At 06:49 AM 8/31/2010, you wrote:
That's well said and absolutely true :)
Self interest runs the world and for the most part is a good thing
because it motivates people to do more than the minimum required, to
create great innovations, and find ways to be the most
efficient. This has been an interesting conversation (at least it
hasn't devolved into name calling like the last heated off topic outburst).
In my opinion the great counterbalances to greed (too much of
anything is bad) is responsibility and accountability. Many people
that complain about greed are not taking responsibility for
themselves (I don't think the examples on this list fit that). The
biggest example of lack of accountability I've seen is in our
Government. They act as if the money they take from us isn't our
money. I wish every thing they spend money on was subject to a
public vote. It would slow pork barrel spending for sure.
Socialization sounds like a great idea until you see it in
action. My wife works in healthcare and sees it every day. People
from Canada come HERE for treatment because they can get it NOW and
get the best medical care they can afford. When you take away the
motivation to do more people do less, they don't innovate, they
don't look for ways for greater efficiency. In a lot of ways well
meaning laws get in the way. You just can't break into the medical
industry because of all the bureaucracy involved from our government
and beyond. If I came up with a cure for Cancer in a lab in my
house it would have zero chance of making it into the world without
going through a gatekeeper. The SYSTEM is broken because of too
much bureaucracy and too many gatekeepers.
It's people like us that can make it change. Look at Linux. If it
had a single 'head' someone would have sued it out of existence but
since there is no single point of control the will of the community
moves forward despite those that would try to cheat. Oracle buys
MySQL, MySQL forks several ways. Freedom persists. We've removed
almost all of the bureaucracy from Linux and the best of the best
moves forward. It's amazing how far Linux has come since I started
using it in 1993. Open medicine would have the same effect.
Here is an interesting medical
group: http://www.canaryfoundation.org/index.cfm
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