Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (16033)	3/2/2002 11:24:50 PM
From: AC Flyer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Hi Ray: Nice link. I enjoyed the essay, agree with its sentiments, aspire to live that way. I don't understand why you see Maurice as the antithesis of this particular utopian vision. I guess it's a question of how you get there rather than the end point. The answer to all of mankind's problems is economic development, pure and simple. A civilization needs a lot of surplus wealth before it can devote adequate resources to ensuring clean air and water, natural food for everyone and open space in perpetuity. To get that wealth you must have the rule of the law, enforceable contracts, energetic and creative capital markets, adequate but not excessive regulation and a population that wants to work and that contains enough entrepreneurs to make things happen (Maurice's 1%). Civilizations that are ruled by political and cultural dogma, rigid cultural mores, doctrines of "fairness" or that succumb to political corruption and pandering to an entitled populace just won't get the job done. Fortunately, humans are innately competitive and acquisitive and it looks to me as if the unfettered forces of bare knuckled capitalism are going to transform the face of the planet this century. Just as food became incredibly cheap and plentiful in the 20th Century, manufactured goods will become incredibly cheap and plentiful in the 21st, to those civilizations with the backbone to embrace bare-knuckled capitalism. Just as 1% or 2% of the population of the US feed us all now, 10% of the population will provide us with all the cars, appliances and computers that we can use in 40 or so years. That means an incredible increase in the potential quality of life. If you want the "good life" as you say you do, the opportunity is there if you earn it.