META: Excess in a Free Market Place

From: Rick Knight (rknight@platinum.com)
Date: Tue Sep 09 1997 - 09:40:47 MDT


     EvMick (from Illinois) wrote:
     
     Give me an example of (what) the excesses that can and do occur in a
     totally uncontrolled marketplace....give me an example of a totally
     uncontrolled market place...define excess.
     
     Rick Knight responds:
     
     See The Tobacco Industry in the early part of this century in the U.S.
     and elsewhere on the planet in recent times.
     
     I would say that excess has been reached when the marketplace, big on
     desire and short on information and wisdom, is given the free will to
     slowly kill themselves and debilitate the community at large,
     impacting health care costs and productivity.
     
     And then EvMick quoted Voltaire:
     
     Whoever has power in his hands wants to be despotic; the craze for
     domination is an incurable disease.
     
     Rick responds:
     
     I regard the inclination to be a despot decreases in accordance with
     an increase of information and a lack of fear unless you are a
     sociopath. In that case, all bets are off. Besides, it's hard to
     give any viable weight to something that was said at the infancy of
     the Industrial Age (that still echoed Agrarian age influence) when we
     are preparing to eclispse it in this one.



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