Brad,
You are enjoyable to read, but take the infamies of the controlled trade structure, call it the free market, then go on from there.
Which means that from thereon your entertaining paragraphs are not relevant.
It's a shame.
Sorry I did not provide my citation.
Now I have, in my latest posting, so please fight with The Economist, and let us know their folly....
Sorry....
\brad mccormick
Harry
---------------------------------------
Brad wrote:
Ed Weick wrote:
An article in the NYTimes yesterday made the point that dropping subsidies
to first world farmers and barriers against third world food imports will
simply encourage agribusiness to move into the third world and displace
small scale agriculture. Small farmers who now at least (barely) maintain
themselves will flock to the slums of huge third world cities.
[snip]
Cannot we say that the resource allocating *computer* of the free market, insofar as it uses real living persons as the individual transisters in its central processing unit, randomly kills everybody depending on the MTF (Mean TIme to Failure) of a particular circuit at a given time.
But isn't there another way? Can't we let the free market allocate resources, but let the wellbeing of the individuals who are the transisters, be provided for by a comprehensive social safety new which provides parachutes for all, and, in a rich society like ours, why not at least silver if not gold parachutes for all?
Let companies compete to the death to produce the cheapest artery stent or other nuclear power plant or other widget (so that when a surgeon installs that stent in your -- or maybe even Dick Cheney's -- body it will fail to perform and you will die as a logical result of market rationality.... But pay persons to participate, not pay them according to the results of their participation (which they cannot geenrally control, since if you sign on with the wining company you will win a raise, whereas if you sign on with the losing company you will lose your job even if you do a better job there).
O, Free Marketeers! Cant' you be satisfied with war games, like the military, instead of having to go out and concoct real wars (corporate competitions where the workers in the losing company lose their jobs and potentially their way of life)? And while I'm on this analogy, even soliers on the losing side may have certain rights, unlike the free fall envisioned for individuals who lose their jobs in the economy. Imagine if, if Lockhed Martin won, they would have to provide food and medical care to the Boeing workers in their POW camp? Or Lockheed Martin could send each Boeing ee home with 5 acres and a mule and let him keep his rifle, like Grant granted Lee's men....
\brad mccormick
**************************************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: (818) 352-4141 -- Fax: (818) 353-2242 http://home.comcast.net/~haledward ****************************************************
------------------------------------------------------------------------
--- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.515 / Virus Database: 313 - Release Date: 9/1/2003
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
