From: Anton Sherwood (dasher@netcom.com)
Date: Sun Mar 09 1997 - 18:51:35 MST
Erik Moeller explains:
I'd like a high income, too. High enough to allow me to pay my
phone bills, finance my computer activities, realize myself.
But is it still self-interest to accumulate millions or even
billions? Is it need?
We've all got projects to finance.
If this wealth was shared, nobody would have to starve. There would
be no poverty. Everything would be great, fantastic, perfect.
The problem you ignore is accumulation.
Fascinating. Tell me how a confiscatory tax on savings would improve
the distribution of food.
And how sheep's bladders may be used to prevent earthquakes.
> If I'm the boss and the state works for me then I should be able to
> fire the state whenever I want to. Unfortunately I can not, because
> I am not the boss and the state won't let me quit.
Not you are the boss. The population of the country is the boss.
If everyone decides that they don't want the state anymore, the
state can be "fired".
Since the state's officers are part of the population of the country,
the state will never be fired under such a rule.
> [JKC describes the market]
Which essentially means: If the decisions the customers make are
right, the right people will have the power (although monopolies
will form)
(false)
and the right products will be produced. The problem is that the
customers' decisions are usually not for the best product available
but for the product most advertised.
Whereas voters and politicians, since they have no reason to care about
the results of their decisions, are far more enlightened.
[...]
Look at Japan. Much state influence. Great country.
High cost of living, tiny apartments, social regimentation, high rate of
"suicide" (including family massacres) ...
Imagine Japan had started with free markets after WW II,
they'd be like South Korea today.
Oh, so it was free markets that caused a hostile neighbor to appear?
[...]
I have nothing against rich people who spend their money in big cars
or houses etc., the money stays in movement. But it is "evil" (to
use [JKC's] words) if companies and banks invest money in the stock
market where it just circulates. This is where the big money
acucmulates. To nearly no one's benefit. The money invested in stock
markets gets to (large) companies again. But these large companies
tend to re-invest the money in stock markets instead of making
investments in their company, for the stock market promises a higher
profit! So the money available decreases, few people get richer and
richer but without *using* the money -- only to get richer. And the
amount of CIRCULATING money decreases.
If the money supply decreases, prices fall. Big deal.
No one has an interest in making superior products in free markets
except for moral reasons, for
- investments in stock markets promise the highest profit to large
companies
If stock speculation is the best way to profit, I wonder why anybody
ever bothered making anything. Why did anybody ever build a railroad
or a factory, instead of just playing the stock market?
- simply killing other companies with force is much cheaper,
and if you control the media, no one will learn about it
Thank god that politicians, and not industrialists or bankers, control
the police, the army and the media.
[...]
There are no realizable alternatives [to capitalism], so the only
way to make it is to make the pyramid as big as possible in order
to reach transcension before the collapse. But if the market is
liberated, the collapse will come faster, [...]
The USSR's economy collapsed first because it was too free?
Anton Sherwood *\\* +1 415 267 0685 *\\* DASher@netcom.com
"We all hate poverty, war and injustice / Unlike the rest of you squares."
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