The triumph of unbridled capitalism may be temporary. Something similar happened in 1900-1929, when railroad and power companies ruled the world. That ended in the Depression, and for the next fifty years, businesses were strongly regulated and kept in line.
Nah, I think the depression was caused by pirates and ninjas.
That makes more sense than your theories.
You cite two faults of the free market system and I'll try to answer each one.
It is possible to badly assign dollar values to things and in so doing to create situations in which competition will kill things of value as, for example, it might be argued is occurring with things like global warming, where a competitive market is seeking various earth-unfriendly situations because the dollar value of having a world that continues to function correctly has not been appropriately assigned.
The term is 'negative externality'. This is not a new concept that you have stumbled upon. And at its core, this is a property rights issue. Except that instead of an individual owning the property, a group of people collectively own it.
And just like you would object to your neighbour dumping garbage into your backyard, the people collectively object to someone dumping chemicals into the river. A free market is dependent on ownership of property and the scenario you describe, far from discrediting market based economies, only strengthens it.
And so if I own a company where I would like to offer better health care to my employees, I may not be able to afford to because my competition does not and I cannot compete without offering the lowest of what anyone else does or that cost of my "indulging" my employees with good health care will show through to my product.
You are correct. The consumer/market does not care if you pay your employees well, "take care" of them, etc. It completely ignores that aspect and does not place any value on it.
But this seems a problem to you only because you consider only what you can see - like the cat in the proverb, you think that just because you cannot see something it does not exist.
What you do not see and hence do not consider, is another market which does value things like health care, fair treatment, workplace amenities, etc. This of course, is the labour market. And just like the market for the product of a business, this too is a market where people have to compete for scarce resources.
So, while I as a consumer, may greedily want goods for the lowest cost and would not care about things like slave labour, health care, etc, the other market for labour counters my greed with its own.
You seem to view the employer-employee relationship as a paternalistic one where employers have to "take care" of the employees.
I'm only 29 and I've seen this worldview destroyed in my hometown in India. In the 1980s, I've seen mill owners fight with labour unions about worker pay and benefits. I've seen disputes get ugly and end in violence.
Since the economic liberalization in 1992, I've seen labour become scarcer and scarcer to the point where known "union busters" are offering perks upon perks - free housing, on-site healthcare & free transportation - to lure workers.
Workers who had to slave for hours and hours to afford basic goods now command salaries that were unthinkable 15 years ago. And the same marketplace that "exploits workers" has no choice but to pay them what they want.
All of this happenned not because some bureaucrat suddenly came upon "social systems and economic paradigms and value systems that lead to outcomes like happiness and fun", but because people were given the freedom to run their businesses as they please and produce what they want.
So, "social systems and economic paradigms and value systems that lead to outcomes like happiness and fun" does exist and has brought immense wealth to the world in the past 300 years. The only problem now is the people who seem hell-bent on reversing this period of unprecendent prosperity based on their unbelievable vanity and smugness.
So if the INR was gold-backed currency that actually appreciates, do you then agree with my point?
And btw, can you name the one entity that causes inflation? In the US or India or the Roman empire 2000 years ago. Or for that matter, can you define inflation?
However, disparity of wealth distribution isn't even the point in contention (no one disputes that it is a real problem).
Why would that be a problem? I'm from India. There is greater gap between the rich and poor now than there was in the 1980s. But, everyone is richer than we were in the 1980s.
In the 80s in India, the situation was comparable to a rich guy having $10 and a poor guy having $9 and now, it is as if the rich guy has $1000 and the poor guy has $90. Clearly, in the second scenario, the "gap between rich and poor" is higher, but is it the worse scenario among the two I've presented?
...eliminating competition in an otherwise viable industry because someone can afford to offer the service for free as a loss leader to other business.
You should read Bastiat's petition to block out the sun.
You are leaving out the benefits to the end user due to the cheap/free software. It is the classic "Seen vs Unseen".(Of course, if your point about "profiting off an unrelated industry" is true, then it is theft and hence wrong. But I don't believe that that is true.)
but also no one can afford not to use the free thing because the cost of the luxury of buying an alternative brand will be exposed by the market as superfluous if passed along to end users.
Yes. That is a feature, not a bug.
Either the alternative brand has some value, which end users will pay for or its value is not worth anything and the end users are not willing to pay for it.
The mistake you are making is that you value competition for its own sake. Competition (and producers) exist only for the sake of the end consumer. If the consumer can obtain what he wants for a low cost or for free, then there is no need for competition or producers.
This is also the mistake people make when they argue against free-trade and monopolies.
You didn't say that, but the principle you are advocating - that the govt. knows better, takes the long view and is generally wiser than the individuals whom it governs, etc - leads one to that conclusion.
It seems that you only believe your own priciples only when you believe that the cause is just (eg. the French ban). And you abandon your principle when you do not agree with the actions (like the Patriot act).
If one isn't consistent in his principles that means he has convenient principles.
My principle in both case - the French ban and the Bush shenanigans - is that the individual is the person who knows what is best for him, in the short and long term. No all-knowing, omnipotent superhumans are needed to assist him in buying a book.
In my opinion, there is a very strong need for regulation of the credit agencies.
And who would regulate the regulators? You think the regulators won't have political pressure to alter the ratings in an election year?
The ratings agencies operate in a market where competition is prevented by the SEC. In 1975, the SEC mandated that debt be rated by a Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organization (NRSRO).
Before that, they were paid by those looking to buy bonds or make loans to a company. If a rating company did poorly it lost business. If it did poorly too often it went out of business.
But now, since there are only 5 to 7 such companies, the issuers of debt have to pay to get it rated or they couldn't sell it. So this leads to shopping around to see who would give the debt the highest rating. And no matter how badly Moody's or any member of the cartel screws up, they won't go out of business.
But when you're five years into the green card process and walking means starting over, you'll take a lot of shit from your boss.
Ah, so people *choose* to put up with this stuff.
I've heard of stories of actual indentured servitude in (north) India - putting up with a lower salary and a grumpy boss is not indentured servitude.
So a majority of the individual French people want A, but the government that represents these individuals, wants B. And that is good because the government is smarter than the average citizen and is taking the long view.
Hmmm...so maybe the Patriot act, the war on terror, no bid contracts to Halliburton, etc are all good because, even though the general US public does not want it, the Bush administration - the government - is smarter and is taking the "long view"?
I agree with your first point. And I have no problem with globalising labour. If you are prepared to globalise everything else too. I don't mind competing with an Indian engineer if I can get food, electronics and software at Indian prices. Remove all tarrifs, and ensure there are no regional restrictions on any product and we can talk. But we will do labour last, not first. That being said we can certainly get rid of the H1b indentured servitude crap right away.
You are correct. But why does labour have to be last? Or first? Why not globalise everything in one go? Why does it have to be a sequence?
And oh, btw, I'm an Indian engineer here on H1b and there are very very few cases on "indentured servitude". The company I work for is glad to have me, paying me more than the base salary, processing my green card and I'm free to walk out any time I want to - the damage I'll cause them by walking out is far greater for them to screw around with me by paying me a lower salary.
The cases where a company pays someone a lower salary (my cousin at Motorola comes to mind) by waving the green card stick is few and even there, the amounts we are talking about is a few thousands a year.
The question you should be asking is why is diamond more expensive than garnet, or quartz. The least useful thing we can do with either is make jewellery right? Yet one is far more expensive than the others. The reason is that supply is curtailed, and demand increased through marketing.
Ask your wife or girlfriend if she prefers garnet or diamond. That explains the price difference between them.
As for demand increased through marketing - there was no marketing in Rome 2000 years ago and yet the Romans bought diamonds from India and paid a lot more for that than pearls.
If your theory, that one of two reasons diamonds are more expensive than equivalent metals/stones is due to increased marketing, is true, then can you explain why diamonds were more expensive than pearls 2000 years ago?
And finally, your theory of marketing increasing demand assumes that people will buy whatever they are told to buy. This is true to a degree - people want what others want. But if that is true in the long run, we'd all still be buying pet rocks.
Government acting to correct a 'shortage' that isn't there to artificially lower the cost of labour is the very definition of a conspiracy.
I assume you mean the H1b visa thing. In which case, the only government "action" is stopping foreign engineers at the border. There is the artificial interference in the free market.
Diamonds are as expensive as they are for two reasons supply is tightly controlled by one company (DeBeers) and domain specific demand is created through marketing.
And if demand can be created via marketing, why can't MS create this demand for the zune or vista? They tightly control production and have vast amounts of money to "create demand" and yet they are struggling in the marketplace.
If they want more people to do engineering, pay engineers more. You can bet the bank if engineers and scientists were paid football players or rock stars wages, then you wouldn't be able to move for people clamouring to be engineers and scientists.
This is what happened in 99/2000. There was a shortage and people were paid ridiculous amounts. So, there is no conspiracy to fool the engineers and underpay them.
What people mean when they say "there is a shortage of engineers" is "there is shortage of engineers prepared to do amazing work while being paid less than the idiot with the history of art major in middle management". Big surprise there.
Have you ever wondered why a useless diamond costs so much while useful water costs so little?
With modern corporations, if the profits are likely to drop in the near future, you sell the shares.
Exactly. And when everyone sells shares, the company declares bankruptcy. This is the incentive for the managers and executives to think of the long term.
If a company is owned by one individual, or a family, who depends on that company's profits for the foreseeable future, they care more for the long view. With modern corporations, if the profits are likely to drop in the near future, you sell the shares. Since most companies today behave in the same way, no shareholder cares for anything more remote than the next quarter.
And yet, you have Southwest buying aircrafts to help their company 10-15 years from now.
You had Toyota planning hybrids in 1995 when gas prices were low and a hybrid didn't make any sense.
You have defense companies bribing junior congressmen hoping that it will pay off someday in the future.
And you have MS giving away XP to the OLPC children to maintain their grip on the market 10-15 years from now.
None of this should happen in a "capitalistic system" where "short-sided" people run the show. You are a very confused person.
Funny enough, it has such a low annual income per capita and yet most people own their own homes and seem to live relatively decent lives.
They have the 12th highest infant mortality in the world. Their life expectancy is worse than the world average. Their literacy level is about 50%.
... she was positively amazed to learn that banks, phone companies and hospitals weren't run by the government.
How's that working out for you?
Compared to India (where I lived for 21 years and where the government ran the phone company and banks) it's working great here in the US.
Thanks for asking.
How do you allow "proper competition" in the ISP market? How many sets of wires will you run to every house? How many antennas will you have to erect and satellites to put into orbit? How many data centers and backbone hubs can you build?
There was an interview on the radio with a young girl from Bhutan who was visiting the US for the first time. While she was surprised by many things here (obese people, clean toilets, etc), she was positively amazed to learn that banks, phone companies and hospitals weren't run by the government.
She couldn't understand how private companies can be allowed to provide these services.
Your post reminds me of her. Just because you cannot think of a solution doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
There is a difference between someone making an honest mistake and someone arrogant enough to make a decision about something they have no clue about.
If I, an engineer, started prescribing medication and killed a bunch of people, would you still call it an honest mistake? And would you applaud me if I realized my error and prescribed a different medicine?
Judges have this incredibly arrogant view that they understand everything and are qualified to pass judgment. I'd have more respect for this guy if he had said that he does not understand any of the issues and is not qualified to judge the case.
, to see a judge on his own realizing his mistake, and instead of just sitting on it, doing something about it.
He realized that his mistake ruined a person's life and now he has magnanimously given the person another chance.
Is the standard to which judges are held? That is sad.
You are right on the second point, people don't alway put their money on what they value. If that was news to you, I feel sorry for you.
So that is how we have an honest discussion!
So, people say they want A, but pay for B. And not only that, they wouldn't put up with a little inconvenience and cost to support A either.
And in your view, A is what they want? Isn't that your point? My argument is that they really want B.
Now that I've really simplified and cleared that up, I hope you address that and not make any patronising comments.
And I very much challenge your assumption that money is the better democracy
You are confusing money with freedom.
Money is a medium of storing value. Money has as much to do with free markets as ink has to do with literature.
If it were true, we would buy our friends, instead of making them, for example.
Yes. And you are *free* to make your own friends. That is the essence of the free market argument - that you are the person who knows what you want.
The argument you are making is that each individual is not the best person to pick their friends and the government should do it for them.
One, you assume it's customers who decide which shops stay and which shops go. It isn't.
You are correct and I was wrong. Apparently, it is the government which decides who stays and who goes. Not the customers.
I was thinking of a world where a business has to keep the customers happy to survive.
You assume that "like" is the same as "buy from". It doesn't have to be.
So what you're saying is that even though people *say* they want something, when it is time to put their money where their collective mouths were, they don't?
Then isn't what they really wanted lower prices, despite what they said?
You assume that low prices was what the small shops could not cope with, but do you have evidence?... such as the convenience of online shopping, the amount of books you have available right now (many potential customers do not come back if you don't have a book today, but can have it tomorrow)...
So the bigger stores not only provide lower prices, but also other things that benefit the customer? Oh the horror! Kick them out.
Finally, you assume that the government does something for no reason. I haven't heard of protests, maybe the government did exactly what the people wanted?
Maybe. Maybe not. There is one way to find out though.
Let everyone compete and the people spending their money, time and effort will tell you *exactly* what they prefer. No need to guess. No need to see if anyone protests.
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The triumph of unbridled capitalism may be temporary. Something similar happened in 1900-1929, when railroad and power companies ruled the world. That ended in the Depression, and for the next fifty years, businesses were strongly regulated and kept in line.
Nah, I think the depression was caused by pirates and ninjas.
That makes more sense than your theories.
You cite two faults of the free market system and I'll try to answer each one.
It is possible to badly assign dollar values to things and in so doing to create situations in which competition will kill things of value as, for example, it might be argued is occurring with things like global warming, where a competitive market is seeking various earth-unfriendly situations because the dollar value of having a world that continues to function correctly has not been appropriately assigned.
The term is 'negative externality'. This is not a new concept that you have stumbled upon. And at its core, this is a property rights issue. Except that instead of an individual owning the property, a group of people collectively own it.
And just like you would object to your neighbour dumping garbage into your backyard, the people collectively object to someone dumping chemicals into the river. A free market is dependent on ownership of property and the scenario you describe, far from discrediting market based economies, only strengthens it.
And so if I own a company where I would like to offer better health care to my employees, I may not be able to afford to because my competition does not and I cannot compete without offering the lowest of what anyone else does or that cost of my "indulging" my employees with good health care will show through to my product.
You are correct. The consumer/market does not care if you pay your employees well, "take care" of them, etc. It completely ignores that aspect and does not place any value on it.
But this seems a problem to you only because you consider only what you can see - like the cat in the proverb, you think that just because you cannot see something it does not exist.
What you do not see and hence do not consider, is another market which does value things like health care, fair treatment, workplace amenities, etc. This of course, is the labour market. And just like the market for the product of a business, this too is a market where people have to compete for scarce resources.
So, while I as a consumer, may greedily want goods for the lowest cost and would not care about things like slave labour, health care, etc, the other market for labour counters my greed with its own.
You seem to view the employer-employee relationship as a paternalistic one where employers have to "take care" of the employees.
I'm only 29 and I've seen this worldview destroyed in my hometown in India. In the 1980s, I've seen mill owners fight with labour unions about worker pay and benefits. I've seen disputes get ugly and end in violence.
Since the economic liberalization in 1992, I've seen labour become scarcer and scarcer to the point where known "union busters" are offering perks upon perks - free housing, on-site healthcare & free transportation - to lure workers.
Workers who had to slave for hours and hours to afford basic goods now command salaries that were unthinkable 15 years ago. And the same marketplace that "exploits workers" has no choice but to pay them what they want.
All of this happenned not because some bureaucrat suddenly came upon "social systems and economic paradigms and value systems that lead to outcomes like happiness and fun", but because people were given the freedom to run their businesses as they please and produce what they want.
So, "social systems and economic paradigms and value systems that lead to outcomes like happiness and fun" does exist and has brought immense wealth to the world in the past 300 years. The only problem now is the people who seem hell-bent on reversing this period of unprecendent prosperity based on their unbelievable vanity and smugness.
So if the INR was gold-backed currency that actually appreciates, do you then agree with my point?
And btw, can you name the one entity that causes inflation? In the US or India or the Roman empire 2000 years ago. Or for that matter, can you define inflation?
Jeez - way to miss the point. Use gold units if that helps you understand.
However, disparity of wealth distribution isn't even the point in contention (no one disputes that it is a real problem).
Why would that be a problem? I'm from India. There is greater gap between the rich and poor now than there was in the 1980s. But, everyone is richer than we were in the 1980s.
In the 80s in India, the situation was comparable to a rich guy having $10 and a poor guy having $9 and now, it is as if the rich guy has $1000 and the poor guy has $90. Clearly, in the second scenario, the "gap between rich and poor" is higher, but is it the worse scenario among the two I've presented?
...eliminating competition in an otherwise viable industry because someone can afford to offer the service for free as a loss leader to other business.
You should read Bastiat's petition to block out the sun.
You are leaving out the benefits to the end user due to the cheap/free software. It is the classic "Seen vs Unseen".(Of course, if your point about "profiting off an unrelated industry" is true, then it is theft and hence wrong. But I don't believe that that is true.)
but also no one can afford not to use the free thing because the cost of the luxury of buying an alternative brand will be exposed by the market as superfluous if passed along to end users.
Yes. That is a feature, not a bug.
Either the alternative brand has some value, which end users will pay for or its value is not worth anything and the end users are not willing to pay for it.
The mistake you are making is that you value competition for its own sake. Competition (and producers) exist only for the sake of the end consumer. If the consumer can obtain what he wants for a low cost or for free, then there is no need for competition or producers.
This is also the mistake people make when they argue against free-trade and monopolies.
Since when do IQ tests contain questions about the bible, dinosaurs, etc?
Not that I'm disappointed that I did so badly or anything...
You didn't say that, but the principle you are advocating - that the govt. knows better, takes the long view and is generally wiser than the individuals whom it governs, etc - leads one to that conclusion.
It seems that you only believe your own priciples only when you believe that the cause is just (eg. the French ban). And you abandon your principle when you do not agree with the actions (like the Patriot act).
If one isn't consistent in his principles that means he has convenient principles.
My principle in both case - the French ban and the Bush shenanigans - is that the individual is the person who knows what is best for him, in the short and long term. No all-knowing, omnipotent superhumans are needed to assist him in buying a book.
In my opinion, there is a very strong need for regulation of the credit agencies.
And who would regulate the regulators? You think the regulators won't have political pressure to alter the ratings in an election year?
The ratings agencies operate in a market where competition is prevented by the SEC. In 1975, the SEC mandated that debt be rated by a Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organization (NRSRO).
Before that, they were paid by those looking to buy bonds or make loans to a company. If a rating company did poorly it lost business. If it did poorly too often it went out of business.
But now, since there are only 5 to 7 such companies, the issuers of debt have to pay to get it rated or they couldn't sell it. So this leads to shopping around to see who would give the debt the highest rating. And no matter how badly Moody's or any member of the cartel screws up, they won't go out of business.
Indiana Jones wins and the villain loses.
But when you're five years into the green card process and walking means starting over, you'll take a lot of shit from your boss.
Ah, so people *choose* to put up with this stuff.
I've heard of stories of actual indentured servitude in (north) India - putting up with a lower salary and a grumpy boss is not indentured servitude.
So a majority of the individual French people want A, but the government that represents these individuals, wants B. And that is good because the government is smarter than the average citizen and is taking the long view.
Hmmm...so maybe the Patriot act, the war on terror, no bid contracts to Halliburton, etc are all good because, even though the general US public does not want it, the Bush administration - the government - is smarter and is taking the "long view"?
I agree with your first point. And I have no problem with globalising labour. If you are prepared to globalise everything else too. I don't mind competing with an Indian engineer if I can get food, electronics and software at Indian prices. Remove all tarrifs, and ensure there are no regional restrictions on any product and we can talk. But we will do labour last, not first. That being said we can certainly get rid of the H1b indentured servitude crap right away.
You are correct. But why does labour have to be last? Or first? Why not globalise everything in one go? Why does it have to be a sequence?
And oh, btw, I'm an Indian engineer here on H1b and there are very very few cases on "indentured servitude". The company I work for is glad to have me, paying me more than the base salary, processing my green card and I'm free to walk out any time I want to - the damage I'll cause them by walking out is far greater for them to screw around with me by paying me a lower salary.
The cases where a company pays someone a lower salary (my cousin at Motorola comes to mind) by waving the green card stick is few and even there, the amounts we are talking about is a few thousands a year.
The question you should be asking is why is diamond more expensive than garnet, or quartz. The least useful thing we can do with either is make jewellery right? Yet one is far more expensive than the others. The reason is that supply is curtailed, and demand increased through marketing.
Ask your wife or girlfriend if she prefers garnet or diamond. That explains the price difference between them.
As for demand increased through marketing - there was no marketing in Rome 2000 years ago and yet the Romans bought diamonds from India and paid a lot more for that than pearls.
If your theory, that one of two reasons diamonds are more expensive than equivalent metals/stones is due to increased marketing, is true, then can you explain why diamonds were more expensive than pearls 2000 years ago?
And finally, your theory of marketing increasing demand assumes that people will buy whatever they are told to buy. This is true to a degree - people want what others want. But if that is true in the long run, we'd all still be buying pet rocks.
Government acting to correct a 'shortage' that isn't there to artificially lower the cost of labour is the very definition of a conspiracy.
I assume you mean the H1b visa thing. In which case, the only government "action" is stopping foreign engineers at the border. There is the artificial interference in the free market.
Diamonds are as expensive as they are for two reasons supply is tightly controlled by one company (DeBeers) and domain specific demand is created through marketing.
Ah. So it's a conspiracy. Nothing to do Marginal utility, eh?
And if demand can be created via marketing, why can't MS create this demand for the zune or vista? They tightly control production and have vast amounts of money to "create demand" and yet they are struggling in the marketplace.
If they want more people to do engineering, pay engineers more. You can bet the bank if engineers and scientists were paid football players or rock stars wages, then you wouldn't be able to move for people clamouring to be engineers and scientists.
This is what happened in 99/2000. There was a shortage and people were paid ridiculous amounts. So, there is no conspiracy to fool the engineers and underpay them.
What people mean when they say "there is a shortage of engineers" is "there is shortage of engineers prepared to do amazing work while being paid less than the idiot with the history of art major in middle management". Big surprise there.
Have you ever wondered why a useless diamond costs so much while useful water costs so little?
With modern corporations, if the profits are likely to drop in the near future, you sell the shares.
Exactly. And when everyone sells shares, the company declares bankruptcy. This is the incentive for the managers and executives to think of the long term.
If a company is owned by one individual, or a family, who depends on that company's profits for the foreseeable future, they care more for the long view. With modern corporations, if the profits are likely to drop in the near future, you sell the shares. Since most companies today behave in the same way, no shareholder cares for anything more remote than the next quarter.
And yet, you have Southwest buying aircrafts to help their company 10-15 years from now.
You had Toyota planning hybrids in 1995 when gas prices were low and a hybrid didn't make any sense.
You have defense companies bribing junior congressmen hoping that it will pay off someday in the future.
And you have MS giving away XP to the OLPC children to maintain their grip on the market 10-15 years from now.
None of this should happen in a "capitalistic system" where "short-sided" people run the show. You are a very confused person.
However the persons that are endangering development the most are the economists (actually just bean-counters).
Economists study scarcity. They want to know the best way to allocate a service or product that is scarce. I don't know what a 'bean counter' does.They have the 12th highest infant mortality in the world. Their life expectancy is worse than the world average. Their literacy level is about 50%.
How's that working out for you?
Compared to India (where I lived for 21 years and where the government ran the phone company and banks) it's working great here in the US.Thanks for asking.
How do you allow "proper competition" in the ISP market? How many sets of wires will you run to every house? How many antennas will you have to erect and satellites to put into orbit? How many data centers and backbone hubs can you build?
There was an interview on the radio with a young girl from Bhutan who was visiting the US for the first time. While she was surprised by many things here (obese people, clean toilets, etc), she was positively amazed to learn that banks, phone companies and hospitals weren't run by the government.
She couldn't understand how private companies can be allowed to provide these services.
Your post reminds me of her. Just because you cannot think of a solution doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
There is a difference between someone making an honest mistake and someone arrogant enough to make a decision about something they have no clue about.
If I, an engineer, started prescribing medication and killed a bunch of people, would you still call it an honest mistake? And would you applaud me if I realized my error and prescribed a different medicine?
Judges have this incredibly arrogant view that they understand everything and are qualified to pass judgment. I'd have more respect for this guy if he had said that he does not understand any of the issues and is not qualified to judge the case.
, to see a judge on his own realizing his mistake, and instead of just sitting on it, doing something about it.
He realized that his mistake ruined a person's life and now he has magnanimously given the person another chance.
Is the standard to which judges are held? That is sad.
You are right on the second point, people don't alway put their money on what they value. If that was news to you, I feel sorry for you.
So that is how we have an honest discussion!
So, people say they want A, but pay for B. And not only that, they wouldn't put up with a little inconvenience and cost to support A either.
And in your view, A is what they want? Isn't that your point? My argument is that they really want B.
Now that I've really simplified and cleared that up, I hope you address that and not make any patronising comments.
And I very much challenge your assumption that money is the better democracy
You are confusing money with freedom.
Money is a medium of storing value. Money has as much to do with free markets as ink has to do with literature.
If it were true, we would buy our friends, instead of making them, for example.
Yes. And you are *free* to make your own friends. That is the essence of the free market argument - that you are the person who knows what you want.
The argument you are making is that each individual is not the best person to pick their friends and the government should do it for them.
One, you assume it's customers who decide which shops stay and which shops go. It isn't.
... such as the convenience of online shopping, the amount of books you have available right now (many potential customers do not come back if you don't have a book today, but can have it tomorrow)...
You are correct and I was wrong. Apparently, it is the government which decides who stays and who goes. Not the customers.
I was thinking of a world where a business has to keep the customers happy to survive.
You assume that "like" is the same as "buy from". It doesn't have to be.
So what you're saying is that even though people *say* they want something, when it is time to put their money where their collective mouths were, they don't?
Then isn't what they really wanted lower prices, despite what they said?
You assume that low prices was what the small shops could not cope with, but do you have evidence?
So the bigger stores not only provide lower prices, but also other things that benefit the customer? Oh the horror! Kick them out.
Finally, you assume that the government does something for no reason. I haven't heard of protests, maybe the government did exactly what the people wanted?
Maybe. Maybe not. There is one way to find out though.
Let everyone compete and the people spending their money, time and effort will tell you *exactly* what they prefer. No need to guess. No need to see if anyone protests.
The French like their small independent booksellers but the average citizen
I thought the average citizen in France was French.