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

To: TimF who wrote (373835)	3/11/2008 10:39:36 PM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573691

You know, Tim, these conversations remind me alot of when I was in MBA school 20+ years ago studying macro and micro economics. We would have these knock down drag out debates on the economic transference of costs from one sector of the economy to another based on government policies and intervention or non-intervention. I remember one debate where we were talking about the scenario of pollution in a city and who should pay for it. The choices were fairly clear. If you believed that companies profit from engaging in industries that create pollution, then it would follow that they should pay for controlling the pollution as a cost of doing business. That was the populist line of thinking and the folks fighting for this were in the minority However, if you were the typical MBA, then we all believed that companies had the right to pollute as much as they wanted to because no one could really quantify the damage being done and no one could identify a victim and link the pollution to the victim as the root cause of the harm they were experiencing. Very typical MBA, because we were all educated in business law and were all very sold on free market theories. We all believed we had unlimited potential and wanted economic Darwinism in place for us, because of course we'd be the victors. Anyway, I'm older now and have learned a few things from the school of hard knocks. I believe there are always externalities that are not accounted for in the cost of goods that companies produce. I've also had first had experience with companies actively hiding the impact of their business on other areas of the economy, so that the cost of their goods don't rise to compensate those who are losing or experiencing harm because of that company. So my eyes have been opened a little. When it comes to oil, I can't quantify the portion of our military activity around the world that is directly or indirectly involved in securing our oil supplies. However, common sense and the overwhelming evidence points to a very highly involved effort on the part of our Commander-in-Chief, his VP, and our military to fight wars to secure our oil supplies. If we were able to quantify that, the costs would be staggering compared to what you believe it to be. I would bet we could easily allocate at least $300B a year spent on military that we could avoid if we no longer needed oil. Just imagine what we could do with that money. One year's worth of savings would be all we would need to kickstart the electric car industry. Hell, the savings from one year of war in Iraq would be enough to do that. It's really a shame we get so distracted by all of this involvement with other countries who don't want nor need our help. And before, you accuse me of being a liberal, just remember I am and have always been a pretty conservative Republican. My core values have never changed. However, this Republican party is no longer conservative in my book. They are liberal spenders and extremist in almost everything they do. I wish we could strip them of the Republican name and call them what they are...neo-cons. End of rant.