From: Peter C. McCluskey (pcm@rahul.net)
Date: Wed Aug 05 1998 - 15:54:07 MDT
bostrom@ndirect.co.uk ("Nick Bostrom") writes:
>SOCIETY AND POLITICS
>
>Won't new technologies only benefit the rich and powerful?
>What happens to the rest?
>
>- The typical pattern with new technologies is that they are expensive
>in the beginning and get cheaper as time goes by. Take medical
>technologies, for example. Cutting-edge experimental procedures are
>usually only available to research subjects and the very rich. As
>these procedures become routine, costs drop, effectiveness improves,
This is a bit too abstract. How about throwing in some examples of
companies that price their products to reach tens or hundreds of millions
of people (Intel, AOL, Coke, Exxon, Disney, etc) and challenging
the people who are asking that question to explain why greedy capitalists
would prefer to invest in products that only the rich would ever buy?
How many investors got rich on mass-market goods and services and
how many got rich making Rolls Royces, yachts, caviar, etc.?
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Peter McCluskey | Critmail (http://crit.org/critmail.html): http://www.rahul.net/pcm | Accept nothing less to archive your mailing list
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