This is not a warm, fuzzy, let's-see-how-far-we-can-stretch-the-analogy kind of sentiment. I mean it quite literally. All the important elements are there: Producers, consumers, adaptation to environmental pressures, competition, symbiosis, the perils of monoculture and on and on...
What I want to talk about is the ramifications of the analogy. Contrary to the testosterone-infused epic that some people make of "survival of the fittest," Nature isn't always about every critter for itself. Half an hour working with honeybees should put paid to that "always" for good. (Trust me on this, we've kept bees for years.) Similarly, an economy that exists to reward the most ruthless is not capitalism. It's not even worth the dignity of the term economy: It's basically an enforced Ponzi scheme. Or, in biological terms, the economic equivalent of factory farming, in the most exploitative sense of that phrase.
First, let's agree that you won't have to look too hard to find a regulation that's merely proof that some self-important bureaucrat had to justify her/his salary. But the dirty little secret that's swept under the rug is that many, many regulations were more or less bought and paid for by established business interests. Mainly to raise the barrier to entry for the upstarts who might otherwise force them to adapt. Or to limit the choices of the consumers who might demand changes. One need look no further than the Big Three fighting CAFE standards in the interest of higher profit margins on SUVs, as if peak oil and over-extended consumer credit would never come home to roost.
Similarly, folks in business resist adaptation by dint of buying smaller competitors and destroying their value through the process of assimilation. Or by "partnering" solely with companies of equivalent weight and treating smaller vendors as interchangeable commodities. The whole point of being in business is to find--as in actively seek--ways to manage risk to maximize returns. Yet so many so-called defenders of the free market treat their niches as sinecures. (Not unlike claiming to live by the law of the jungle while shooting tigers from elephant-back.)
The way I see it, the second you stop paying attention--and I mean really paying attention--to what's going on in your niche of the ecosystem because you assume that you can control it, you've lost the right to call yourself a free market capitalist.
And, moreover, paying attention also entails a certain amount of active cultivation, even when it doesn't yield dividends in the short term. Some basic illustrations:
- The contract you toss--with crossed fingers--to the startup of today could be the difference between it going under...or becoming your own customer down the road.
- The budget that allows an employee to squeak in a college class means that the process of solving your problems has fresh information to work with.
- The schedule jiggling you have to do to allow key people to rub elbows with their peers at a conference gives you a chance to put your finger on the proverbial pulse.
- The intern you find time to train could be employee who hits the ground running straight out of school.
