From: Dehede011@aol.com
Date: Sun Aug 25 2002 - 13:57:09 MDT
In a message dated 8/25/2002 2:04:44 PM Central Standard Time,
forrestb@ix.netcom.com writes: An overheated economy is not possible in a
hard-money free market. Overproduction is yet another memetic myth
promulgated by Marxists and Keynesians.
Forrest,
Please let me comment on this from the angle of a guy that doesn't
want to let any of our possible paradigms be closed until we are sure we have
all the facts on the table.
In the interest of openness I strongly suspect that we don't have the
answers todate. In fact I know that one way of diverting people's attention
is to suck them into a false dichotomy. You know the old question: "Do you
want a job that you really enjoy or one that pays a lot of money?" My
answer, "Gee do have one that I would just love that pays a lot of money? I
can mention several." <G>
There is a third possibility that I have experienced in my life time.
I came from outside a small town that has fluctuated from 1,000 to 1,500
citizens over the last 100 years. My Dad often remarked how in the early
days one of the really large shoe companies came in and wanted to build a
shoe factory to employ roughly several hundred people. The owner of the
largest department store in our town often told of the successful battle he
waged to keep the show factory out of town. He feared, probably rightfully,
that the shoe company would bid up local wages.
There was no conspiracy, no Marxists, No Keynesians nor anything else.
There was just some knuckleheads with power doing what they thought of as
intelligent and profitable for themselves.
Likely one of the deciding factors that made the shoe factory want a
small town like ours was the availability of several existing railroad
sidings that would improve transportation in the early 20th century. That
the existing property was limited is also without doubt how control was
maintained to prevent their coming in.
So the factory went to another town about twenty miles away. With
some other good moves that town grew up to be about 35,000 population. When
the shoe factories went the way of the Dodo they made other moves and are
still growing the last time I went visiting.
So my point is that we need neither conspiracies nor political parties
to explain dumb events. Nor will the presence of conspiracies or political
parties prevent them.
Ron h.
BTW, the labor also moved out of my neighboring town. For the past forty
years one of its major problems has been that in each generation the sharp
kids left and the knuckleheads remained. That has made it increasingly
difficult to attract business of anykind. About 30-40 years ago the people
got so poor some charitable group brought in teachers to teach these small
farm community townsfolk how to raise a garden so they would have more food.
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