Without the rules and structures created and maintained by government, corporations as such could not exist. All we would have are sole proprietorships and partnerships.
If you simply mean this tautologically, i.e., a corporation wouldn't be a corporation without laws to recognize its existence, then OK. However, if you mean that large for-profit organizations with limited liability for its owners are impossible, then this depends on the legal environment that such an entity exists in. Without laws that give creditors the right to pursue investors or attorneys the ability try to sue investors for alleged torts similar entities can exist without necessarily requiring any positive action on the part of government (or even necessarily a government at all). In fact, many of the early big companies were NOT founded as corporations but instead as trusts, partnerships, etc. That being said, our well established body of corporate law is a fairly optimal way to create such entities and it would be significantly harder without it.
Why then do governments create and maintain corporate structures? Simply to increase the wealth of their stakeholders? Or is it in fact to increase the public wealth?
Leaving aside the fact that corporations do not have a monopoly on amoral behavior (see government, non-profit organizations, political groups, individuals, religious groups, etc)... Society benefits when large amounts of risk capital can be efficiently accumulated and invested in productive activities. This helps efficiently create jobs, goods, and services that modern society benefits greatly from. Wealth is created and spread throughout society precisely because this tends to be efficient. Our modern economy requires an efficient mechanism to limit shareholder liability and provide a well understood legal framework in which all stakeholders have clearly defined rights.
Some activities can ONLY be produced on a large scale and most are done far more efficiently on large scale. Consider a semiconductor or LCD factory, a car company, drug R&D and manufacture, industrial scale farming, logging, and so on. The number of partners in a partnership scales very poorly. Let's suppose the optimal number is 20. Exactly how many very rich people out there have both the desire and enough liquid capital to invest in such an multi-billion dollar enterprise? Now what about all other large enterprises that require capital?
You should also consider what would happen to the wealth of society if there were not an efficient vehicle for people to invest their wealth. If corporations were not available to utilize capital, there would simply be much less investment opportunity. You might argue that the void left by the disappearing corporations of the world would be filled by Mom and Pops, and this might be true to some extent, but their ability to produce goods and services at all or at a price an affordable (never mind equally affordable) price would be limited. Capital that would otherwise be invested in corporations would either be not invested at all (due to lack of risk/reward) or be invested in poorly performing activities. This lost investment return would also not be available for re-investment. Likewise, consider where that would leave the retirement funds of the average person. Are they supposed to invest their entire life savings in the mom and pop down the street? The loss of wealth would be HUGE.
Finally, an empirical analysis does not support your apparent opinion that we'd be better off without corporations. If anything, the results show very much to the opposite. Consider food safety today vs 50, 100, or 200 years ago. Consider farm productivity (look at the price of food vs the average pay check), average real wages, work place safety, the affordability and quality of goods and services available today, novel medical devices/medicines, etc.... On the whole people today in this country
So, the victims are to blame, not the con artists? Where do you, personally, draw the line? If you get shot, is that your fault for walking in the wrong neighborhood? If a drunk driver hits you, is it your fault for not looking both ways crossing the street?
Why do you presume they're all merely innocent victims? If someone gets shot, it's not like they're getting anything out of it. Those that took out ARMs would have benefited had the market not gone South. In point of fact, many people DID do very well with their ARMs in recent history. Many were able to afford bigger houses and those bigger houses made them even more money in a booming market that seemed to many like it could never fall. Just because the so-called victims are not "rich" and/or don't work in the financial industry doesn't mean that they can't be greedy or short-sighted.
The banker, who you THINK has a vested interest in you paying off your loan (he doesn't, because he's reselling it to some other sucker) is telling you it will all work out. Sounds great, right?
Actually I think most of these were sold by retail mortgage brokers. It is commonly known that the brokers (and the companies that they work for) work on commission/fees and the process, in my experience, makes it pretty clear that they're just packaging the loan for banks, sight unseen. I never would have assumed that they're looking out for my interests in any shape way or form. If nothing else, I would think that most reasonable people would scratch their heads and wonder why they're able to afford a house 2x as nice as what their peers could. I also fail to see how someone can be innocent if they're involved if exaggerating their incomes, assets, etc.
I have no doubt that there were some innocent victims involved. Just like I have no doubt that many people that took out these loans knowning that they were taking some form of risk (even if not fully appreciating the scope of it). However, I truly believe that to design a system that would protect or bail out all potential innocents also creates very large moral hazards that society ultimately cannot afford.
I agree that having a degree from a respected institution tends to help open doors and make life easier in general. Some larger and more conservative companies will not even hire or promote you without a bachelors degree or better. However, I wouldn't say that all individuals would be well advised to pursue a degree, especially if they're already doing well in the working world.
At many smaller organizations it's more a function of how intelligent, capable, and sophisticated you are. Many people ascribe to "lack of degree" problems that are really the result of poor communication skills or lack of polish (which may tend to correlate with formal education but are _not_ the same thing). Someone that has these skills is far less likely to be passed over in a more entrepreneurial organization that cares more about results than procedures or appearance. Someone with solid communication skills, that understands the concerns of management, and has broader interests, and so on will fair much better (even over people with degrees from presumably good schools).
If one cannot attend a well respected institution and/or obtain a somewhat relevant degree for whatever reason (e.g., financial, educational background, etc), then essentially dropping out of the work force for 4 or more years is not necessarily a good decision. This time out of the work force or working part-time is an opportunity cost, more so if they have some highly needed skill-set or a particular opportunity available to them at that moment that they would otherwise turn away from. This is even more true if one is not going to get a lot out of the degree because they're not motivated or interested in the work.
I have known tons of people with degrees (BS - PhD) from some of the best schools in the country that basically go nowhere because they frankly never got much value out of their education (i.e., they just cruised through because that's what was easy) and/or lacked the intelligence or the work ethic to add real value. It's far from an automatic key to success. Intelligent people with the focus and the drive to bring real insight to problems are rare commodity in this world, with or without extensive formal education, and these are the people that tend to succeed in areas like IT, business, etc.
In short, while a bachelors degree tends to help significantly, it depends a lot on the situation and the answer is much less obvious the further one gets away from high school.
That is not true. Can you point to one instance where someone doing proper, scientific research (meaning: not just making shit up) has lost grant funding for not predicting global warming? You can't.
Your argument is disingenuous. What the parent poster is saying is that the potential for the scientist to obtain future grant money, the life-blood of these researchers, is diminished once someone takes a publically skeptical view of global warming and/or downplays the potential consequences of it. All the grant administrators need to do is decline: they don't need a reason and if they are pressed for one they could find any number of other reasons (highly subjective decision in the first place). Also you need to keep in mind that the (current) grant applications themselves may tend to hint at the intentions (e.g., gathering certain proxy records, working with group X, etc). Furthermore, these scientists also need to get published (to secure future grant money, to promote their own careers, etc) and the act of submitting a paper that calls into question the theory may mean that the scientist will have a harder time getting their work accepted (and is much more likely to be criticized) when the great majority of their peers feel very strongly about global warming (not your usual dispationate issue).
Does this "prove" there is a systematic bias? No, but lack of concrete proof doesn't automatically disprove that there is a systematic bias either. Look no one would question that racism has existed and still exists today in the US, but actual proof is often hard to come by (even more so in something like there where you're talking about a relatively small community doing things that can't be compared apples to apples).
In fact, anyone who did would still be able to get fat stacks of cash from the oil industry, or don't you remember that story?
Do you have any actual proof of researchers getting "fat stacks of cash" from the oil industry? Please don't cite the AIE/Exxon thing. I won't deny the possibility that there is motivation on the part of industry, but I'm asking for proof. Please note that even accepting grant money from the oil industry is enough to taint the researcher in the future amongst their peers, the media, etc (even amongst those who might be more open-minded on the subject of global warming).
You are saying you've been impacted by a tax with a $2,000,000 deductible? I certainly hope you aren't expecting anyone to feel sorry for you that you have that much money and have to pay taxes on it.
I know families who have been personally (many of them not nearly as rich as you imagine) and my family has, at various times, been exposed to real potential damage as well (i.e., if one of my parents died unexpectedly then their companies would very likely have been forced to have been sold in a fire sale... which would have decimated its actual value (there are often huge disparities)). You seem to believe that it's simply a matter of planning properly or that IRS is very understanding/flexible... this is just not the case
My wife and I stand to inherit over $250,000 from her father and a house worth about $200,000 from my mother, so my proposed change would impact me. Simply because something would impact me is no reason not to do it. I didn't do anything of value to society to earn that money, should I therefore have an absolute right to it?
How very generous of you (joke). I don't know what tax rates you're figuring, but the ~10K you stated is less than 4% of your eligible inheritance (or ~2% of your total) and the tax liability, from the sounds of it, would be easily accomodated with the remaining investment dollars allowing you to keep the house (not to mention the fact that it's much easier to get a loan to pay for a house than it is a business). Why should the estate tax be so small and so convenient for you? How is that significant amount of money any less an accident of birth than what I stand to recieve (or then what the poorer members of society stand not to recieve). You and your wife stand to inherit nearly half a million dollars, almost all of it tax free, while other people under other situations stand to inherit about the same amount in practice and witness the destruction of the businesses that their parents created and that they may well have contributed to (and maybe even employed by it). It's only approaching "fair", imho, when you are effectively forced to sell the house (which can't easily be replaced) and only collect a little more than 50% of the proceeds.
Err...slashdot swollowed some of my text (tags)...
If you really believe that inheritance is fundamentally unfair on its face, then you should insist that the burden of paying the tax should be equally shared by all people (i.e., $0 dollar exclusion/deducation with a flat rate for all). How are numbers of excess of 200K an "accident of birth" while figures at or less than 200K somehow "deserved"? If anything, I personally believe that deservedness is often reversed. People that start small businesses, save more, waste less, etc... and so have a higher net worth when they die (thus increasing their tax liability), should have more say over what happens with their assets than someone that never really saved or worked particularly hard (sure there are people with less money that work their asses off too, but this tax does have a perverse impact on some of the most productive/valuable members of society).
Duh, of course it is the net worth of that age group I should have considered. So, the average person would be paying taxes on $10,000 IF they inherited everything under my proposal. That is bad why, exactly?
You're arguing that we lower the exclusion amount to 200K and keep the rates the same, right? Why should the "average" deceased person be able bequeath virtually all of their money while someone moderately more wealthy (due to starting v. small business, working longer, retiring later, spending less, etc) pay vastly more? If you really believe that inheritance is fundamentally unfair on its face (how is equally shared by all people (i.e., $0 dollar exclusion/deducation with a flat rate for all). Anyways- my point is that the change you propose (and even the the status quo) has very real impacts on far more just the mythical "rich" that you envision (the very much more average people who simply save more, invest more, work harder, etc). This also ignores the hugely disruptive effects the estate taxes have on families that are impacted by it. Maybe it seems easier because you're safely distanced from it, but many people I know (and my own family) have been and are potentially impacted by it in practice (and not just in its theoretical tax rate terms).
It is a socially responsible tax that helps level the playing field against accident of birth.
Life must be so much simpler when you can over-simplify everything like this. Let's completely ignore the fact that those parents probably had a lot to do with it: that they probably worked their asses off and likely exposed themselves to a great deal of risk in order for such an "accident" to happen in the first place (not mention that they probably chose to save and re-invest instead of spending). Let's also ignore the potential fact that the children may well have had something to do with the net worth (e.g., works for and/or manages family business).
The $2,000,000 deduction may be surpassed, but that isn't the point. You don't pay ANY taxes on the first $2,000,000. If you are stupid enough not to have saved up to pay for this tax when it is due, then your family does not deserve to run the damn business, sorry.
Sigh. You suffer from a real disconnect between the Bill Gates' of the world and the moderately successful middle-class family who may well live frugally (assets != income) and have a high net worth on paper (their business/assets). A family owned business valued at, say, 4M dollars will have an almost 1M dollar federal tax liability (plus potentially another 5-7% in state estate taxes). Actually paying this amount often results in the destruction of family businesses and other entreprenuerial type ventures (unless the owners happen to be very liquid). What's more, establishing the actual value of the assets is often far more messy than you might imagine and the timeline for repayment can force a fire sale which will destroy value further (An asset valued worth 4M may only be reap a fraction of its actual value if forced to be sold too quickly). Lastly, you need to consider the actual take home amount for each heirs. The estate may be valued at X-taxes, but after the proceeds recieved by each heir may well be a fraction of that amount (if, say, the estate has 5 children... you're probably talking about less than 1/5 of that amount)
Only the very rich would benefit from the repeal of the estate tax. Anyone who's net worth, including homes and small businesses is over $2,000,000 is very rich. The average net worth of all US households is about $100,000. That is twenty times lower than this deduction!
Besides the fact that the median net worth of people that are around 60+ years old is closer to 200K (or that the top 25% is around 650K or that the top 10% is 1.6M), who cares? You presume that all people work, save (or spend), and invest equally -- that all people are equally deserving. This is simply not the case. A lot of successful middle class people could easily estates valued in this ball park, but many don't because they retire early, spend more, and esp. don't start start businesses (most people with high net worths do). I'm sorry, but I fail to see how it is fair that someone that takes a no-risk job and works 40hrs week should be able to bequeath the full value of their 300K dollar home to their sole surving child, but that someone that chooses to save and start a family business should be forced to dissolve the company that they worked so hard to build and, not only that, but that when it is dissolved their many children may well only collect a fraction of that amount.
No, the average net worth in the USA is under $100,000, including the home.
The "average" you quote is basically meaningless in this context. The median net worth for people ages 60-69 is about 210K. The top 25% of this age group is worth 657K and the top 10% is worth more than 1.4M. Look it up for yourself.. While I would not regard someone in the top 10% as being fabulously well off, this also ignores the fact that people with higher net worths often live more modest lifestyles (it's very easy to have most/all of your net worth wrapped up in a business/investments and actually live quite modestly at these levels).
Well for the ones that really do suffer from this little piece of apparent hypocrisy, it's the very idea of handouts going to the poor that irks them.
Uh, when is the last time you did a brain dump of people that are opposed to such social transfer programs? I know you left a small caveat at the end, but a) I think you'd find that the overwhelming majority of them have substantially different reasons than what you imply b) this is essentially a strawman argument.
Yet they'll buy insurance, and do exactly that. The difference? With insurance, everyone else has paid the premiums too, so you at least know your money is going to help someone who is your economic equal.
You have a poor understanding of why people buy insurance. The consumer buys insurance out of self interest. They hedge against risk by pooling risk with other people. One critical difference between the national healthcare systems envisioned by most people in the US and a standard insurance plan is that the insurance basically pays out what you put into it on the aggregate (less some small percentage for overhead costs and profit for the insurance company and perhaps some for fraudulent claims / agency costs -- it is a fairly competitive market though so these tend to be somewhat optimal). Whereas nationalized healthcare plans basically seek to transfer net funds from those that pay more into it to those that do not (or can not); otherwise they would not need to be compulsory. In other words, your assertion that people care that the claimants are their economic "equal" is irrelevant and is just flat wrong (most insurance companies insure a broad range of economic levels with the same funds using different premium levels and different payouts).
It's why you'll hear this type of person rail against the idea of public healthcare, because they don't want to pay for someone else's health care.
Again, the most relevant difference here is that with these socialized healthcare plans that almost all of the envisioned plans make huge net transfers from "the rich" to "the poor". The rich only get a few pennies on the dollar of what they're going to spend on the aggregate. The rich person's taxes may double as a consequence of such programs and the fact is that they won't get any better healthcare for it (probably worse infact). Even if you don't believe this is a valid reason, this is not the only reason people are against socialized healthcare.
This mentality is at its worst in the upper levels of corporations and government. They will see no hypocrisy in lobbying for and receiving tax breaks, tarrifs, or whatever other handouts while lobbying against anything that benefits the truly needy.
You are conveniently conflating the arguments. Most of these same fiscal conservatives are also opposed to corporate welfare programs (although, in fact, social welfare programs account for a much larger percent of the US tax receipts). Of course these programs still exist (much to my dismay), but there is plenty of hypocrisy to go around in all political parties and it's not as if the supporters of these programs in the halls of government are uniformally conservative (many democrats also support agicultural subsidies, tarrifs, etc).
Because business is good, poor people are bad. Helping business financially is good (spurs entrepeneurship!), helping poor people financially is bad (spurs depedence!).
Several additional points. While people such as myself are generally opposed to subsidizing corporations or offering them preferential treatment (unless its to perform some genuine public good that otherwise would not be profitable and that would not otherwise be fulfilled), there are some valid arguments for limited transfers. Some examples of these are NIH research grants for startups, low interest government loans, etc. These types of funds ca
Religion is different from race. Religion is consciously chose, race isn't. . Religions, as a rule, mix common sense rules with some amount of logic-defying ridiculousness. The common sense rules hook people in, and then the illogic breaks their minds, rendering them incapable of making rational decisions on their own. They become cattle for the priestly class which profit from their mental enslavement. Religion teaches people that they are incapable of thinking for themselves, that they need a higher power, always speaking to them through a human intermediary, in order to know how to live correctly. Religion is a form of mass psychosis. It is no more a legitimate "belief system" than the ramblings of a paranoid schizophrenic.
Almost by definition, a person has to mentally damaged in order to accept religion. This is no slight against any person so damaged, any more than a person damaged by a viral infection is at fault. It is not your fault that your mind was infected by an insidious mental virus that has damaged your ability to think, in order to make you better at spreading the virus to others. But you should not be respected for having the virus, and your attempts to pass the virus on to others should be stopped.
I can't belief this hatefully and intellectually empty fluff passes for "insightful"... even here on/.
Religion can be used for good or for ill just like anything else. You neglect the fact that the greatest killers of the 20th century were not religion; they were largely secular movements, e.g., Communism, Naziism, etc. History has proven that masses of people can act in irrational, stupid, and hateful ways regardless of their belief in a higher power. A religious person does not necessarily have to give up independent thought anymore than, say, a person that believes in Communism does (such as yourself). You might argue that many people have been duped by some religious authorities throughout history (and ignore all the other factors involved), but this same argument holds even more true for Communists and other such political believers.
People must think for themselves, but it's a mistake to believe that all religious believers necessarily sign-away their independent thought process in order to partake in religion. Many intelligent people in western world today have a basic belief in God (in some higher power); they believe that the traditions/rituals prescribed by their selected religion are basically good things to raise a family in; and they see the value of being part of a community organized around those principles. Many of these religious groups do not necessarily have any religious authority that wields real power (or even any at all: see the Quakers for instance). Many religious people basically sign up for an essentially static belief system and they do not recognize the leaders as having any kind of special connection to God. I know many bright and intelligent people that believe in this manner and, in many ways, I respect them more for it (I'm agnostic).
I reject the idea that the world would be better off without any form of religion. I believe that many of the problems that we face today owe at least in part to the utter rejection of any basic moral principles that religion has historically helped guide. I won't say that it's impossible to have some moral compass without relgion (I'm not religious myself), but that the removal of the institution of religion has caused more problems in many parts of society (esp. those without close family ties, community, good education, basic exposure to those most basic principles, etc) than those it might have removed.
10. OMFG Crisis! Free market sux0r! Obviously we need a big government to spend 1 trillion dollars to provide 1GB/s service to everyone (even though many people can pay ~30/month for cable/DSL and simply choose not to)!***
*** Note: I'm not saying everything is perfect here (esp. in the land of telecos/govt granted monopolies), but that the many/.'s and, indeed, the article itself paint an awefully simplistic picture (How much did S. Korea spend to deliver its level of service to its people and how much would similar services cost in a much larger and more geographically distributed population like ours? Why is relative rank more important than the general proportion of the population that has decent broadband options?). Blah
Don't bother reading, all comments will fall into one of the following:
1. Mmmm, US BIG! ENGLAND SMALL! LAYING CABLE EXPENSIVE! FIRE BAD!
2. O NOES! US is teh sUx0rs!
3. omg teh US is teh R0x0rS! France = surrender monkeys!
4. blah blah dark fiber blah blah net nuetrality blah blah GOOGLENET!
5. I for one welcome Korean||English||Chinese overlords.
6. I'm stuck on dial-up, you insensitive clod!
7. If you want to live in the boonies, you pay the price. The invisible hand of Adam Smith will give all true Libertarians happy endings...
1.) "The Standard" is not necessarily a good thing, unless the standard is consistant. I used to work in AutoCad because it was "the standard".. then next thing I know we can't read other customers files because they upgraded and we didn't.. so we had to upgrade.. and just like ".doc" we had ".dxf" which was SUPPOSED to be a standard that any CAD program could read, not just Autocad.. but of course it didn't work unless you had the right version of Autocad.
I'm not defending Microsoft, but the fact is that most customers are still "safer" in terms of file compatibility, user experience, etc by sticking with "the standard", even if it forces them on an expensive upgrade treadmill, than they are with OpenOffice and other such competing applications. Maybe some small shops that don't need to exchange a significant number of office files outside of their own organization and who have relatively simple needs can consider to switching... but for most the problems and the costs that changing presents significantly exceed the potential cost savings. This is a fact of life for most CIOs and IT managers.
2.) Compatability... Why does it have to be OO the does all the work ? Why isn't Microsoft making Office able to open an OpenOffice file ? Who is really doing more to be compatable ?
I'm not defending Microsoft. Obviously they enjoy a de facto monopoly in the office suite market. It's not in their interest to facilitate perfect cross-compatibility.
3.) Learning Curve... There are learning curves when upgrading versions of Office. Most Word Processors and Spreadsheets operate pretty much the same within reason anyway. The learning curve argument is one of the worst excuses for not using OpenOffice. You could tell me that the thing just loads too slow.. and I would agree with you.. but tell me it's hard to learn... well that doesn't fly.
I disagree. Although it is not the reason, it is significant (particularly before a year or two ago, huge change,... prior versions were pretty aweful). Most sophisticated computer users can adapt fairly quickly, but you'd be surprised how quickly more average computer users stumble when something changes ever so slightly. The difficulty is that most users really have a very poor conceptual idea of what they're doing (which makes it difficult to transfer skills between applications/changes): they manage by memorizing certain keystrokes/mouse clicks. They can learn, but it will cost time and money (moreso as you move away from the most basic features). It may be true that only 5-10% of the users really need those advanced features, but juggling two different suites creates dificulties of its own and identifying who those users are & helping them is rather costly.
4.) Development.. Yes Sun has incentive to continue, but OpenOffice itself seems to be developing just fine on it's own. They recently added a Database to the suite.. not that it's that great, but they are "doing things". They are not stalled.. I get updates and fixes all the time. Why are they doing this ? perhaps because users want improvements and features added.
It seems to be doing OK right now (though I don't watch their development activity day to day), but the future funding is a bit of an unknown (and thus a potential risk for businesses/managers). I suspect that Sun is funding the development for strategic purposes (to weaken MS). I'm not convinced that they're actually profiting from their development directly, i.e., X dollars in R&D equal Y profit from Open Office/Star Office. Sun could decide at somepoint that they want to make money and thus force all people that want updates to buy Star Office instead (or perhaps just drop it entirely). The relative risk of this happening to MS Office is about zero (a huge cash cow for them). Again, my point is not that this is true, but that it is
Indeed, that is the danger. It should be noted too that there are reasons why the Nordic countries have been so succsessful with socialism. One, they are quite culturally homogenous, so one never feels that outsiders are leaching off of them. Two, they have a culture of cooperation brought about by extremes of climate. That's my theory, anyway.
While these factors may partially explain why Sweden and other Nordic countries have not crashed as spectacularly as other socialist movements (e.g., Germany, France, New Zealand, etc) to call their model a success would be to ignore its many current problems, its historic economic instability, and what is almost certainly a lack of sustainability of the model.
Sweden's real unemployment is estimated to be between 15and 20%. Although their official stats count just ~6% as being unemployed, this excludes a lot of people on long-term sick leave (which count as being employed -- 16% of public spending pays for this!), welfare recipients, people that simply give up (e.g., students, early retirees, etc), etc.
What's more, many of those who are actually employed are employed by the government (about 30%). Sweden has created almost no new private sector jobs in 50 years. Only 1 of their 50 largest companies was created after 1970. Many of their biggest companies have left the country (e.g., IKEA) or moved their taxable entities outside recently. Despite having a large highly educated population, it is an unfriendly place for entrepreneurship and creates little of it due to labor laws (v. expensive to sack people), high taxation, very high sales taxes, etc.
Their tax revenues are significantly more than 50% of GDP (their middle class pay a much higher rate of tax than we do here). The Swedish people pay much higher taxes than we do across the board. They don't have a lot of wealthy people so they've been forced to raise taxes on the middle class to sustain these benefits. Some may try to excuse it as simply being a product of a welfare state, but it is a very real economic burden on their economy. For instance, their GDP per capita has fallen dramatically relative to the rest of the OECD since 1950.
Consider, for instance, that the difference in disposable income (after taxes and all social transfers) between the poorer 30 decile of income and the richest 80 decile is just 12K Krona per month (about $1500). This itself represents a small change in lifestyle but consider just how wide that gap is: the entire middle class (from poorest full-time working class and the upper middle class). There is very little incentive to work hard, to risk a stable job for a new one that might pay better, to take a new job if you get laid off (cushy benefits), to show up to work, to take a more stressful job, and to take business risks, etc. What has happened is that people are working less and less (and, ironically, many of those that want to work can't find it), taking more sick leave, etc. In fact, if you look at the number of hours worked in their economy it has fallen dramatically.
To further stress their system, Sweden's retirees is set to increase to roughly 54% of their working age people by 2050, i.e., 1 senior-pensioner for every ~2 working people (much of it happening soon). They've also acquired a significant number of foreign immigrants (many of them no longer of Nordic heritage) -- roughly 10% of the country now (who are heavily unemployed). The system is already showing signs of stress and tax payer unrest (at least 65B in overseas tax avoidance, rising non-market work, etc). Sweden an
I also bet you believe we are winning the Iraq war, GW saved us from WMD's and the easter bunny is real as well.
This is basically a lame implied ad hominem argument. Don't listen to him! He believes in the easter bunny!
Here are some major facts. Microsoft products have a earth sized avalanche more marketing than Open office does. If you go and ask 100 random people chances are that less than 3% will know what open office is. Hell they even get high schools and colleges to market it for them by offering "office suite classes" that are nothing more than a 10 week marketing class they get people to pay to go to( in college).
Besides the fact that you only present one "vague" fact to support your argument (not even a specific relevant number) this is a total non sequitur. The mere fact that MSFT spends X million dollars of marketing does not mean their their success owes entirely or even substantially to it (particularly true when we know of several other majors factors here).
Marketing does not always win the day--superior products and better prices usually do. The US car industry has vastly outspent their Japanese rivals year in and year out and they've lost market share to the Japanese year after year. Microsoft has spent a ton of money promoting products at various points in their historic with little if any pickup (e.g., TabletPC, Windows CE, MSN vs Google, Internet Explorer vs Mozilla, etc).
Meanwhile you ignore:
1) That Microsoft Office has been the standard for many years. Customers know the product very well because they've actually used it for thousands and thousands of hours. Open Ofice has only very recently approached some level of equality (features, UI, stability, compatibility, etc).
2) Customers would have to deal with less than perfect file compatiblity (my actual experience) or at least the chance that it won't be (no proof that it is). Even if you believe that it's 100% compatible with Office 2003 and all earlier versions, how are potential customers supposed to assess if and how quickly OO will handle the new Office 2007 format, say, when their business associations start sending them documents in such a format?
3) Customers have to learn a new UI. This takes time and money.
4) Customers have to contend with lack of VBA and lack of automation compatibility. You'd be surprised how many applications and corporations are wedded to Office because of this. Try exporting from Crystal Reports into a spreadsheet, many corporate DBs, etc.
5) Customers face business risk with potential uncertainty with Open Office due to their lack of business model (Sun is still driving most of the development... there's no obvious organic driver for continued growth and support).
6) Lack of features and stability for advanced users.
7) Just plain unknowable risk. Open Office is still an unknown quantity in the most corporate environments. If you spend many man hours assuring yourself that it's kosher you might sleep well, but it's far from plug and slug change.
These are just a few of the real concerns with respect to customer adoption. Yes, Microsoft Office is completely over-priced given its widespread adoption and I'd be glad to see OO take marketshare from MS, but to completely dismiss Microsoft's continued success here as simply owing "marketing" is nonsense.
Do the same in businesses, survey 100 CEO's and CTO's less than 10% will know what Open office is. Business leasers also feed the marketing themselves.. Where is that powerpoint(tm) your excel(tm) or word(tm) file?
I was a CIO fairly recently for a mid-size corporation (and later for a division for a major corporation). I knew about Open Office and considered deploying it internally (instead of renewing SA - $$$), but I ruled it out due to some of the reasons I mentioned (e.g., cost of modifying internal applications, lack of compatibility with many shrinkwrapped packages, increased memory, having to deal with decentralized VBA scripts, potential issues with Citrix, etc). I wouldn't expect a CEO to know about this sort of thing if can't even make it past most IT managers.
No, it is not a logical fallacy, and nothing in your post says it is.
Your statement is an obvious non sequitur (more specifically, you are denying the antecedent.) You posit that if competition actually improves productivity, then most/all companies would be structured this way. Your argument is based on the false assumption that productivity is the sole concern of shareholders (not mention another critical assumption: that management is completely free of any relevant conflicts, e.g., agency costs). Long term profitability (or future cash flows) is the chief concern of shareholders and I demonstrated how increased productivity can dramatically reduce net profitability. Therefore your assertion that competition does not improve productivity does not follow from your argument.
Your argument is kind of like arguing that "If good deeds contribute to the welfare of society, then this big group of people would be doing more good deeds. Because they're not, good deeds must not be good for society."
What's more, your argument does not really even compute. You imply that there are many companies that are unnecessarily competing against their own interests, but suggest that management is at once too stupid to know better (due to the fact that they're competing externally) and simultaneously suggest that their lack of internal competition is clear evidence of management's belief in cooperation. It'd be one thing if you wish to finger antitrust regulation as being the culprit (that some mergers would not be allowed), but I think the real issue is that you want to have your cake and eat it too. Management is insightful and properly motivated when you agree with them, but not otherwise.
If you consider all of us to be shareholders in society, then it makes sense for society to be organized as corporations are, cooperatively. If it makes sense for a corporation to have one larger division rather than several smaller ones, because of overhead costs and duplication of effort, it makes sense for all of society to be so organized.
More logical fallacies. Your argument is too simplistic and too polar. You might as well argue that if two packets of sugar in your coffee is better than none, then an entire cup of sugar would be the best. There is a balance to be struck. A company can get too big for their own good or sell too much internally and that can create very real inefficiencies. Small companies are usually dramatically more efficient in terms of management than big companies are... where big companies make up for it is when production/manufacturing scale creates dramatic efficiencies (e.g., producing cars) or where having vast amounts of capital is extremely important (e.g., building a cell phone network). The point that you are missing is that the free market, under our system of government, usually allows the participants to decide when to cooperate/merge (with the exception of very large companies when they are deemed by the powers that be to have "market powers") and when to compete (where the government hasn't granted monopolies, e.g., land-line phones). When it is in the interest of two or more companies to merge or for one to acquire the other, this happens fairly frequently. In point of fact, this has happened throughout the agricultural industry in the United States. Big corporate owned farms can farm far more efficiently than small ones do and this has put market pressure on those small farms to sell to bigger ones or to, at least, form collective agreements with previously competing farms.
If there are a number of studies proving competition boosts productivity, perhaps you could point them out?
I don't keep them at my finger tips since this is sufficiently obvious to most people, but here's One
If competition truly led to higher productivity, then large corporations would be internaly structured as redundant competing units. In reality, this has been tried and failed miserably.
This is a logical fallacy. Corporations are structured to improve shareholder wealth. If each division shared the same amount and kind of resources (e.g, IP, manufacturing, capital resources, etc) and truly competed without restriction, then this would push profit margins way down. Furthermore, this model dramatically increases overhead costs and thus would make many large companies dramatically less efficient. One larger division producing a mature product can usually produce it more cheaply than several smaller divisions producing the same amount of goods. In other words, there are usually very large economic disincentives for shareholders to agree to what you suggest (companies have formed internal competition in some cases though and spun off them at some point... it can make sense in limited context). This does not disprove the well documented theory that competition boosts productivity for society though.
Our ability to cooperate is one thing that sets us apart from other animals.
Uh, wolves, dolphins, and other animals cooperate to hunt for food and for self-defence purposes. Also, you're ignoring that companies are truly always been a hybrid. Companies both cooperate and compete. To wholly ignore one or both elements is just plain silly.
While I'm certainly glad that your father found the success he did, the fact is that rags-to-riches anecdotes like this are the exception, not the rule. Most people are unable to rise above the position and options that society sets out for them. Recent studies show that upward mobility for the truly poor is almost non-existent in America. On average, it takes over ten generations for a poor family to rise to middle class.
It's not as exceptional as you seem to believe. My mother did much the same thing, albeit she was born here and to an upper-middle class background (though she started her career with no money and went to school on scholarship). Most of the truly rich people I know (which is a lot) earned their place through hard work and entrepreneurship (not because they inherited a bunch of wealth). I've also worked with a lot of solidly middle class or even upper middle class people that started out relatively poor. Although education is certainly a critical factor, people that are both capable and motivated can and do improve their financial situations dramatically. Anyways-the point is that wealth can be created and that you are wrong to assume that it's simply a matter of distribution of a fixed number of stolen assets.
I was using "you" in the generic sense. I was not claiming you had literally stolen your land! More that you had purchased stolen property. I also have less of a problem with personal ownerhsip of real estate that is actually being lived on, as opposed to things like forests, mines, grazing lands, etc. that are not even being worked by the real owners but by their employees. Think of it like this: if you buy a stolen bicycle, does that bicycle belong to you or the original owner? Land is the same, it was stolen originally and therefore all subsequent title to it is invalid as well.
You'd need to prove it was "stolen" originally and the courts, since this is the authority you're appealing to here, would not accept this argument. Also, if you wholly reject the notion of property, then no country has claim to their own territory. The Chinese, Africans, Indians, South Americans, etc would have equal claim to all land in the US.
You accuse me of sophistry, and then demonstrate it yourself. People are always "fundamentally free" in any regime. Even in a totalitarian state, you are free to do as you are told, or die. Same with a free market system that does not garauntee individuals access to the means of suporting themselves. You are free to do what you are told, or die. You may have a choice of who you are told what to do by, unless you sign that right away as part of your "employment" contract.
I'm sorry you can't see the distinction between doing what the regime orders you to do or getting executed/tortured/improsoned for failing to do it and being allowed freedom of professions, employments, movement, speech, etc and having to weigh the costs and benefits with each decision. Even the poorest people in this country have a wide array of practical choices. You assert a priori that anything less than some illusory "perfect" and consequence free choice is just the same as no choice, yet you simultaneously neglect that life itself imposes these limitations (Even if you were the only human on this earth, you would have to make a choice between working to find food/water/shelter/etc or die).
There is no historical precedent that would lead me to trust that the owning class will not collude to keep the poor in wage-slavery.
Nonsense. If would study history or economics in any real depth, then you would learn that the conditions of the poor have improved dramatically over the past hundred years or even moreso 200, 300... and long before.
You can make the claim that the free market will always correct this, but I have seen absolutely no evidence this is true.
I'm against coercive force too, and that is why I take the stand I do on private ownership of natural resources. All private ownership of natural resources relies on coercive force.
Pretty much all rights rely on coercion if you wish to view the world from this absolutist prism. Your right to life comes at the cost of my right to swing my arm when and how I like. Your right to privacy comes at the cost of my being able to use my senses fully and to share information. Your right to free speech comes at the cost of my right not to listen to you. Your significant other's right to her own body comes at the cost of my right to satisfy my sexual urges. Your right to own and care for your pet comes at the cost of my right to eat critters. Your right not to be discriminated against comes at the cost of my not being able hire whomever I want. All nations rights, likewise, come at the cost of other nation's and citizens of other nation's to exercise their rights.
You take what was not yours, which you have never labored on, and call it yours. You then protect your ill gotten gains with force.
You assume too much: I didn't take anything. I've worked hard. I bought my land and I've improved on it. Most land that is valuable has been dramatically improved on by industrious people (even farm fields). If you don't believe me then draw a 100 mile radius from whatever city you live in now, the odds are very high that somewhere within that circule you can purchase a significant amount of land for fairly little. You might argue that someone at some point, many many generations ago, took land that they had no claim to, but very few of us can claim to be direct descendents of these people. Disentangling this would be near impossible... but we can be quite certain that most people earned their keep.
My father, for instance, emigrated to this country after WWII with scarcely anything to his name: just the beginnings of a good education and a willingness to learn and work hard. He went to night school to complete his education (EE) worked for several years in industry and later he started several companies (designed/patented several critical products) and he eventually became quite wealthy (buying land along the way @ market price). He created wealth (not zero sum)... this is what allowed him to buy land.
Without society, a person wouldn't even think of the concept of rights, only power. With society, rights boil down to contract. You agree to uphold and protect this right for me, and in exchange, I agree to uphold it for you. For property, though, the only parties to the contract are property owners. Non property owners are not a party to the contract because there is no value exchange, they get nothing and are still expected to uphold the rights in others.
You are ignoring that home ownership rates in the US are roughly 70% in the United States (a clear majority) and that pretty much everyone owns property even if not their own home (cars, clothing, electronics, food, cash, etc). Even if we suppose that there exist a very significant number deserving-yet-property-less people in the country, it would be difficult to argue that they are not beneficiaries. The alternative to no private property ownership is state-ownership (and this has been shown to be miserable) or no state supported property rights at all (in which case we have no productive use of land, lack of civil order, etc). If you want to argue that they're not beneficiaries of this system, then you need to prove that they'd benefit more under some regime (which I don't think you can do).
This amounts to a virtual enslavement of the non-property holders. It will also lead to their actual enslavement as they do not have access to the means of production, thus they have no way of supporting themselves without entering into a contract with a property owner. It is very easy for the owning class to collude
First, about information, I said the free market doesn't handle non-exclusionary goods efficiently. I wasn't necessarily advocating open access to information. In fact, with a few modifications regarding copyright length, our IP system is not bad. But it involves the government handing out monopolies precisely because what I stated is true. Can you refute that?
I'm sorry, but your position on the matter was unclear. I don't disagree that IP rights must be enforced in order to support a broad and viable system for IP development and that government is usually the best one to enforce this. Whether or not you wish to define this as being the "free market" is a semantic argument of little interest to me.
Second, democratic control of resources was tried for a few years after the February revolution in Russia, but where else has it really been tried?
What you're talking about is a democractically-controlled planned economy. Planned economies have failed repeatedly throughout history and planned resources within other economies have similarly sub-optimal results. Obviously there is a long list of authoritarian regimes that have imposed it and failed to efficiently achieve what they set out to do (e.g., produce crops at the levels needed, affordable machinery, etc): USSR, East Germany, China, Poland, North Korea, Romania, Bulgaria, Nicaragua, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, Czechoslovakia, various Indian states, etc. You then also have a wide number of forrays into nationalization in the Europe, North America, South America, etc and partial-state ownership into many industries which have generally resulted in failure or, at least, under-performance. There have also been numerous experiments into communal farming: Israeli Kibbutz, various experiments in the US (e.g., Brook Farm, New Harmony, Hopedale, Putney Community, etc), and many more throughout the world. I know you'll claim that nothing is quite like your perfectly concieved idea, but the evidence in damning. Can you name any that have truly succeeded on any scale?
Some things you might want to consider: How are voters supposed to determine what the correct amount of land to produce corn is? How are they even supposed to know how much corn to produce (never mind timing, quality, variety, etc)? How do voters determine at the price at which, perhaps, other crops should be planted? How are voters supposed to know at what point it would make sense to plant another crop (greater efficiency) or perhaps do something entirely different with the land (e.g., build a manufacturing facility)? How are voters even supposed to know that a particular resource is being used inefficiently without an array of individuals trying alternative methods, pricing, etc? How are voters supposed to determine the market rates to pay the various job holders? How are voters even supposed to coordinate their own divergent interests? People in my camp might be willing to produce twice as much for the use of the resource as an oppositional camp might with only 2x the number (but they'd likely win)? When the technology/efficiency improvements avails itself, how will voters have the knowledge and the resolve (or even the sufficient number) to override the interest group of those employed unnecessarily (i.e., should be layed off)?
Wait, I thought of one where it is still being done: the Mondragon Collective in Spain. Well, it's kind of a hybrid system with some free-market, capitalist aspects but there is a large amount of democratic controll of resources. It's kind of hard to make a system work when most of the privileged upper class the world over has it in for you just on principle.
The system pays 6x the wages to more valued employees and pays dividends exclusively to the majority of its employees (they have an equity stake in their own efforts). I'd hardly say this is anything like what you're advocating and, what's more, it's very questionable that they
Insufficient profit margin? So the problem is that the pharmaceutical companies can't make enough money off of this unpatented drug, and the answer is to just hand them a patent?
This drug is already being produced and can be purchased at drug stores. The problem is not known to be effective for treating cancer in vivo or safe at the required doses . They haven't performed any clinical trials yet and someone needs to do this before doctors will prescribe this (except, perhaps, off-label in desperate cases). If the university or school is willing or able to scrape together the funds to pay for the testing (and possible refinement: dosing, delivery, etc) without ever having any real potential to recover their costs, then more power to them. This is quite unlikely to happen though.
If they can't do this in a reasonable amount of time though, then I'd suggest that it's appropriate that they patent and offer the drug company that does this work an exclusive license which they would need to economically justify the kinds of investment necessary to make this a viable treatment option (and, btw, there is a very good chance that this drug won't prove to be a good treatment option for actual patients: please read what an expert has to say.).
Aspirin isn't patented, but we still see companies making that.
You miss the point. While generic drug companies are very willing to produce a drug once it is known to safe and effective (and, especially, after someone else has created a large market demand for it), it takes lots of money to identify the targets, find/discover the compounds, and prove to be good viable treatment options (pay for multiple clinical trials and studies). BTW, Aspirin was patented in 1899, but its patent expired long ago.
If we're going to effectively take the free market out of the equation by handing out a patent for doing nothing, why NOT have the government do it?
The company would not be doing nothing, they'd be spending a tremendous amount of money (clinical trials, further refinement, etc) on something that has a very real chance of failure. You speak from an ivory tower point of view: as someone that has never had to deal with the realities of developing an actual medical product. Developing novel high-tech products is not a simple thing and it is precisely the sort of thing that government has proven to be woefully bad at (not to mention that it inevitable shifts all the costs on the most productive members of society which creates problems of its own).
Call me an idiot, but free information is preferable. Information is non-exclusive, it does not behave like normal property and the market is not able to handle exchange of non-exclusive goods efficiently.
Free lunch is preferable too, everything else being equal, but most people (even idiots) understand that it's not practical. Likewise, open access to intellectual property is not practical in most cases. What you fail to recognize is that most inventions do not come from random and unsolicited discovery, but from substantial concerted and targeted efforts whereby the inventors/innovators spend substantial resources months to years in advance with the hope of creating something desirable that will allow them to eventually cover their R&D costs and profit. If the actual implementation of the resulting product is made available at its marginal production cost by free-riding competitors, then the inventor will never be able to cover their R&D costs (not to mention that they'd have no incentive to take those risks in the first place).
Resources should be controlled and administered by small, local democratic organizations.
Err yeah, because this has worked so well in the past. You must be smoking the good stuff.
Yes, I forgot. In the New American Christianity, Jesus was a capitalist entrepreneur who helped the money lenders set up a profitable business plan and NOT lending for profit is a sin.
Please. It's not exactly "new" and it didn't start in America. All of the world's religions have evolved considerably (hello, animal sacrifice? women's equality? etc). Ever heard of Calvinism or the so called "protestant work ethic"?? As early as the 16th century, John Calvin actually encouraged Christians to lend for profit as often as possible and to be productive members of society. Work itself became enobling. For the first time, it was ok for someone to change their social standing, to leave their family profession, and be as productive as possible (instead of being told that certain enumerated professions were the only worthy ones or that man should aspire to a humble monastic existence). This was an enlightened point of view as compared to the earlier Christian thought (well Martin Luther started the ball a bit... but much more limited). Without this sort of thinking the West would still be a economic, social, and scientific backwater (and the rest of the world would as well... unless they evolved similarly).
You are ignoring the truth that markets can be manipulated with money as easily as with political power.
I disagree. First, markets are actually quite difficult to manipulate to a great degree (especially without the presence of some kind of government-granted monopoly). Only in those rare industries where few significant players exist is this feasible (and these usually, but not always, owe to government granted monopolies). Once you have more than a few significant players it's nearly impossible. Powerful politicians, on the other hand, are relatively few in number and they can be bought quite easily. Second, I never suggested that markets can't be manipulated or that there is no place for regulation. You seem to be under the impression that I'm a libertarian--I am not.
In a free market system wealth invariably concentrates in fewer and fewer hands. Even if you don't buy that, you must see that wealth is distributed so inequitably that there will exist some class of people for whom the only good economic alternative is to sell themselves into slavery.
We don't live in a zero sum world. The rich can get richer faster and the poor can (and generally do) get richer at the same time. Most of the country, even the poor, have enjoyed generally significantly higher incomes each year on average. Median family incomes have more than doubled since the 1940s and the similar number holds true for all economic quintiles (and if you look at, say, the 1800s several times more). Most people are living longer and are healthier. Roughly 70% of the country now owns their own homes.
What's more, the record is much more mixed (see pg 456) than you seem to believe -- in fact there is evidence to suggest that much the opposite has happened in the US over the past 100 years.
When all the world is owned, those who do not own the means of production become the slaves of those who do, as otherwise they have no means of supporting themselves. The owners are the wolves, the people who do not own and must sell themelves into slavery are the lambs. Get it?
The long term trend in the US is very much the opposite of what you suggest. You are too fixated on "the means of production" since you view everything in zero sum terms. Human capital is a very real form of production too. A skilled programmer, doctor, lawyer, etc, for instance, may own almost no property, but can still command a high salary (and eventually purchase property of their own). As our economy evolves towards more and more of a knowledge based system and as efficiency grows ever higher (thanks to capital investment, innovation, flexible labor markets, etc), individuals will have greater bargaining power to command higher salaries and higher standards of living will be obtained for most people. It may not always be perfectly smooth year to year, but that is the trend and that is reality.
In regards to free market types scaring the crap out of me, I am refering to people who think that the unregulated free market is a more equitable and fair way of excercising control than democracy. As in the ancient Greek kyklos, people in a Democracy are free to elect a tyrant, and often do. It makes no difference whether that is a political or economic tyrant.
Nonsense. Name the economic tyrant in the US and tell me how it compares to, say, Stalin, Hitler, etc? We do not effectively allow anyone to gather so much power that they can abuse anyone like this. If people don't like their employer, they will leave for another one (just talk to any employer/see turnover rates). If people don't like the services/products offered, they will (with few exceptions) go to another provider.
Syndicalism, as practised by the Mondragon Collective, a large gro
Capitalism is two wolves haggling over how much a lamb costs.
You are seriously confused. Capitalism is an economic system whereby the means of production are largely owned privatly and products and services are exchanged in a largely unrestricted/undirected way (free market). It in no way prescribes that criminal and civil law should not exist.
Democracy is three lambs voting to make eating lamb illegal.
This is merely one possible outcome. However, you utterly neglect that the lambs can also make it illegal for cattle, a minority group, to eat grass (or that they can only eat as much grass as any one lamb and thus starve). We all find ourselves in the minority group in some respect at some point in time. This is why wise countries like the United States have elected long ago to place limits on what the so-called majority can do by forming a Constitutional Republic (and other similar measures).
People who hate democracy and want to replace it with "market based solutions" scare the crap out of me.
I'm not sure what you're referring to exactly, but if such laws/regulations are promulgated Democratically and the people still hold the power, it's still a Democracy. Would say, for instance, that the FDA isn't a Democratic institution because the majority isn't directly making all the decisions? I wouldn't think so.
Historically, that's a little closer to the truth.
Your reading of history is woefully lacking in depth and breadth. Historically, before the United States, most Democracies were abject failures: they either collapsed quickly or brutally surpressed the rights of even those that it originally set out to protect. As for Capitalism, please name another system (time/place) that has better served the great majority (even the poor)?
Slashdot Mirror
If you simply mean this tautologically, i.e., a corporation wouldn't be a corporation without laws to recognize its existence, then OK. However, if you mean that large for-profit organizations with limited liability for its owners are impossible, then this depends on the legal environment that such an entity exists in. Without laws that give creditors the right to pursue investors or attorneys the ability try to sue investors for alleged torts similar entities can exist without necessarily requiring any positive action on the part of government (or even necessarily a government at all). In fact, many of the early big companies were NOT founded as corporations but instead as trusts, partnerships, etc. That being said, our well established body of corporate law is a fairly optimal way to create such entities and it would be significantly harder without it.
Leaving aside the fact that corporations do not have a monopoly on amoral behavior (see government, non-profit organizations, political groups, individuals, religious groups, etc)... Society benefits when large amounts of risk capital can be efficiently accumulated and invested in productive activities. This helps efficiently create jobs, goods, and services that modern society benefits greatly from. Wealth is created and spread throughout society precisely because this tends to be efficient. Our modern economy requires an efficient mechanism to limit shareholder liability and provide a well understood legal framework in which all stakeholders have clearly defined rights.
Some activities can ONLY be produced on a large scale and most are done far more efficiently on large scale. Consider a semiconductor or LCD factory, a car company, drug R&D and manufacture, industrial scale farming, logging, and so on. The number of partners in a partnership scales very poorly. Let's suppose the optimal number is 20. Exactly how many very rich people out there have both the desire and enough liquid capital to invest in such an multi-billion dollar enterprise? Now what about all other large enterprises that require capital?
You should also consider what would happen to the wealth of society if there were not an efficient vehicle for people to invest their wealth. If corporations were not available to utilize capital, there would simply be much less investment opportunity. You might argue that the void left by the disappearing corporations of the world would be filled by Mom and Pops, and this might be true to some extent, but their ability to produce goods and services at all or at a price an affordable (never mind equally affordable) price would be limited. Capital that would otherwise be invested in corporations would either be not invested at all (due to lack of risk/reward) or be invested in poorly performing activities. This lost investment return would also not be available for re-investment. Likewise, consider where that would leave the retirement funds of the average person. Are they supposed to invest their entire life savings in the mom and pop down the street? The loss of wealth would be HUGE.
Finally, an empirical analysis does not support your apparent opinion that we'd be better off without corporations. If anything, the results show very much to the opposite. Consider food safety today vs 50, 100, or 200 years ago. Consider farm productivity (look at the price of food vs the average pay check), average real wages, work place safety, the affordability and quality of goods and services available today, novel medical devices/medicines, etc.... On the whole people today in this country
Why do you presume they're all merely innocent victims? If someone gets shot, it's not like they're getting anything out of it. Those that took out ARMs would have benefited had the market not gone South. In point of fact, many people DID do very well with their ARMs in recent history. Many were able to afford bigger houses and those bigger houses made them even more money in a booming market that seemed to many like it could never fall. Just because the so-called victims are not "rich" and/or don't work in the financial industry doesn't mean that they can't be greedy or short-sighted.
Actually I think most of these were sold by retail mortgage brokers. It is commonly known that the brokers (and the companies that they work for) work on commission/fees and the process, in my experience, makes it pretty clear that they're just packaging the loan for banks, sight unseen. I never would have assumed that they're looking out for my interests in any shape way or form. If nothing else, I would think that most reasonable people would scratch their heads and wonder why they're able to afford a house 2x as nice as what their peers could. I also fail to see how someone can be innocent if they're involved if exaggerating their incomes, assets, etc.
I have no doubt that there were some innocent victims involved. Just like I have no doubt that many people that took out these loans knowning that they were taking some form of risk (even if not fully appreciating the scope of it). However, I truly believe that to design a system that would protect or bail out all potential innocents also creates very large moral hazards that society ultimately cannot afford.
I agree that having a degree from a respected institution tends to help open doors and make life easier in general. Some larger and more conservative companies will not even hire or promote you without a bachelors degree or better. However, I wouldn't say that all individuals would be well advised to pursue a degree, especially if they're already doing well in the working world.
At many smaller organizations it's more a function of how intelligent, capable, and sophisticated you are. Many people ascribe to "lack of degree" problems that are really the result of poor communication skills or lack of polish (which may tend to correlate with formal education but are _not_ the same thing). Someone that has these skills is far less likely to be passed over in a more entrepreneurial organization that cares more about results than procedures or appearance. Someone with solid communication skills, that understands the concerns of management, and has broader interests, and so on will fair much better (even over people with degrees from presumably good schools).
If one cannot attend a well respected institution and/or obtain a somewhat relevant degree for whatever reason (e.g., financial, educational background, etc), then essentially dropping out of the work force for 4 or more years is not necessarily a good decision. This time out of the work force or working part-time is an opportunity cost, more so if they have some highly needed skill-set or a particular opportunity available to them at that moment that they would otherwise turn away from. This is even more true if one is not going to get a lot out of the degree because they're not motivated or interested in the work.
I have known tons of people with degrees (BS - PhD) from some of the best schools in the country that basically go nowhere because they frankly never got much value out of their education (i.e., they just cruised through because that's what was easy) and/or lacked the intelligence or the work ethic to add real value. It's far from an automatic key to success. Intelligent people with the focus and the drive to bring real insight to problems are rare commodity in this world, with or without extensive formal education, and these are the people that tend to succeed in areas like IT, business, etc.
In short, while a bachelors degree tends to help significantly, it depends a lot on the situation and the answer is much less obvious the further one gets away from high school.
Does this "prove" there is a systematic bias? No, but lack of concrete proof doesn't automatically disprove that there is a systematic bias either. Look no one would question that racism has existed and still exists today in the US, but actual proof is often hard to come by (even more so in something like there where you're talking about a relatively small community doing things that can't be compared apples to apples).Do you have any actual proof of researchers getting "fat stacks of cash" from the oil industry? Please don't cite the AIE/Exxon thing. I won't deny the possibility that there is motivation on the part of industry, but I'm asking for proof. Please note that even accepting grant money from the oil industry is enough to taint the researcher in the future amongst their peers, the media, etc (even amongst those who might be more open-minded on the subject of global warming).
Err...slashdot swollowed some of my text (tags)...
If you really believe that inheritance is fundamentally unfair on its face, then you should insist that the burden of paying the tax should be equally shared by all people (i.e., $0 dollar exclusion/deducation with a flat rate for all). How are numbers of excess of 200K an "accident of birth" while figures at or less than 200K somehow "deserved"? If anything, I personally believe that deservedness is often reversed. People that start small businesses, save more, waste less, etc... and so have a higher net worth when they die (thus increasing their tax liability), should have more say over what happens with their assets than someone that never really saved or worked particularly hard (sure there are people with less money that work their asses off too, but this tax does have a perverse impact on some of the most productive/valuable members of society).
Uh, when is the last time you did a brain dump of people that are opposed to such social transfer programs? I know you left a small caveat at the end, but a) I think you'd find that the overwhelming majority of them have substantially different reasons than what you imply b) this is essentially a strawman argument.
You have a poor understanding of why people buy insurance. The consumer buys insurance out of self interest. They hedge against risk by pooling risk with other people. One critical difference between the national healthcare systems envisioned by most people in the US and a standard insurance plan is that the insurance basically pays out what you put into it on the aggregate (less some small percentage for overhead costs and profit for the insurance company and perhaps some for fraudulent claims / agency costs -- it is a fairly competitive market though so these tend to be somewhat optimal). Whereas nationalized healthcare plans basically seek to transfer net funds from those that pay more into it to those that do not (or can not); otherwise they would not need to be compulsory. In other words, your assertion that people care that the claimants are their economic "equal" is irrelevant and is just flat wrong (most insurance companies insure a broad range of economic levels with the same funds using different premium levels and different payouts).
Again, the most relevant difference here is that with these socialized healthcare plans that almost all of the envisioned plans make huge net transfers from "the rich" to "the poor". The rich only get a few pennies on the dollar of what they're going to spend on the aggregate. The rich person's taxes may double as a consequence of such programs and the fact is that they won't get any better healthcare for it (probably worse infact). Even if you don't believe this is a valid reason, this is not the only reason people are against socialized healthcare.
You are conveniently conflating the arguments. Most of these same fiscal conservatives are also opposed to corporate welfare programs (although, in fact, social welfare programs account for a much larger percent of the US tax receipts). Of course these programs still exist (much to my dismay), but there is plenty of hypocrisy to go around in all political parties and it's not as if the supporters of these programs in the halls of government are uniformally conservative (many democrats also support agicultural subsidies, tarrifs, etc).
Several additional points. While people such as myself are generally opposed to subsidizing corporations or offering them preferential treatment (unless its to perform some genuine public good that otherwise would not be profitable and that would not otherwise be fulfilled), there are some valid arguments for limited transfers. Some examples of these are NIH research grants for startups, low interest government loans, etc. These types of funds ca
Religion can be used for good or for ill just like anything else. You neglect the fact that the greatest killers of the 20th century were not religion; they were largely secular movements, e.g., Communism, Naziism, etc. History has proven that masses of people can act in irrational, stupid, and hateful ways regardless of their belief in a higher power. A religious person does not necessarily have to give up independent thought anymore than, say, a person that believes in Communism does (such as yourself). You might argue that many people have been duped by some religious authorities throughout history (and ignore all the other factors involved), but this same argument holds even more true for Communists and other such political believers.
People must think for themselves, but it's a mistake to believe that all religious believers necessarily sign-away their independent thought process in order to partake in religion. Many intelligent people in western world today have a basic belief in God (in some higher power); they believe that the traditions/rituals prescribed by their selected religion are basically good things to raise a family in; and they see the value of being part of a community organized around those principles. Many of these religious groups do not necessarily have any religious authority that wields real power (or even any at all: see the Quakers for instance). Many religious people basically sign up for an essentially static belief system and they do not recognize the leaders as having any kind of special connection to God. I know many bright and intelligent people that believe in this manner and, in many ways, I respect them more for it (I'm agnostic).
I reject the idea that the world would be better off without any form of religion. I believe that many of the problems that we face today owe at least in part to the utter rejection of any basic moral principles that religion has historically helped guide. I won't say that it's impossible to have some moral compass without relgion (I'm not religious myself), but that the removal of the institution of religion has caused more problems in many parts of society (esp. those without close family ties, community, good education, basic exposure to those most basic principles, etc) than those it might have removed.
*** Note: I'm not saying everything is perfect here (esp. in the land of telecos/govt granted monopolies), but that the many
I'm not defending Microsoft, but the fact is that most customers are still "safer" in terms of file compatibility, user experience, etc by sticking with "the standard", even if it forces them on an expensive upgrade treadmill, than they are with OpenOffice and other such competing applications. Maybe some small shops that don't need to exchange a significant number of office files outside of their own organization and who have relatively simple needs can consider to switching... but for most the problems and the costs that changing presents significantly exceed the potential cost savings. This is a fact of life for most CIOs and IT managers.
I'm not defending Microsoft. Obviously they enjoy a de facto monopoly in the office suite market. It's not in their interest to facilitate perfect cross-compatibility.
I disagree. Although it is not the reason, it is significant (particularly before a year or two ago, huge change,... prior versions were pretty aweful). Most sophisticated computer users can adapt fairly quickly, but you'd be surprised how quickly more average computer users stumble when something changes ever so slightly. The difficulty is that most users really have a very poor conceptual idea of what they're doing (which makes it difficult to transfer skills between applications/changes): they manage by memorizing certain keystrokes/mouse clicks. They can learn, but it will cost time and money (moreso as you move away from the most basic features). It may be true that only 5-10% of the users really need those advanced features, but juggling two different suites creates dificulties of its own and identifying who those users are & helping them is rather costly.
It seems to be doing OK right now (though I don't watch their development activity day to day), but the future funding is a bit of an unknown (and thus a potential risk for businesses/managers). I suspect that Sun is funding the development for strategic purposes (to weaken MS). I'm not convinced that they're actually profiting from their development directly, i.e., X dollars in R&D equal Y profit from Open Office/Star Office. Sun could decide at somepoint that they want to make money and thus force all people that want updates to buy Star Office instead (or perhaps just drop it entirely). The relative risk of this happening to MS Office is about zero (a huge cash cow for them). Again, my point is not that this is true, but that it is
While these factors may partially explain why Sweden and other Nordic countries have not crashed as spectacularly as other socialist movements (e.g., Germany, France, New Zealand, etc) to call their model a success would be to ignore its many current problems, its historic economic instability, and what is almost certainly a lack of sustainability of the model.
Sweden's real unemployment is estimated to be between 15 and 20%. Although their official stats count just ~6% as being unemployed, this excludes a lot of people on long-term sick leave (which count as being employed -- 16% of public spending pays for this!), welfare recipients, people that simply give up (e.g., students, early retirees, etc), etc.
What's more, many of those who are actually employed are employed by the government (about 30%). Sweden has created almost no new private sector jobs in 50 years. Only 1 of their 50 largest companies was created after 1970. Many of their biggest companies have left the country (e.g., IKEA) or moved their taxable entities outside recently. Despite having a large highly educated population, it is an unfriendly place for entrepreneurship and creates little of it due to labor laws (v. expensive to sack people), high taxation, very high sales taxes, etc.
Their tax revenues are significantly more than 50% of GDP (their middle class pay a much higher rate of tax than we do here). The Swedish people pay much higher taxes than we do across the board. They don't have a lot of wealthy people so they've been forced to raise taxes on the middle class to sustain these benefits. Some may try to excuse it as simply being a product of a welfare state, but it is a very real economic burden on their economy. For instance, their GDP per capita has fallen dramatically relative to the rest of the OECD since 1950.
Consider, for instance, that the difference in disposable income (after taxes and all social transfers) between the poorer 30 decile of income and the richest 80 decile is just 12K Krona per month (about $1500). This itself represents a small change in lifestyle but consider just how wide that gap is: the entire middle class (from poorest full-time working class and the upper middle class). There is very little incentive to work hard, to risk a stable job for a new one that might pay better, to take a new job if you get laid off (cushy benefits), to show up to work, to take a more stressful job, and to take business risks, etc. What has happened is that people are working less and less (and, ironically, many of those that want to work can't find it), taking more sick leave, etc. In fact, if you look at the number of hours worked in their economy it has fallen dramatically.
To further stress their system, Sweden's retirees is set to increase to roughly 54% of their working age people by 2050, i.e., 1 senior-pensioner for every ~2 working people (much of it happening soon). They've also acquired a significant number of foreign immigrants (many of them no longer of Nordic heritage) -- roughly 10% of the country now (who are heavily unemployed). The system is already showing signs of stress and tax payer unrest (at least 65B in overseas tax avoidance, rising non-market work, etc). Sweden an
Marketing does not always win the day--superior products and better prices usually do. The US car industry has vastly outspent their Japanese rivals year in and year out and they've lost market share to the Japanese year after year. Microsoft has spent a ton of money promoting products at various points in their historic with little if any pickup (e.g., TabletPC, Windows CE, MSN vs Google, Internet Explorer vs Mozilla, etc).
Meanwhile you ignore:
1) That Microsoft Office has been the standard for many years. Customers know the product very well because they've actually used it for thousands and thousands of hours. Open Ofice has only very recently approached some level of equality (features, UI, stability, compatibility, etc).
2) Customers would have to deal with less than perfect file compatiblity (my actual experience) or at least the chance that it won't be (no proof that it is). Even if you believe that it's 100% compatible with Office 2003 and all earlier versions, how are potential customers supposed to assess if and how quickly OO will handle the new Office 2007 format, say, when their business associations start sending them documents in such a format?
3) Customers have to learn a new UI. This takes time and money.
4) Customers have to contend with lack of VBA and lack of automation compatibility. You'd be surprised how many applications and corporations are wedded to Office because of this. Try exporting from Crystal Reports into a spreadsheet, many corporate DBs, etc.
5) Customers face business risk with potential uncertainty with Open Office due to their lack of business model (Sun is still driving most of the development... there's no obvious organic driver for continued growth and support).
6) Lack of features and stability for advanced users.
7) Just plain unknowable risk. Open Office is still an unknown quantity in the most corporate environments. If you spend many man hours assuring yourself that it's kosher you might sleep well, but it's far from plug and slug change.
These are just a few of the real concerns with respect to customer adoption. Yes, Microsoft Office is completely over-priced given its widespread adoption and I'd be glad to see OO take marketshare from MS, but to completely dismiss Microsoft's continued success here as simply owing "marketing" is nonsense.I was a CIO fairly recently for a mid-size corporation (and later for a division for a major corporation). I knew about Open Office and considered deploying it internally (instead of renewing SA - $$$), but I ruled it out due to some of the reasons I mentioned (e.g., cost of modifying internal applications, lack of compatibility with many shrinkwrapped packages, increased memory, having to deal with decentralized VBA scripts, potential issues with Citrix, etc). I wouldn't expect a CEO to know about this sort of thing if can't even make it past most IT managers.
Your statement is an obvious non sequitur (more specifically, you are denying the antecedent.) You posit that if competition actually improves productivity, then most/all companies would be structured this way. Your argument is based on the false assumption that productivity is the sole concern of shareholders (not mention another critical assumption: that management is completely free of any relevant conflicts, e.g., agency costs). Long term profitability (or future cash flows) is the chief concern of shareholders and I demonstrated how increased productivity can dramatically reduce net profitability. Therefore your assertion that competition does not improve productivity does not follow from your argument.
Your argument is kind of like arguing that "If good deeds contribute to the welfare of society, then this big group of people would be doing more good deeds. Because they're not, good deeds must not be good for society."
What's more, your argument does not really even compute. You imply that there are many companies that are unnecessarily competing against their own interests, but suggest that management is at once too stupid to know better (due to the fact that they're competing externally) and simultaneously suggest that their lack of internal competition is clear evidence of management's belief in cooperation. It'd be one thing if you wish to finger antitrust regulation as being the culprit (that some mergers would not be allowed), but I think the real issue is that you want to have your cake and eat it too. Management is insightful and properly motivated when you agree with them, but not otherwise.
More logical fallacies. Your argument is too simplistic and too polar. You might as well argue that if two packets of sugar in your coffee is better than none, then an entire cup of sugar would be the best. There is a balance to be struck. A company can get too big for their own good or sell too much internally and that can create very real inefficiencies. Small companies are usually dramatically more efficient in terms of management than big companies are... where big companies make up for it is when production/manufacturing scale creates dramatic efficiencies (e.g., producing cars) or where having vast amounts of capital is extremely important (e.g., building a cell phone network). The point that you are missing is that the free market, under our system of government, usually allows the participants to decide when to cooperate/merge (with the exception of very large companies when they are deemed by the powers that be to have "market powers") and when to compete (where the government hasn't granted monopolies, e.g., land-line phones). When it is in the interest of two or more companies to merge or for one to acquire the other, this happens fairly frequently. In point of fact, this has happened throughout the agricultural industry in the United States. Big corporate owned farms can farm far more efficiently than small ones do and this has put market pressure on those small farms to sell to bigger ones or to, at least, form collective agreements with previously competing farms.
I don't keep them at my finger tips since this is sufficiently obvious to most people, but here's One
It's not as exceptional as you seem to believe. My mother did much the same thing, albeit she was born here and to an upper-middle class background (though she started her career with no money and went to school on scholarship). Most of the truly rich people I know (which is a lot) earned their place through hard work and entrepreneurship (not because they inherited a bunch of wealth). I've also worked with a lot of solidly middle class or even upper middle class people that started out relatively poor. Although education is certainly a critical factor, people that are both capable and motivated can and do improve their financial situations dramatically. Anyways-the point is that wealth can be created and that you are wrong to assume that it's simply a matter of distribution of a fixed number of stolen assets.
You'd need to prove it was "stolen" originally and the courts, since this is the authority you're appealing to here, would not accept this argument. Also, if you wholly reject the notion of property, then no country has claim to their own territory. The Chinese, Africans, Indians, South Americans, etc would have equal claim to all land in the US.
I'm sorry you can't see the distinction between doing what the regime orders you to do or getting executed/tortured/improsoned for failing to do it and being allowed freedom of professions, employments, movement, speech, etc and having to weigh the costs and benefits with each decision. Even the poorest people in this country have a wide array of practical choices. You assert a priori that anything less than some illusory "perfect" and consequence free choice is just the same as no choice, yet you simultaneously neglect that life itself imposes these limitations (Even if you were the only human on this earth, you would have to make a choice between working to find food/water/shelter/etc or die).
Nonsense. If would study history or economics in any real depth, then you would learn that the conditions of the poor have improved dramatically over the past hundred years or even moreso 200, 300... and long before.
You'r
Pretty much all rights rely on coercion if you wish to view the world from this absolutist prism. Your right to life comes at the cost of my right to swing my arm when and how I like. Your right to privacy comes at the cost of my being able to use my senses fully and to share information. Your right to free speech comes at the cost of my right not to listen to you. Your significant other's right to her own body comes at the cost of my right to satisfy my sexual urges. Your right to own and care for your pet comes at the cost of my right to eat critters. Your right not to be discriminated against comes at the cost of my not being able hire whomever I want. All nations rights, likewise, come at the cost of other nation's and citizens of other nation's to exercise their rights.
You assume too much: I didn't take anything. I've worked hard. I bought my land and I've improved on it. Most land that is valuable has been dramatically improved on by industrious people (even farm fields). If you don't believe me then draw a 100 mile radius from whatever city you live in now, the odds are very high that somewhere within that circule you can purchase a significant amount of land for fairly little. You might argue that someone at some point, many many generations ago, took land that they had no claim to, but very few of us can claim to be direct descendents of these people. Disentangling this would be near impossible... but we can be quite certain that most people earned their keep.
My father, for instance, emigrated to this country after WWII with scarcely anything to his name: just the beginnings of a good education and a willingness to learn and work hard. He went to night school to complete his education (EE) worked for several years in industry and later he started several companies (designed/patented several critical products) and he eventually became quite wealthy (buying land along the way @ market price). He created wealth (not zero sum)... this is what allowed him to buy land.
You are ignoring that home ownership rates in the US are roughly 70% in the United States (a clear majority) and that pretty much everyone owns property even if not their own home (cars, clothing, electronics, food, cash, etc). Even if we suppose that there exist a very significant number deserving-yet-property-less people in the country, it would be difficult to argue that they are not beneficiaries. The alternative to no private property ownership is state-ownership (and this has been shown to be miserable) or no state supported property rights at all (in which case we have no productive use of land, lack of civil order, etc). If you want to argue that they're not beneficiaries of this system, then you need to prove that they'd benefit more under some regime (which I don't think you can do).
I'm sorry, but your position on the matter was unclear. I don't disagree that IP rights must be enforced in order to support a broad and viable system for IP development and that government is usually the best one to enforce this. Whether or not you wish to define this as being the "free market" is a semantic argument of little interest to me.
What you're talking about is a democractically-controlled planned economy. Planned economies have failed repeatedly throughout history and planned resources within other economies have similarly sub-optimal results. Obviously there is a long list of authoritarian regimes that have imposed it and failed to efficiently achieve what they set out to do (e.g., produce crops at the levels needed, affordable machinery, etc): USSR, East Germany, China, Poland, North Korea, Romania, Bulgaria, Nicaragua, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, Czechoslovakia, various Indian states, etc. You then also have a wide number of forrays into nationalization in the Europe, North America, South America, etc and partial-state ownership into many industries which have generally resulted in failure or, at least, under-performance. There have also been numerous experiments into communal farming: Israeli Kibbutz, various experiments in the US (e.g., Brook Farm, New Harmony, Hopedale, Putney Community, etc), and many more throughout the world. I know you'll claim that nothing is quite like your perfectly concieved idea, but the evidence in damning. Can you name any that have truly succeeded on any scale?
Some things you might want to consider: How are voters supposed to determine what the correct amount of land to produce corn is? How are they even supposed to know how much corn to produce (never mind timing, quality, variety, etc)? How do voters determine at the price at which, perhaps, other crops should be planted? How are voters supposed to know at what point it would make sense to plant another crop (greater efficiency) or perhaps do something entirely different with the land (e.g., build a manufacturing facility)? How are voters even supposed to know that a particular resource is being used inefficiently without an array of individuals trying alternative methods, pricing, etc? How are voters supposed to determine the market rates to pay the various job holders? How are voters even supposed to coordinate their own divergent interests? People in my camp might be willing to produce twice as much for the use of the resource as an oppositional camp might with only 2x the number (but they'd likely win)? When the technology/efficiency improvements avails itself, how will voters have the knowledge and the resolve (or even the sufficient number) to override the interest group of those employed unnecessarily (i.e., should be layed off)?
The system pays 6x the wages to more valued employees and pays dividends exclusively to the majority of its employees (they have an equity stake in their own efforts). I'd hardly say this is anything like what you're advocating and, what's more, it's very questionable that they
This drug is already being produced and can be purchased at drug stores. The problem is not known to be effective for treating cancer in vivo or safe at the required doses . They haven't performed any clinical trials yet and someone needs to do this before doctors will prescribe this (except, perhaps, off-label in desperate cases). If the university or school is willing or able to scrape together the funds to pay for the testing (and possible refinement: dosing, delivery, etc) without ever having any real potential to recover their costs, then more power to them. This is quite unlikely to happen though.
If they can't do this in a reasonable amount of time though, then I'd suggest that it's appropriate that they patent and offer the drug company that does this work an exclusive license which they would need to economically justify the kinds of investment necessary to make this a viable treatment option (and, btw, there is a very good chance that this drug won't prove to be a good treatment option for actual patients: please read what an expert has to say.).
You miss the point. While generic drug companies are very willing to produce a drug once it is known to safe and effective (and, especially, after someone else has created a large market demand for it), it takes lots of money to identify the targets, find/discover the compounds, and prove to be good viable treatment options (pay for multiple clinical trials and studies). BTW, Aspirin was patented in 1899, but its patent expired long ago.
The company would not be doing nothing, they'd be spending a tremendous amount of money (clinical trials, further refinement, etc) on something that has a very real chance of failure. You speak from an ivory tower point of view: as someone that has never had to deal with the realities of developing an actual medical product. Developing novel high-tech products is not a simple thing and it is precisely the sort of thing that government has proven to be woefully bad at (not to mention that it inevitable shifts all the costs on the most productive members of society which creates problems of its own).
Free lunch is preferable too, everything else being equal, but most people (even idiots) understand that it's not practical. Likewise, open access to intellectual property is not practical in most cases. What you fail to recognize is that most inventions do not come from random and unsolicited discovery, but from substantial concerted and targeted efforts whereby the inventors/innovators spend substantial resources months to years in advance with the hope of creating something desirable that will allow them to eventually cover their R&D costs and profit. If the actual implementation of the resulting product is made available at its marginal production cost by free-riding competitors, then the inventor will never be able to cover their R&D costs (not to mention that they'd have no incentive to take those risks in the first place).
Err yeah, because this has worked so well in the past. You must be smoking the good stuff.
I disagree. First, markets are actually quite difficult to manipulate to a great degree (especially without the presence of some kind of government-granted monopoly). Only in those rare industries where few significant players exist is this feasible (and these usually, but not always, owe to government granted monopolies). Once you have more than a few significant players it's nearly impossible. Powerful politicians, on the other hand, are relatively few in number and they can be bought quite easily. Second, I never suggested that markets can't be manipulated or that there is no place for regulation. You seem to be under the impression that I'm a libertarian--I am not.
We don't live in a zero sum world. The rich can get richer faster and the poor can (and generally do) get richer at the same time. Most of the country, even the poor, have enjoyed generally significantly higher incomes each year on average. Median family incomes have more than doubled since the 1940s and the similar number holds true for all economic quintiles (and if you look at, say, the 1800s several times more). Most people are living longer and are healthier. Roughly 70% of the country now owns their own homes.
What's more, the record is much more mixed (see pg 456) than you seem to believe -- in fact there is evidence to suggest that much the opposite has happened in the US over the past 100 years.
The long term trend in the US is very much the opposite of what you suggest. You are too fixated on "the means of production" since you view everything in zero sum terms. Human capital is a very real form of production too. A skilled programmer, doctor, lawyer, etc, for instance, may own almost no property, but can still command a high salary (and eventually purchase property of their own). As our economy evolves towards more and more of a knowledge based system and as efficiency grows ever higher (thanks to capital investment, innovation, flexible labor markets, etc), individuals will have greater bargaining power to command higher salaries and higher standards of living will be obtained for most people. It may not always be perfectly smooth year to year, but that is the trend and that is reality.
Nonsense. Name the economic tyrant in the US and tell me how it compares to, say, Stalin, Hitler, etc? We do not effectively allow anyone to gather so much power that they can abuse anyone like this. If people don't like their employer, they will leave for another one (just talk to any employer/see turnover rates). If people don't like the services/products offered, they will (with few exceptions) go to another provider.