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 : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ali Chen who wrote (13843)	9/23/2003 2:36:49 AM
From: gpowell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Sorry to butt in, but it is very simple: a dollar kept by you will be likely spent on a tip in a junk restaurant, or for an extra bag of donuts you do not need anyway. Many dollars collected together in government programs allow the country to run advanced research and develop new technologies, and fund academic research which generates new ideas and helps to better educate our children. I guess you would deny Steve Wozniak a little chump change to create the first Apple PC, when nearly everyone but a few nuts thought it was a waste of time and money. After all, it didn’t do anything and there was absolutely no market for it – everyone knew that. Right? Innovation is not planned and this is why centrally planned economies always lag behind an unplanned one in the long run. In the real world government spending does not always lead to productive outcomes. Certainly, some does - and as a society we can decide to collect and spend money on goals we feel contribute to some public good. I think you omit al least half of the equation here. To "pursue heir own interests", "free individuals" must operate in certain "free" environment. What do you think creates this environment and maintains its relative stability? The social "deadweight" you are referring to is an inseparable part of any society, and the society has to deal with it, which comes at some cost. Apparently, you don’t understand the term deadweight welfare loss so how can you presume to make a cogent rebuttal to my assertion. In fact, if you really understood my statement you would see that I am saying nearly the same thing as you - just more succinctly and accurately. You might want to look up the term “spontaneous order”. You may learn to understand and appreciate the nature of spontaneous order and the institutions that underlie that order-namely, private property, freedom of contract, and limited government. Thinking that our economic society sprung from some central plan or can be improved upon by central planning is the height of pretense to knowledge. Really, this thinking was popular in the middle of the last century but has been thoroughly discredited by mainstream economic thought. It sounds like it's only you who know exactly where to spend your money most effectively ;-) I bet, a statistical taxpayer would rather vote for a sixpack and a bag of popcorn rather than voluntarily give away his extra dollar for a bioengineering or space research he has no clue about and never heard of. Like the DARPA project. Yes – I’m an expert on where to spend my money. I value my government and my freedom to speak my mind and pursue my own interests - knowing full well that contracts will be enforced and the presumption that my possessions will be protected. These are freedoms I’m will to pay for. The fact that not everyone has a full comprehension of the interdependence between some limited government roles and an economic good doesn’t preclude the fact that, in the absence of any other central authority, these institutions will have been created where needed. What’s THE DARPA project. You’re making an amateurish attempt to compare the seeming inefficiency of a free market to a hypothetical perfectly planned and productive government program. You have to look at the actual performance of central planning in comparison to a not so centrally planned economy (there really are few true free markets). Actual performance indicates that centrally planned economies produce very little of the goods and services people actually want – that includes life saving medical procedures. BTW, I’ve worked on and managed quite a few DARPA projects. For the most part, they are a welfare program to the very well educated. I made a humorous reference to this in one of my posts.