<Nice parenting style Maurice. >
Thanks Geode. I'm delighted to say that we have 4 adult - [aged 29 to 21] offspring all of whom we are very proud and by the objective measure of prison and acceptance by others, are "the right stuff". Kicking them out as toddlers is the key! Plus a few other vital things.
Our first grandson is now 3 months old and pretty soon he'll be old enough to kick out. Already he is showing megalomaniac tendencies which will need to be directed in a good way.
<So, if the double amputee doesn't have money on him while he's wriggling in the street, he's left to die.>
Not at all! One shouldn't walk away from a profit opportunity when the first difficulty arises. They might even be unconscious. One would rescue them immediately as one can't make as much profit from a corpse. One would do the immediate repairs essential to avoid further damage and to stabilize their condition, bringing them around to consciousness and see what they want to do. Put them in a nice comfy hospital with all mod cons. When they see how much help they've already had and how well done, informed perhaps by their family, they'll probably be happy to sign up for further care.
Because as an unconscious person, unable to express their will, they would become "commons" property, there would need to be a law to determine ownership of the repair opportunity. They might choose to wear a bracelet saying "Repairs to be carried out by Mqurice's Medical Services" in which case that company would have the right to take possession of the body parts and carry out the necessary services. Otherwise, like radio spectrum, they repair opportunity would be commons property, with the repair opportunity owned by the state.
The state medical service would carry out essential repairs then bill them for the work, deducting it from income, just like normal taxes.
You obviously don't have much of an eye for profit if you'd walk away from somebody so obviously desperate for services just because they don't have cash on them at the time. Desperate people are the most profitable people. If no other medical provider shows up to offer competition, one could charge a huge amount to provide services. Heck, it would be in the order of $300,000 for many people. Some would be well into the $millions. There would be ambulances and doctors and mobile hospitals racing to help people. The current pathetic services wouldn't get a look in.
<Actually, that IS what happens in the tawdry mess that is the US healthcare system. It's called dumping.>
If people don't want to pay, of course, as with supermarkets, they have to do without the goods and services offered.
<Actually, it was the government that came in and restored order. There simply was not enough of government. In fact, NO needed MORE GOVERNMENT and not less. How can you look on what happened there and think, nope, they needed less government?>
Of course they needed government in New Orleans. But the government was busy doing other things instead of protecting the commons. Look at the incompetence of the government's evacuation before Rita. Within a month, they made another mess.
<Your 'capitalist' world does not exist. You're living in a teenager's fantasy land. The basic requirements to create a capitalist utopia DO NOT EXIST IN REAL LIFE.>
Geode, capitalism is what does exist. It is merely interrupted to a greater or lesser extent by governments. Unfortunately, what could be achieved is greatly reduced everywhere by governments, but some are much worse than others.
<Where is the 'free market'? What is it's address on the face of this planet? Where is it?>
The free market is everywhere a voluntary transaction is made by two people without third parties sticking their noses in and telling them what they have to agree to and stopping other people also offering services to the buyer.
The address of the free market is in the minds of people. They want to be rewarded for what they do. They want recognition and payment. The recognition comes from themselves as well as from others. The payment comes from others who want the goods and services offered by the seller. The free market is made up of recognition and reward for the seller and satisfaction of a need for the buyer. The buyer is getting recognition for what they have previously done to earn recognition and reward. So the buyers and sellers are the same people. Sellers are just buyers, a day earlier.
It's a hall of mirrors feedback loop, synergistically making things better. Each creates the reality for the other, passing the money back and forth like photons bouncing between mirrors, creating the images in the participants' minds.
If some third party comes in and steals the photons or money, the whole process collapses, depending on how much of the money and photons are stolen. If it's just a bit of money to protect the system, that's an unavoidable thing, like entropy in a thermodynamic process - the cost of doing business. If it's a lot, then the hall of mirrors is plunged into the darkness of communism and totalitarianism.
Unfortunately, because of our tribal territorial alpha male kleptocratic dominance hierarchy antecedents, most people still think like you. The concept of freely-traded free will is difficult for them to understand. It has never existed in the biological realm, which has always been red in tooth and claw, in a cannibalistic zero-sum game of survival of the fittest and winner take all. That's what people know; it's built right into their DNA. It takes some imagination to conceptualize another way. The animal world can't even tell time, but most humans can get at least part way there if the concepts are pointed out to them.
In their narrow little perspective, they can understand that they themselves like to be able to buy and sell as they like - they don't want me telling them that they have to work for less money [by reducing their selling price, and by the way, they have to give me half their money to "do good things"]. They have trouble expanding that concept to a large scale. They are like teenagers who are only part way through human development. I kick them out on the street to fend for themselves and they soon figure it out.
Mqurice |
