corporate scale, scope, and hierarchy has been blunted, or even transformed into a handicap.” This antidote to business insecurity and instability for traditional power, one should note, are the traditional barriers to entry. And as we have just mentioned, barriers to entry are being overcome through globalization and technology. “Creative Destruction” or the “Schumpeter’s Gale” in terms of technology “led to a world in which the old barriers to entry could no longer protect incumbents from the assaults of new challengers.” In sum, and to conclude: “Almost all of the technologies that we either see in museums (the steam engine) or take for granted (the radio) represented a disruption in their time. But today’s technological revolution is unequalled in scope, touching almost every human activity in the world at dizzying speed.” 

In a word, globalization and “technological determinism” to borrow from Marx. And there is a “thoroughness” to these basic and overarching and structural and systemic changes or transformations or trends which is the primary source of dismay for traditional and incumbent power.