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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bull_derrick who wrote (22564)	12/6/2004 10:03:42 PM
From: kodiak_bull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23153

Derrick, I don't think there's any difference between nations and, say, families or individuals. Let's imagine a country which manufactured nothing (call it "Dell-Land"), simply interfaced between 5 countries (with pitiful communication skills) which manufactured things and 5 different countries which consumed things. Dell-Land, however, was the king of information management. When storms were about to hit two of the producing countries, DL locked up future production of the products from the other three. When 3 of the consuming countries were about to experience economic hardship, DL reduced its inventories and shifted the burden of production back onto the 5 producing countries who then had to lay off workers and bear up under the circumstances. DL, by definition, never produces a thing, simply stands as middle man between producer and consumer, and earns money off distribution fees and the float. Now, could there be such a country? Not in purest form, but ever since Japan hollowed out their watch industry, it is a mystery what the hell Switzerland does. Banking, insurance, cuckoo clocks? I think Switzerland is pretty close to a pure middle man. As is DELL. Is WMT a zero sum game? I dunno, it depends how you define zero, I guess. They've brought economic pricing to towns and villages and their residents who otherwise would have had to support the uneconomic distribution systems of 7-Eleven, Sears and ma and pa stores. Why do you exclude the value added by distributors and only include the value added at the tail end of the manufacturing process? A farmer grows oranges and sells his crop to McHenry & Sons who come by in trucks and crate the stuff up and haul it away. Is McHenry no value added? If the farmer himself crated the oranges and trucked them, could those inputs go into the "value" of the product? What if the farmer used the CBOT to hedge half his production, or all of it? At which point is production done? Your example doesn't really work, if you think about it. What about the banker who facilitates the grower, or the insurance salesman who insures his farm, equipment and liability? Not part of the inputs? Why not? Distribution, insurance, banking--it's all part of the value added parts of our economy, our wealth. It doesn't stop with the widget maker or the guy in the dungarees. Kb