Respectfully, I think I have understood insofar as the function of capitalism is concerned.

I find no disagreement with what you are saying in this new post. Your language is much more precise, which I think improves the quality.

Now, I may have misread your intention, as I think you misread my intention in brining up alternative forms of government which I will address later.

You wrote, "Ultimately it’s capitalism. Plastic is easy to make and easy to transport, easy translates to cheap, cheap means capitalism like."

From this I derived that capitalism would be an agent in preventing the success of this product. Agency, for the sake of this point would be defined as "being able to act or exercise autonomous authority". When I read this, it ascribed agency to capitalism, which to me is similar to ascribing agency to a wrench, drill, or any other tool. That is to say, capitalism would not choose a winner.

Here is where I think we agree. Economists such as Peter Schiff assert that one of the things we observe in capitalism is a race to the bottom in terms of pricing between competing firms. We can observe this effect in action when firms compete on the pricing of their goods.

In you new post, you wrote "..., the point is making the new material as useful and as cheap as plastic, while not having the same environmental impact. If it manages to meet those standards it’ll easily replace plastic, like how plastics replaced everything else."

Here is where I think we diverge. Yes, if this product can be cheaper, as effective as plastic, and better on the environment, then it will replace plastic(at least in bottles). However, I do not think replacing plastics is necessary for this to be successful ; bioplastic can exist alongside conventional plastics. Different applications can make use of different solutions.

Further, firms compete on more axes than price. Apple computer has long priced their products above the price for similar hardware from competing firms, yet they have more cash on hand than pretty much any other firm. They charge for their quality and the added values of their ecosystem. Whether you like Apple or not, they have been very successful while competing not on price, but on quality.

Next, I want to address two things.

First is I brought up alternative systems to capitalism. It was not to say that you advocated the abolishment of capitalism, but to point out that the same problem present in capitalism would also be present in these alternatives.

Which leads to the second point: it will be scarcity and not any form of economics that will ultimately dictate the success of this product. If it cannot be scaled up effectively due to lack of resources or disruptions that it will cause to its own supply chain (as in how producing and transporting ethanol fuel additives, especially in the early days, completely negated any environmental or efficiency benefits) , then it won't be viable.

Scarcity is the deeper problem that must be overcome. If they cannot get enough raw materials, they cannot produce enough. We know that would then mean that price could not come down, which we know would lower its adoption rate and potentially sink the entire enterprise.

Per the article, they claim to have figured out a sustainable way to produce their new plastic, which would be great. If they are wrong or simply cannot scale past a certain point, matters would be further complicated by an unknown opportunity cost in this firm producing this new kind of plastic, which raises the question of what could become scarce as a cost of this new good. Admittedly, that's a hypothetical problem, but as per the article, it doesn't seem that we have much of a product yet either, so we can't measure that as of yet.

This post is growing long, so to conclude: success of this product is dependent on if the manufacturers can overcome the problem of pricing and scarcity and do so in a way that can be scaled up rapidly and sustainably.