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

To: marek_wojna who wrote (20667)	7/1/2002 6:20:47 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

<one technology killing another one with the speed of the photons Maurice is so proud of, China as manufacturing monster> Marek, I too use florid metaphorical language, but we can trap ourselves with our own analogies. In fact, one technology doesn't actually kill another. What actually happens is that people invent a technology to serve some function they have to satisfy their drives. After a while, somebody [maybe the same people] invent another technology which replaces the previous technology. The creation and replacements only happen if the users of those technologies find so much benefit in those technologies that they hand over their hard-earned money to use those technologies. They have to hand over sufficient of their money to justify the investors in those technologies risking their hard-earned cash in the creation and production of said technologies. The investors and inventors have to guess at how much money they'll make based on how much they think the users will appreciate the technology. People know that some technologies are replaced quite quickly, such as computers, so the tax authorities allow depreciation at very rapid rates. Other technologies, such as houses or big buildings depreciate at much slower rates, so returns are expected over a long period of time. It is not a negative or bad situation that technologies are 'killing' each other off in short order. That is good. It's good because it means that things are getting better really fast. The creators of the short-lived technologies make their money in a short time [if they know what they are doing] and that's fine. Because it's so hectic, plenty of people make a mistake and lose their investment. That's life in the fast lane! If they succeed, they make a fortune. The risk to reward ratio is what keeps investors coming back for more. They can earn 1% in the bank or 100% in the hot new technologies [if they own the 1:50 which get the wild success]. That risk suits plenty of people. Regarding China as a manufacturing monster. They are actually people getting up, going to work, producing something, getting their money and going home to their love, families, friends, food, fun and fighting. They are not monsters. There are a lot of them. That's a good thing. The more the merrier. Many people enables very low unit costs and huge markets enable a vast array of technologies to be developed, even for very specialized applications. We do not want manufacturing minnows. Monsters produce a LOT of stuff and can do it cheaply and with good quality. Again, your use of the word 'monster' gives a negative meaning rather than the positive one that large scale manufacturing should have. We all benefit from low-cost, large-scale, high-quality manufacturing. Yes, there are now 6 billion people instead of the 1 billion or so of a century ago and those 6 billion are doing vastly different things with vastly different technologies than the rural agricultural life which nearly everyone on earth suffered 100 years ago. Yes, that means that there is a LOT of adaptation required and yes, adaptation is stressful and people sitting in a comfortable monopoly position resist adaptation. But the world is not run for a few monopolists. It's run for 6 billion people. Those 6 billion are wanting their lives to be better. The gloom and doomsters and environmental wackoes think that 6 billion people is too many people. But very few of those people feel that they are surplus to requirements though they wouldn't mind some of the others being ditched. Almost none of those people have negative value, as shown by the fact that murder, mayhem and war are trivial in the modern world and that what they can buy for their day's work is vastly more than they could buy a century ago. Progress has been amazing over 100 years. I think that most people in China can afford a watch. 100 years ago, almost nobody had a watch and towns might have a clock on the steeple. Calculators are common now whereas 100 years ago many people could count and do a bit of arithmetic using an abacus or pencil and paper. Cars trump horses. 747s beat boats. Vaccinations beat death by disease. The poorest people are benefiting from these technologies, even if they don't use them directly themselves. Life is good. The more the merrier. Getting political/military thugs off people's backs is the main problem. Getting liberal capitalism spread around the world is the main capitulation needed. Capitulation of authoritarian collectivists kleptocrats is the key to peace, light and harmony. Capitulation of stock markets is trivial and a mere market clearing of irrational exuberance. I too am curious how it will look. Maybe we'll have a re-run of the 1930s and 1940s - the nature of people and their ignorance hasn't changed much. GeorgeW worries about the Axis of Evil [the trivial triad of North Korea, Iran and Iraq] but far more worrying is the potential for a global Matrix of Malevolence, [which incorporates his own citizens with their school mass murders, Tim McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski, John Walker Linde, daily toll of shootings, lest he think that the Matrix of Malevolence is solely an alien phenomenon]. I think that good will overcome evil because that's the nature of life - by definition. Evil can only exist when good has created something to be contaminated and destroyed by malevolence. Malevolence creates nothing. Because people universally want their lives better, not worse, there is an arrow of time which pushes in that direction, albeit two steps forward, one step back. Or, maybe 4 steps forwards, half back [my preference]. Yes, I've taken a couple of words and blown them up into a rant, unrelated to what you were discussing, but that's just me!! It's hard to know what will trigger a rant or a market collapse or capitulation. Using my name and denigrating my beloved phragmented photons and China's 1.3 billion people who will phragment photons faster than anywhere in history and discussing technology like some nasty dog fight was bound to get me going. Now, back to your normal progamme. Mqurice