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: LLCF who wrote (27917)	1/26/2003 7:09:35 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74559

<It wouldn't take much imagination for one to chalk up the entire "American Centurie[s]" to free resources including land. > Aztecs, Eskimoes, Incas and company had the whole north and south American continents for a few thousand years and ALL of the resources to themselves. Therefore, we can't chalk up the success of the USA to free resources. Saudi Arabia has free resources and very valuable ones at that. But the place is not wealthy. Iraq has more free resources than Saudi Arabia [if some expectations of reserves turn out to be correct] and civilization [or agriculture or something] got started in Mesopotamia, but they aren't exactly having a century. Switzerland doesn't have mountains of free resources, just mountains, which made road building difficulty. But they seem to have had a century or two. Japan isn't loaded with free resources, but they are still top dog in most people with the most money and the least crime and a number of other desirable attributes. Maoris owned all of NZ for almost 1000 years and lived as cannibalistic warring hunter gatherer stone age tribes. They had free resources to dream of. They still own large chunks of NZ. But they are low in the wealth effect stakes. Impoverished refugees came with nothing from around the world and their descendants are now doing very well. Economics is simple. Civilized, intelligent, creative, energetic people do very well, with our without free resources. Those who have a kleptocratic value system do not. Those who have managed the transition from dominance confiscatory hierarchies to voluntary free exchange of goods and services have done very well. The transition is only partly under way, in all societies. Those most far along the trail are doing best. Those still in the grab-what-you-can-take-from-others state of mind are doing badly. Ray mistakenly thinks capitalism is a grab what you can idea. It's pretty simple really. Free resources are becoming less and less important as the biological and industrial revolution worlds dwindle in importance and the ethereal abstract world of electronics, photonics and cyberspace gathers momentum. Mqurice