Costly Efficiencies: Health Care Spending, Covid-19, and the Public/Private Health Care Debate

capital as power cost/benefit COVID-19 health care private/public sabotageThe debate around public versus private health care often turns on cost – that is, on how to reduce costs, and particularly government expenditures, when it comes to health care. This paper examines the theoretical and empirical relationship between health costs and health outcomes in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It proposes an alternative political economic framework – capital-as-power – for understanding how the provision of health care affects the relationship between health care costs and health outcomes, arguing that private health care realizes profits through the strategic limitation of health services. It presents empirical evidence suggesting that in countries which rely more heavily on private health care, higher overall health care expenditures predict more severe COVID-19 outbreaks, contradicting the argument that private health care services are more cost-efficient or will lead to better health outcomes at a lower cost

Soft-wars': The Differential Trajectories of Google and Microsoft -- A Capital as Power Analysis

capital as power differential accumulation Google MicrosoftFROM THE ARTICLE: According to the capital as power framework, pecuniary earnings, or profits, are a symbolic representation of the struggle for power between different capitalist groups. In this struggle, capitalists measure their own power differentially – that is, relative to other capitalist entities. The focus on differential power, expressed in differential earnings, leads firms to try to beat an average rate of return. In order for the profits of one firm to beat the average, others must be prevented from accessing the same earnings. In an environment with hundreds, thousands or even millions of similar sized firms, it would be difficult if not impossible to empirically isolate the relationship between shifts in power between any two firms. However, in most industries, only a handful of firms dominate, theoretically making the microanalysis of such a relationship much more feasible. It is my contention that this is largely true for the computer technology industry in the US. Within the computer technology industry, Microsoft and Google stand out as two of the most profitable and most powerful firms. As such, it is logical to assume that in differential power terms, Google’s rapid rise poses a direct threat to Microsoft’s dominance. Moreover, in recent years both companies have expanded beyond their respective core profitable businesses, coming into more and more direct competition. [. . .] The purpose of this paper is to show that, despite the fact that Google and Microsoft currently derive the majority of their profits from separate businesses, competition between them can be empirically observed in the way each firm pursues the differential accumulation of power

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FW 2017 Jan Rehner Writing Prize Finalists, 1st Year Winner WRIT 170

No Shortage of Profit: Technological Change, Chip 'Shortages', and Capital Accumulation in the Semiconductor Business

Rapid technological change is often touted as a fundamental reality of capitalist societies. It is also often presented as concrete evidence for the supposed progressive improvement of material well-being that characterises the capitalist system of social order. Since its emergence in the mid-20th century, semiconductor technology in many ways exemplifies this reality. Yet the rapid advancement of semiconductor technology has also been accompanied by social conflict. The history of the technology is as much a story of frequent global chip ‘shortages’ and geopolitical disputes as it is one of exponentially growing computational power. The purpose of this study is to examine how the two sides of this story—progress and conflict—are linked. Starting from the theoretical political economic framework of capital as power, I put organized social power at the central of this inquiry. I examine the behaviour of large semiconductor manufacturing firms in an attempt to uncover empirical relationships between capital investment, chip ‘shortages’, prices, and profits. Using quantitative and qualitative analysis, I find that rapid technological change in the business of semiconductors can be both a problem and a solution in the pursuit of differential capital accumulation

Costly Efficiencies: Health Care Spending, COVID-19, and the Public/Private Health Care Debate

* Winner of the 2022 RECASP First Essay Prize * Proponents of private healthcare often claim that the private sector is more ‘efficient’ at delivering healthcare services. This paper tests the privatization thesis in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a large sample of countries, I investigate how healthcare privatization affects the correlation between COVID-19 death rates and healthcare spending (as a share of GDP). In countries with healthcare that is mostly public, I find no correlation. However, in countries with significant healthcare privatization, I find that greater healthcare spending was associated with more COVID-19 deaths. This result is consistent with the theory of ‘capital as power’, which argues that to earn profits, the private sector seeks to strategically limit the provision of social goods

Technological Change and Strategic Sabotage: A Capital as Power Analysis of the US Semiconductor Business

Rapid technological change is often touted as a fundamental reality of capitalist societies. It is also presented as concrete evidence for the supposed progressive improvement of material well-being that characterises the capitalist system of social order. Since its emergence in the mid-20th century, semiconductor technology in many ways exemplifies this view. Yet the rapid advancement of semiconductor technology has also been accompanied by social conflict. The history of the technology is as much a story of frequent global chip ‘shortages’ and geopolitical disputes as it is one of exponentially growing computational power. The purpose of this study is to examine how the two sides of this story—progress and conflict—are linked. Starting from the theoretical political economic framework of capital as power, I put organized social power at the centre of this inquiry. I examine the behaviour of large semiconductor manufacturing firms in an attempt to uncover empirical relationships between capital investment, chip ‘shortages’, prices, and profits. Using quantitative and qualitative analysis, I find evidence that dominant semiconductor firms have engaged in systematic underinvestment in order to control chip prices for differential gain

Teknojätit ja pääoman vallankäyttö (Techno giants and the use of power by capital)

Pääoma valtana -viitekehys, jonka on kehittänyt Jonathan Nitzan ja Shimshon Bichler, esittää että liiketoiminnan tavoite ei ole ‘liikevoiton maksimointi’ vaan differentiaalinen yhteiskunnallisen vallan akkumulointi. Tätä viitekehystä teoreettisena lähtökohtana käyttäen analysoin Googlen ja Microsoftin vallan akkumulointistrategioita. Esitän kvalitatiivista ja kvantitatiivista näyttöä, josta käy ilmi, että huolimatta siitä että Google ja Microsoft tällä hetkellä saavat suurimman osan liikevoitostaan erillisestä liiketoiminnasta (ja näin perinteisen logiikan mukaan ne eivät ole toistensa suoranaisia kilpailijoita), nämä kaksi yritystä ovat kuitenkin kilpasilla keskenään tietojenkäsittelyteollisuuden kontrollista