> On Aug 29, 2:27 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? That's the point of a monopoly, to
>> control a vital resource and make everyone pay to get it. 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.
Declaring a fact to be a myth isn't going to change anything. However,
since monopolies are technically illegal these days (that dratted government
again!), the oil companies are actually oligopolies, control not by one
entity, but by a favored few operating in collusion with one another. And
yes, unfair control of the marketplace due to having no real competition is
bad for an economy and necessitates government regulation.
> 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.
Saying that they pay "willingly" because they have no alternative to paying
is farcical. Of course you don't try to get them to pay more than they can.
All they'll do is die. But you *can* get them to pay one hell of a lot more
than is fair or good for them. A smart parasite only weakens its host
rather than killing it ourright.
> 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.
They have made sure that we *must* value their oil more highly than it's
really worth. Our dependency on oil is another contrivance. Not only have
oil companies locked up the access to oil, they have also tried their very
best to suppress any alternative energy source. It was President Carter's
plan to reduce our dependency on oil by promoting solar power. To that end,
he had solar panels installed in the Whitehouse. When Reagan was elected,
largely financed by the oil industry and other huge Wall Street corporate
entities, he tore them out and that was the last anybody heard of solar
power in our energy policies for the next twenty years, keeping us all in
the thrall of the oil oligopoly.
> That's what the alternative energy movement is up to.
What the alternative energy advocates are up to is breaking through the
phony facade that oil is our only viable energy source. Of course, that is
something that oil companies don't want and they have a lot of money to hire
the very best hucksters to convince rubes like you that they love you like
your mommy does. So they telle you to go back to sleep, children and by no
means should you ever look behind the curtain.
>> 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. 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.
Not "substitutes", Erwin. Alternatives. Oil is not the one true energy
source with all others being merely poor copies. That's just the huckster
patter, the flim-flam of PR firms trying to keep you toeing the mark. And
prefacing your agreement with me with a "no" does not mean you're not
agreeing with me.
> 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.
So you use your ill-gotten wealth to keep your would-be competition from
ever having a level playing field.
>>> 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. My point stands. Is anything you said relevant to it?
>
> That's pretty weak.
It was pretty weak of you to try to pretend I had no point to make, but due
to your self-involvement, you couldn't see that. So I turned your argument
back on you. Once you were hit with your own stick, you suddenly noticed
how bootless that sort of argument really is.
So stop trying to strut like a banty rooster and stick to the arguments
themselves.
>>> you're the one who
>>> admits wanting the government to steal your money and waste it.
>>
>> *You* assume it's all stolen and wasted. Not me. I pay my taxes
>> willingly,
>> so it's not stolen,
>
> But you pay your oil prices willing, so it is stolen, right?
I choose my government. Democracy, remember? I don't choose my oil
company. They are *not* a democracy.
>> and while I think it's often spend inefficiently, it's
>> not all wasted. If the government is competent, it spends the money it
>> collects in a more responsible way. 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.
That's exactly what happens, actually, but the fly in the ointment is the
influence of big money interests on where that money is spent. Insurance
companies make sure that government doesn't spend money on health care
because if it did, they wouldn't get rich bleeding that system by putting a
bizarrely complicated and profit-oriented bureaucracy between doctor and
patient. Oil companies make sure the government doesn't make the switch to
solar or subsidize solar industries they way oil companies as subsidized
because if it did, oil companies wouldn't get rich bleeding *that* system.
We currently have an opportunity to improve that situation. The Obama
campaign has discovered a way to use the internet to let grassroots
financing fund their efforts at a level which can actually compete with big
money funded campaigns. Thus the influence of big corporations and their
lobbyists has been significantly reduced and Obama is not beholden to the
same corporate pirates that have effectively shackled every political party
up to now. It's not perfect, by any means, but it's a damn sight further
down the road toward a truly representative government than any previous
election has been able to manage.
I'm not willing to accept whatever lousy system happens to be in place just
because an initial change doesn't result in immediate perfection. The
answer to the question of what to do when the situation is bad is not to
give up and bear the suffering stoically, but to change it. If the change
doesn't give you the result you hoped for, you change it again. Repeat
until you get success.
>> The current US government is especially incompetent. So I mean to change
>> it. 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".
Of course you're not "sure". Don't be a coward. Don't run from change just
because you don't know for sure what's going to happen. Change is coming.
The only real issue is whether or not you lead it or get dragged along by
it.
>> I don't imagine any "foreign utopias". As we have both noted in other
>> threads, one doesn't have to get everything right in order to get some
>> things right. The US health care system is the most inequitable of any
>> industrialized nation. 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.
If you have enough money to afford it. Increasingly, we don't. Health
insurance programs are becoming more expensive every day. Benefits are
curtailed. Doctors are being told by accountants what drugs are to be
administered to their patients because the drug companies want to make their
own record profits, right along with the oil companies. The whole system is
riddled with parasites from top to bottom. It is not true that the American
health care system "may or may not be the most inequitable". It *is* the
most inequitable.
> 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.
What ever gave you the silly notion that any health care system run by any
organization that isn't intending to make a profit out of it must deliver
"shockingly poor care" to everyone? I don't hear anybody saying that rich
people won't be allowed to pay over and above some minimum level of care.
Nor does any health care system anywhere make that demand. That sort of
bugaboo is just another huckster spiel designed to confuse and distract you
from the real issue that a lot of American people are getting no health care
at all. Even a little would be better for than than none.
>>> 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.
That's the most ridiculous claim you've made yet. First, you make the
completely unsupported claim that everyone weill have to wait eighteen
months to get cancer treatment, which simply isn't true. Then you claim
that getting some minimum level of care is just as bad as getting no care at
all, which also is completely unsupported by any factual data outside of
anecdotal exceptions. You've completely abandoned any rational argument
here.
>> You don't
>> have to be perfect to be better than nothing. We can do better.
>
> And once again, you are assuming that your version of "better" is the
> right one.
And you're worried that it might not be so you don't have the courage to
even try.
>> The "nonsense" is in the way you are conceiving of the situation. People
>> want stuff. The more stuff they can get, the better. 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. 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".
You cannot change a fact by mere name-calling and hyperbole. Nobody claims
that markets are "opposed to the common man". The fact is that the markets
are not actually "free", and any and all objections to the unprincipled
manipulations of the marketplace by big corporations is not "socialism".
>> There's no cooperation. It's all
>> competition.
>
> I take it you've never heard of the "invisible hand", then?
Corporate mythology.
"The reason that the invisible hand often seems invisible is that it is
often not there." -- Dr. Joseph E. Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize in
economics 2001.
> You appear to harbour a fondness for ideas of social evolution.
Whereas you seem to want social stagnation.
>> 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
No, that's not what I propose. That's only what you're afraid of. It might
be true if the only way to get rich was to steal, but it's not. The goal of
keeping the rich from taking unfair advantage due to the power of their
wealth is not the same as the goal of not allowing anyone to be wealthy.
I propose social responsibility as a cornerstone of a fair and sustainable
economy.
