>3. I don't think you can get competition to enforce capitalist firms to
>maximize profit, unless you assume a pre-given rationality of maximization
>and predatory behavior. Why do firms squeeze out the maximum profit?
>Because some predator is forcing them to. Well, why is the predator doing
>it? Because another predator is loose. Etc. Sooner or later, you come back
>to the fact that some firm is maximizing profit because that is its
>rationality (which sets the whole process in motion).
I doubt that this is necessary. One could assume initially a random
distribution of behaviours and show that the profit maximising behaviour
was what Maynard Smith calls the evolutionary stable strategy, in that
in a mixed population the profit maximising sub-population would displace
the others.
Paul Cockshott
wpc@cs.strath.ac.uk
http://www.cs.strath.ac.uk/CS/Biog/wpc/index.html