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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (151240)	9/10/2002 1:59:31 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1586776

Capitalism isn't anywhere close to 100%. True but if its 40% all the alternatives are more like 5%. That makes it efficient. Tim, it doesn't necessarily make it efficient, just more efficient than the others. [You're funny......you always try to get in the last word] Free market is a misnomer in a modern, technological society. Some systems are just more controlled than others. Not at all. You can have a very free market in a modern technological society. True we don't have a hundred percent free market but no one ever has. But our market is relatively free compared to the rest of the world, or in terms of how much of the economy is controlled by the government so it still makes sense to talk about the US as a free market economy. It is even less problematic to talk about free market ideas abstractly or hypothetically. A true free market is 100% free. Our's is not 100%. And that's why capitalism is inefficient. When the economy's complexity shifts too greatly, the capitalist economy falters and sputters and then some times konks out. Millions or billions of people with trillions of dollars and modern technology are going to want many different things. This will be true whatever type of economic system you have. No person or committee can cope with this complexity as well as a free market. However, sometime in the future, there may be an advanced system that can. You're like the guy who said a car can never be better than the Model T. And yes, the analogy is apt. No it is not. Things improve with technology. The cars that are better then the Model T would be like better examples of a free market system. Yes things will get better, but your still driving cars. Replacing it with a socialist system would be like replacing cars with 15 seat bicycles with the steering controlled from a remote central location. They bikes might get better over time, sleeker, more gears, better radio links for the remote controls, less friction in the gears, but they still will be worse then a decent car for most trips. Why do you read into what I am saying.........I never said replace our system with a socialist one but rather a better one that is more efficient. How? There are a million ways......cut down on the maintenance requirements of plant equipment to boost profits.....workers get physically hurt; cut corners on a residential development in order to bring project in early and boost profits.......homeowners end up having greater maintenance expenses; plant cuts corners and does not install proper environmental controls on a chemical plant and dumps noxious chemicals into the local drinking water in order to boost profits......community, domestic animals, wildlife suffer. The list is endless. None of these are strongly connected to the idea of allowing a profit motivation. Most people who are motivated by the desire for profit do not do these things and they happen even worse in socialist or communist systems. There will always be evil people in any system. Your blaming 9/11 on air travel again. These are not always evil people who cut corners to make more profit....many are simply in need of more money because of bills or family problems and the like. With profit motivation, negative behavior is encouraged.......but not with all people, just the ones who tend to be weak. Tim, don't you understand that the central authority sucked up all the wealth. No I don't understand that because it isn't true. Sure they grabbed tons of it, but a lot of resources where also put towards consumer goods (yes less then here but enough that the people should have had it better then they did) but those resources where largely wasted through inefficiency and through the fact that the resources often went to produce goods and services that where not what people really needed or wanted. You would get far too much of some goods and not nearly enough of most goods, other goods where produced in adequate numbers but where so shoddy that people didn't want to use them or that they quickly broke down and needed to be replaced. Production was not focused on demand, that was an enormous problem. I disagree.........very little went to consumer goods. And yes there was waste and corruption but the allocation was small as well. And we are talking about a nation that is richer than the US in natural resources. The people should have had a good lifestyle instead they were Appalachian poor. How can you be concerned about good craftmanship when you are starving and don't have the right medicines for your children. In the final years of the USSR, its a little known fact but there were reports of cannabalism in the outermost provinces. I don't try to do the best stock trades simply for the money although that's part of it. You might be motivated by desire to learn and perfect your skill , or by enjoyment or by other factors but I doubt you would be trading if you knew you could not make any money from it. More good is done by the desire to make money then by any other single factor. The farmer doesn't grow grain, the backer doesn't make bread, and the store doesn't stock it in their bakery section out of their desire to help people. Because of their self interested desire to make money you can have toast or make a sandwich. To a degree that's true but you put too much emphasis on the profit motivation. The primary emphasis is on survival. ours is a capitalist system.....the Japanese and Germans have more socialistic roots than we do. For years now, the Germans and Japanese have turned out better cars and other products then we have. How can that be? Why is the capitalist incentive not enough? The Germans and Japanese produce good cars because of the capitalist incentives. So I don't see your point. If you want to see what Germans produced without capitalist incentives look to East Germany. Their goods tended to be better then what was produced in most of Eastern Europe when it was behind the iron curtain but they where still (with only a few exceptions) inferior to the goods produced in the west. My point was that there are more socialist trappings in the German and Japanese cultures and yet their products are better. How can that be if profit motivation is the primary driver of quality? The Eastern Germans were subject to the same economic constraints, production deficiencies and inferior product designs as the rest of the Soviet bloc. Its no wonder their quality stunk but the truth is their products were better than the rest of the Soviet bloc, and their standard of living was higher. Not by a lot.......but still higher. How can that be? ted