while finance capitalism is even more insane than industrial capitalism -- insanity of an even more abstracted, refined, and goofy order -- the fundamental disconnect where little details like entropy and thermodynamics are ignored, where the technomass is privileged over (and esterminates) the biomass, happens in the industrial model itself, whose materialist Utopian promise underlies both capitalism and communism. The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
Firstly price and value are quantifications of individual desire. They can be time-based in the futures market sense. But they lack any wider social or ecological context. No system which is based on gimme gimme can be worth much, except possibly to children.
Secondly the concept of price is meaningless when relationships are assymetric. If a corporation decides that an object will cost £x, individuals have no bargaining power to change that cost. In the grossest sense they can either buy or not buy, but the price is not only set for them, but desire is artificially stimulated using media brainwashing techniques.
Economics in the real world is based almost entirely on these assymetrical power relationships. Convenient fictions about markets and rational agents are delusional, because all markets include a bias that favours some traders over others.
Finally, economics reduces all human transactions to a price and states that this price is the only important consideration.
The horror of this system isn't only that it's outdated and obsolete, or even that it's a major factor in the coming eco-crash.
The true horror is that so many humans seem to take the monster at face value, treating it affectionately, and accepting its diktats without questioning them.
