On Aug 29, 2:27Â am, "Tom"
comcast.net> wrote:>> On Aug 28, 7:31 pm, "Tom"
comcast.net> wrote:>
>>>> On Aug 28, 12:49 pm, "Tom"
comcast.net> wrote:>>>>> "Erwin Hessle"
erwinhessle.com> wrote in message>
>
>>>>>> What do you think happens to these "obscenely swollen profits"?
>>>>>> They're not kept under the executives' beds, you know.
>
>>>>> No, they're kept in off-shore accounts where they won't get taxed.
>
>>>> Good for them. Keeps them out of the grubby hands of the thieving
>>>> government highway robbers,
>
>>> By keeping them in the grubby hands of the thieving oil company highway
>>> robbers.
>
>> Ah yes, those "thieving oil company highway robbers" that these poor
>> people of yours keep willing giving their money to.
>
> Do they have a viable alternative? Â That's the point of a monopoly, to
> control a vital resource and make everyone pay to get it. Â They have no
> choice but to buy it from you, unless they depose you and force you to
> relinquish control.
This is a common myth often used to justify social control. Monopolies
can't "make everyone pay to get it". A monopoly in a free market
depends for its very existence on there being enough people to
willingly pay the asking price for a product. Now, monopolies be able
to increase the price over and above what it might be in an enforced
competitive market, but they can never force people to pay more than
they are willing to pay, and if market participants are rational that
means that the value they place on that product is at least the asking
price, and for the vast majority of the market participants they will
actually place a higher value on it than the price they pay because of
consumer surplus.
So, your entire argument boils down to a view that it is fundamentally
unfair for people to pay a price for a product which is less than the
value they place on that product.
> That's what the alternative energy movement is up to.
> It is *not* necessary to let those thieves keep robbing you in order to get
> the energy you need to keep you from being at the mercy of the dark and the
> cold. Â Their profits will evaporate when you no longer need what they own.
No, their profits will evaporate when the market presents a way to
acquire a good substitute for that valued product at a lower price.
This is just regular old market competition, but it's competition in
substitute products, rather than identical products.
That's the inherent danger in monopoly; you think it's secure and that
you've cornered the market, but if someone comes along with an
alternative product you're screwed. It's easy to paint monopolies as
some kind of evil entity, but the reality is that they are as subject
to the forces of competition as anyone else once you look a little
further afield.
>>> Besides, just because they don't pay any taxes doesn;t mean they don't
>>> want
>>> the government to spend a lot of money. That's why the $200 billion
>>> budget
>>> surplus each year that America enjoyed when Clinton was president have
>>> become the $410 billion deficit we have now. It's not the the neocons
>>> didn't spend money; it's just that they didn't collect it from their
>>> friends. And spent most of it on projects that they handed to their
>>> friends' corporations via no-bid contracts.
>
>> Did you have a point to make that is in any way relevant to what I
>> said?
>
> That would depend on whether or not anything you said had anything to do
> with my point. Â My point stands. Â Is anything you said relevant to it?
That's pretty weak.
>> you're the one who
>> admits wanting the government to steal your money and waste it.
>
> *You* assume it's all stolen and wasted. Â Not me. Â I pay my taxes willingly,
> so it's not stolen,
But you pay your oil prices willing, so it is stolen, right? And you
don't see any contradictions, here?
> and while I think it's often spend inefficiently, it's
> not all wasted. Â If the government is competent, it spends the money it
> collects in a more responsible way. Â The trick is to devise a competent
> government.
*A* trick, which has largely proved unattainable. Another, better,
trick is to restrict the things that the government is allowed to
spend money on.
> The current US government is especially incompetent. Â So I mean to change
> it. Â If enough of my compatriots agree, change will be implemented. If the
> next batch doesn't get it right, we'll change it again. That's how democracy
> is supposed to work.
I'm not sure that choosing being one of two different dictators
presented to you every four years is worthy of the name "democracy".
>>> And now America is the only industrialized country that doesn't have it.
>>> It's time to grow up and join the modern human race.
>
>> Yeah, you might want to get out of America once in a while and see how
>> it works in these foreign utopias you've imagined.
>
> I don't imagine any "foreign utopias". Â As we have both noted in other
> threads, one doesn't have to get everything right in order to get some
> things right. Â The US health care system is the most inequitable of any
> industrialized nation. Â In that regard, we are not doing as well as others.
> We can do better.
Only if you measure things in terms of equity. The US health care
system may or may not be the most inequitable of any industrialized
nation, but it's certainly one of the most high quality systems. Not
everyone will agree that a system where everybody gets the same
shockingly poor level of health care is "better", despite how
"equitable" it is.
>> Try the free health
>> "care" in the UK, for instance, and wait eighteen months for your
>> first appointment with a specialist to examine your cancerous tumour.
>
> Better than waiting forever because you can't afford any at all.
Not really. In both cases you die before you get any treatment.
Arguably, dying before you get any treatment and knowing that that's
going to happen is preferable to having uncertainty about it.
> You don't
> have to be perfect to be better than nothing. Â We can do better.
And once again, you are assuming that your version of "better" is the
right one.
>>>> And don't forget, all those jobs going to India, China and Mexico
>>>> result in a hell of a lot more poor people over there getting better
>>>> healthcare,
>
>>> Not yet.
>
>> Ah, I see, so it's the possibility of Indians, Chinese and Mexicans
>> getting better healthcare in the future that upsets you so much?
>
> Not a bit. Â However, the only reason the robber barons are investing there
> is that they haven't organized their labor yet and demanded it. Â They will.
> It's an inevitable phase of economic evolution.
Only inevitable to the extent that these "robber barons" of yours
invest in these places. You apparently want to withhold that
opportunity from them, so that they never manage to get themselves out
of squalor. So much for "equitable"!
>>>> and if you want to get all moral on me then you'll have to
>>>> explain why those people are less deserving of it,
>
>>> That's just plain stupid to try to say that A has to lose a job if B gets
>>> one. There's plenty of work to go around. There's no shortage of demand
>>> for products and therefore no reason why people everywhere can't work at
>>> a
>>> job that pays a decent wage.
>
>> Of course there is a reason, otherwise nobody would be unemployed.
>> What kind of nonsense is this?
>
> The "nonsense" is in the way you are conceiving of the situation. Â People
> want stuff. Â The more stuff they can get, the better. Â Thus. if we had an
> equitable way to get stuff to everybody. we'd all have jobs doing so.
> Nobody would be unemployed and everybody would have stuff. Â The problem is
> that "free markets" are based on the idea that you keep stuff from people in
> order to get them to pay more for it.
See? That's socialist thinking, that markets are somehow opposed to
the "common man". Businesses are owned and run by these very same
"people" whom you are claiming to be oppressed by them. Do you have a
401(k) plan? A college fund for your kids? Then when "big business"
profits, so do you.
Free markets are based on the idea that profits are made when there is
stuff that a lot of people want. This attracts other participants into
that market, production increases, and people end up with a lot more
of the stuff that they want. Interfering in markets leads to short
supply and people don't get the stuff thay want. Your argument is
completely backwards, but that's socialism for you.
> There's no cooperation. Â It's all
> competition.
I take it you've never heard of the "invisible hand", then?
> On the other hand, if everybody gets and nobody pays, nobody
> ever has any reason to get anything to anybody else. Â The balance is
> precarious. Â Regulation must occur to keep competition and cooperation from
> overwhelming one another. Â This is beyond capitalism or socialism. Â The
> global economy has not yet emerged. Â We're still in the nascent stages of
> it. Â I don't expect things to settle down for another hundred years or so.
> Until then, arguments like yours and mine are going to continue.
You appear to harbour a fondness for ideas of social evolution. What
is more likely is that this "global economy", if regulated in the way
that you suggest, will become so overblown that it collapses and
returns to a freer market system. Free markets are efficient because
they require no additional effort to keep them going. Regulation and
control is expensive and wasteful, and it implies that the persons
doing the regulating have something approaching perfect knowledge.
That's always the problem with socialism - you start regulating things
in order to "give control to the people", but the minute you start
regulating you take that control away from them. It's a pipedream.
>>> They are big parasites.
>
>> No, parasites steal things -
>
> You say "no" then you agree with me. Â They steal things. Â Government
> subsidies one doesn't deserve or need is theft.
Well, do you believe in democracy, or don't you? Again, you claim that
you pay your taxes willingly to the government, and you knew when you
paid them willingly that the government would spend them however it
saw fit. Now you want to complain about it. You can't have it both
ways.
> Grabbing up a natural
> resource of the people and then making them pay to get it back is theft.
"A natural resource of the people"? Firstly, the "people" don't own
that resource, and they never did, so it's a non-argument to begin
with. Secondly, you're not actually paying for the oil, you're paying
for the extraction, refining and distribution processes. Tell you
what, let's get rid of the oil companies, and the "people" can walk
thousands of miles to the oilfields, dig it out of the ground
themselves with homemade spoons, and then carry it home on their backs
in sacks made from grass, how about that?
>> Yes it is, because you have a socialistic view of "fair", which
>> involves the "rich" subsidising the poor.
>
> No it's not because I have the view that doesn't allow the rich to rip off
> the poor merely because the rich have the power to do so.
So what you propose is forcing the rich to share their wealth with the
poor merely because the poor, in sufficient numbers, have the power to
compel them to do it. Nothing you are talking about has anything to do
with taking away the power of control - you're just proposing moving
cooercive power from one group of people to a different group of
people. Pots and kettles, Tom?
Erwin Hessle, 8=3
