Re: True faiths ( was Re: The true faith )

[Nils Goesche <cartan@t-online.de>]

In article <xcvu1tr5ay6.fsf@conquest.OCF.Berkeley.EDU>, Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> Christopher Browne <cbbrowne@acm.org> writes:
> 
>> tfb@conquest.OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Thomas F. Burdick) writes:
>> > Nils Goesche <cartan@t-online.de> writes:
>> > 
>> > > In article <slrna40nb0.7nn.randhol+abuse@kiuk0156.chembio.ntnu.no>, Preben Randhol wrote:
>> 
>> > > > Capitalism will need to adjust itself in the near future from
>> > > > the short-term gain view to a long-term view.
>> 
>> > > Funny; ``in the near future''.  This claim is *very* old, but we
>> > > are still waiting ;-)
>> 
>> > Even restricting one's view to economics alone, look at the United
>> > States.  We're in the second economic recession in 10 years.  And in
>> > the time in between, although unemployment was low, wages didn't
>> > grow.  This isn't much of a refultation of the claim.  Or are you
>> > just arguing that capitalism still exists?  If so, that's not much
>> > of an argument.
>> 
>> And "wages" and "unemployment" are forcibly supposed to be related to
>> the manner of ownership of the results of production _how_?
> 
> I was responding to a claim that seemed to be implying that there
> wasn't anything wrong with capitalism's optimizing for short-term
> gain.

There /is/ something wrong with your idea of `capitalism' being
`optimizing' for anything like `short-term gains'.  /People/ are
`optimizing'.  Maybe some managers and politicians are `optimizing
for short-term gains'.  But that is nothing to worry about:  If you
think you know better how to win in the long run, by any means, do it!
Those stupid short-term-thinkers that apparently worry you so much
will lose and you'll take them over when they're broke ;-)

But yes, I know what you're up to.  You are, like everybody else
on the `leftist' side,
convinced that you can do better than the market; that you know what
people /really/ want, or at least should want to do or to buy because
you are, because of your superior intelligence, able to predict
the future and are the only one who can tell what has to be done instead
in order to save us all.  So, we need a strong government, ownership
of companies and anything else has to be transferred to the government
which must be led by yourself, of course, not by some ordinary,
mortal short-term-thinker.  Then, elections are no longer necessary
and in fact dangerous, because the stupid public might not recognize,
because of their lack of intelligence, how everything the government
does will be good for them, in the long run, of course, and some
`right-wing' evildoers might convince them to elect somebody else and
we can't have that, can we?

Pretty close?  I hope you are not offended by this too much, but I
wanted to show you how all this `leftist' talk sounds to people not
sharing your views.  Now you probably think that I am a `right-wing'
evil-doer, that would be a typical reflex at least, but there are
other views of the world than the leftist, and not all of them are
right-wing.

If you find this interesting, however, you might be also interested in

  ``The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation As a Basis for
 Social Policy''

   by Thomas Sowell,

or

  ``Free to Choose: A Personal Statement''

  by Milton and Rose D. Friedman,

both available at Amazon.

Regards,
-- 
Nils Goesche
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.

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