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To: GVTucker who wrote (182545)	11/8/2005 10:23:52 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

re: In this case, the market is clearly able to solve the problem. SUV sales are collapsing. Demand is declining. Government intervention at this stage of the game just does not make sense. And it will cause problems that you don't envision in your analysis. There is huge government intervention in support of energy companies and subsequent gasoline consumption. This would just create some balance. It's clearly in the public interest to increase the fleet mileage of automobiles. As I said before, it adds discretionary dollars to the economy, reduces the balance of trade deficit, helps the poorest of us the most, lowers pollution (and maybe global warming), and improves our political position. There is nothing new about the government intervention for the public good. Virtually every tax creates winners and losers. Inefficient use of a finite and precious commodity is not a good use of capital. The marketplace is not a level playing field with the subsidized exploration and manufacturing of gasoline. What are the unintended consequences you are worried about? John

To: GVTucker who wrote (182545)	11/10/2005 4:02:08 AM
From: Amy J	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 186894

RE: "Government intervention should be necessary when the market isn't capable of solving a problem." Government intervention is why China is way ahead of India. (Looking at the numbers in the CIAfactbook, China is ahead of India by a factor of two.) Efficient communism with intelligent intervention is much more efficient than capitalism. This is because capitalism requires a wasteful period of destructive forces before constructive solutions appear. Meanwhile, preventive action is what efficient communism allows. For example, China's govt intentionally had one of its cities built in the style of capitalism - the buildout was random, confused, spiraling growth that was disruptive to the flow of traffic, and the infrastructure was insufficient. They learned from this, and decided to build a second city using a capitalistic model but with important modifications that permitted better planning and prevention. They planned out the infrastructure and installed it, prior to allowing spiraling growth. Meanwhile, as a point of comparison to the failure of democracy/capitalism, India can't even build adequate airport infrastructure. India's infrastructure sucks, China's does not. And it's no wonder the USA's communications infrastructure is so behind other countries. Greenspan asked Congress to address the educational problem we have in the USA, before it becomes too costly to fix, he said the problem would be much less costly if we were preventive. (He also said it's not fair to our children to permit them to attend poor performing schools, and he certainly has my heart on that issue.) Of course, Congress could care less about prevention, so ignored his appeal. This is why our brand of capitalism will probably fail someday: Congress ignores the wisdom of experience and prefers to be reactive rather than preventive. Additionally, we will bankrupt ourselves by voting ourselves money, and we will never be preventive. I thought it was exceedingly disrespectful of Congress to disregard Greenspan's very wise appeal to improve education.