Re: OT : so this is what our troops are dying for in Afghanistan !

On 16 Aug 2006 11:35:13 +0200, David Brown
<david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:




There's no difference. Any company makes all the profit it can. If
somebody offered you $50 for your old rusty VW, and somebody else
offered you $12,000, which offer would you accept?


I wouldn't accept either.

Allow me to be skeptical here. You'd keep a rusty VW you don't want
because neither offer is fair?


I see no reason for businesses to have any different attitude - money is
a necessary evil, not an end in itself. If money were the only
important factor, there is no point in a small company trying to produce
electronics - they could probably make higher profit margins running a
porn site.

"Money" is not the same thing as "profit." At present, my company
needs a new reflow oven, a thermal imager, a good RF signal generator,
and we need to paint the roof, to reduce solar absorption and energy
use. Once we acquire these things, the IRS and the state of California
both consider them to be "profit" and both tax us accordingly. Well,
maybe we can expense the paint.

Profit is the way any company grows. It's what lets us design dynamite
electronics and create good jobs. And there's too many people in the
porn business already; I doubt it's easy to make money that way any
more.

I don't even agree that "money is a necessary evil." Money is what
makes our societies work, and is of enormous social benefit because it
quantizes value and makes value easily transportable over long
distances. Societies that have tried to do without money (barter
economies, or real communism, for example) have been pits of poverty
and misery.



If an oil company increases prices during shortages (I don't think there
actually *were* shortages after the hurricanes - but lets assume there
were), then that's one way to control demand and avoid running out.
What matters is the company's attitude, and what is done with the money.
When you take that money and invest it (such as re-building and
improving damaged infrastructure), that's fine - when you gloat over
your profits and give bonuses to your shareholders and top company
employees, that's profiteering.


Your position is bad economics hence bad morality. A capitalist,
profit-oriented economy has proven to be the besy way out of poverty.
You and I luxuriate in the bounty of such an economy and can afford to
scorn it for sport if it pleases us. But the dirt-floor poor of the
world haven't that luxury... they will remain poor until they get more
productive, and the surest path to productivity is to own businesses
that make real profits and can afford to grow.


It's still doing some good, and I'd hate to try a quantitative analysis
even if it were possible, but the "bad behaviour" currently far
outshines the good in the eyes of the world. You can argue whether Bush
is good for the USA or not, and you can even argue that you think he is
doing a good job for the rest of the world, but there is no doubt that
the majority of the rest of the world think the USA is the world's
biggest bully and bad guy.

How do you define the "eyes of the world"? Europe? The Muslim
countries? The UN?

Europe: isolationalist, elitist, disengaged, jealous, still somewhat
anti-semitic, still ambivalent about WWII and the Cold War; still have
issues to work out.

Muslims: strong religious bias, even towards tyrants and terrorists;
jealous of the West in general, ambivalent about lots of things, like
sex and business and science and tolerance.

UN: despots and lunatics have equal voting rights as democratic
countries; as an organization, deeply immoral and corrupt.

It's interesting that neither China, India, nor Japan is very critical
of the US role in the world, and they make up about 40% of the
planet's population. I think, underneath the ritual communist
rhetoric, that the Chinese rather like us. The ones that I meet sure
seem to.

We didn't hear "Biggest bully and bad guy" when we were liberating
Europe and Asia from facism or defending them against the Communist
empires. I don't think we have changed as much as you have.

I don't think europeans really think we engage in "bad behavior"; they
generally don't give a rat's ass about the plight of dark-skinned
people. What upsets them is that we *can* do the things we do, that we
have the power and the will to change things.

John


.

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