From: Alexander Sheppard (alexandersheppard@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Nov 16 2002 - 16:57:37 MST
Well, looking over the discussion about Bill Gates and what he actually
produced, there's a number of ideas which I'll comment on.
First of all, the argument has been made that Bill Gates is corrupt and that
his products aren't very good, but that they were sold on uninformed
customers by a very good marketing team. I don't know about Bill Gates ; all
this sounds very plausible, however. This is an example, though, of the
essential corrupt nature of capitalism--if your goal is to bring resources
under your personal control in any way you can, then of course you don't
care about your customers, and you'll take advantage of them in any way you
think you can get away with. Of course, the argument is made that someone
will be forced to care about their customers because otherwise they won't be
able to entice them into putting resources under thier control--but why not
just have a system where the people who produce something care about
producing it because they think producing it is important? Instead of having
a system which is essentially a war of all against all, why not have one
where people cooperate voluntarily for purposes they see as important? Is
nothing meaningful to anyone except a threat? Are people really that stupid,
and the masters really that intelligent? And how is this a humanistic
system?
Second, of course Bill Gates didn't produce the equivilant of $50 billion. I
mean, this is as nutty as saying that we should give Hitler credit for all
the production of Nazi Germany because he coordinated it. Coordination does
not equal production. The actual production which created that $50 billion
was carried out by thousands of people who were coerced into giving up what
they produced to Gates by the system. If they were to refuse to give up what
they produced to Gates, they might not have a house the next day. Gates
loses nothing personally important, and mabye nothing even not personally
important, as there will probably be other people to take the place of that
person.
I have a question for people who regard themselves as anarcho-capitalists,
or, as I think is really a better term for this set of ideas,
proprietarians. What of unions?
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