From: Reason (reason@exratio.com)
Date: Sun Sep 01 2002 - 15:54:43 MDT
--> Technotranscendence
> 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.)
Yes, I should have been clearer there. My point was that people in the
industry are far better than government at arriving at the best way to use
the resources of their investors and those they create. Not that they're
perfect, but their experience and knowledge have to make them better at this
than random wonks. Not to mention the ethical thing about who has the right
to spend a person's wealth...
Reason
http://www.exratio.com/
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