Their proposed solution – of exclusion and creating artificial scarcity – was sketchy but revealing. This would be achieved through creating closed voluntary architectures (as Apple would later pursue with their products for example), changes to copyright law and the active promotion of monopolies – something previously viewed as being at odds with functioning, healthy markets. Summers and DeLong even conceded such a point when they wrote that
temporary monopoly power and profits are the reward needed to spur private enterprise … the right way to think about this complex set of issues is not clear, but it is clear that the competitive paradigm cannot be fully appropriate … we do not yet know what the right replacement paradigm will be.
Nearly two decades later and still nobody can answer that question.
Until now.
What Is Fully Automated Luxury Communism?
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