From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Sun Sep 01 2002 - 09:24:43 MDT
On Sunday, September 01, 2002 2:44 AM Reason reason@exratio.com wrote:
> My mind works this way: if the people that know
> best (i.e. people in the industry) judge there is no
> need to retrain or see no money to be made in
> retraining people, than that industry has no great
> need for retrained people.
I disagree here. It could be -- and I reckond it often enough is --
that people are ignorant of the real potential around them. So certain
roads never get taken -- even on a free market. The market does not
perfectly foresee these things nor is it perfect at exploiting
opportunities it does see. It's merely better than the alternative of
government intervention. After all, government has no special knowledge
or insight here and suffers from the same ignorances -- and even more
due to the lack of a genuine price system to aid discovery and
dissemination -- and foibles -- even more so since costs are
"de-localized" making decision-makers not bear the costs of bad
decisions. (This happens too in markets, though often it's because of
government interventions -- as in the moral hazard problems with
government safety nets for, e.g., investors. Even when it's not, the
costs are still localized to a specific firm. The boss's nephew might
get a make work job, but that doesn't directly affect people who don't
deal with or work for that firm. The corrective is apparent in such
cases too. If costs become too high, the boss can't keep carrying water
for his nephew.)
Cheers!
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/MyWorksBySubject.html
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