Chris, the Dutch led in financial innovations of all kinds. Annuities
preceded insurance, I believe. Shipping insurance preceded fire
insurance.
Fire insurance was considered to be a public service. Ben Franklin worked
on introducing fire insurance in Pennsylvania, I believe -- working from
my
The insurance case is on the table now. There is an
interesting column today in the Post by Warren Buffet;
his company sells insurance and lost a few billion last
month.
He makes what to me is a persuasive point that the
costs of some disasters exceed the total capitalization
of the industry, mu
Fred brings up a very interesting question. Market forces still exist,
but there is probably a direct correlation between the social and
political powers of any business and the degree of its need to respond
to market forces.
There was a famous American case in which Westinghouse had entered int
Just because companies have monopoly power and owe
their power (property rights and all) to the state,
doesn't mean that market mechanisms have become
unimportant. Markets serve as a serious constraint on
the choices open to the directors of almost any
company. This is why I ask what you mean by
'
Greg Scoflield has raised interesting issues. I am more pessimitic than he.
But there are some optimistic predetermined milestones. If one defines a
democratic socialist society as one moving in the direction of equality of
citizenship and equality of human rights then, from the Declaration of
Hu
--- Message Received ---
From: Gar Lipow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 09:09:22 -0800
Subject: [PEN-L:19686] Re: Re: Re: Socialism Now
I would find it helpful if you specified what you mean by 'socialism'
and 'socialisied'.
I am skeptical because some of the past uses of 'socialised' in this
context do not seem applicable today. There was an argument based on
certain isomorphisms of socialist and capitalist production and
admini
Hard-headed types? Greg there hundreds, perhaps thousands of
groupsicals, with heads that are not only hard, but made of pure wood.
Greg Schofield wrote:
> Bill, the problem is partly found in your answer.
>
> That is you see proletarian socialism as the objective, as an abstraction which must
Bill, the problem is partly found in your answer.
That is you see proletarian socialism as the objective, as an abstraction which must
be sold to the people. It is, by this thinking, already a
sometime-in-the-future-thing. It is the error of these past decades of the movement
that we have redu
