I don't think that capitalism inherently implies "throw a bunch of garbage around". It's true that it may not be a priori possible to decide which way is the best - that's why competition is important - but that doesn't mean that everyone should purposefully run into a garbage direction just because of garbage trends and because the same few investors are funding all big companies.
It effectively turns the problem of finding good solutions to whatever problem (and often there's not even a problem that anyone can point to) into a brute-force search. I don't think that's efficient.
Uh oh, sounds like someone wants a command economy!
No, honestly that's exactly what you're saying "You shouldn't do X because I don't think it will have a potential payoff". Now in some particular cases where there are particular social or environmental harms we may pass laws to limit said behavior. After that point businesses and individuals have the right to waste money on whatever they like.
Note, this is why it's also important to have government funded research on things that may not be profitable. While industry is screwing around trying to squeeze and extra penny out of a dime, research projects, while risky can find hidden quarters.
> Uh oh, sounds like someone wants a command economy!
Is it possible to get your point across without accusing me of things I've never implied?
I didn't say that we should pass laws to prevent people from throwing shit at the wall. But I think that we live in a collective delusion if we think that that's the right way to make progress.
I don't think they were wrong about you implying it, though.
If you don't want people to assume you're proposing some form of command economy, then it's on you to concretely articulate how you envision avoiding the chaos of capitalism without resorting to the authoritarianism of a command economy.
I didn't really imply any sort of teleological character to what I was saying.
I do think that there's a tendency for this kind of thing to happen at a much larger scale in capitalist economies, but I don't think that's intentional. It's just an inevitable consequence of actual humans operating in such a system. That also doesn't mean that any one person consciously believes what they're doing is garbage - I'm sure they're all confident in their idea.
But it's really, really difficult for me to perceive a practical distinction between millions of people all operating under widely varying and often mutually contradictory beliefs, and simple randomness. Maybe that's my statistical training affecting how I view the world, though.
It effectively turns the problem of finding good solutions to whatever problem (and often there's not even a problem that anyone can point to) into a brute-force search. I don't think that's efficient.