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"Late Stage Capitalism" really starts to make sense when you realize that profit is literally the measure of inefficiency in a market.

edit: A perfectly efficient market has no profit margin. As a market increases in efficiency, the profit margin of all participants approaches zero. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition

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Profit is the carrot on the economic stick, driving productivity and innovation.

Late Stage Capitalism is a nonsense concept.

Perfect competition is a very simplistic assumption from unrealistic late 19th century economic model by Walras. That is fine for econ 101 but its clearly not what economists have understood for a long time.

Also, water markets are inertly political for the most part, so political economy actually gives you far more insight into how they work then Walrasian micro economics.

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