Understanding arguments against capitalism

[Brant Gaede]

Jerry writes:

The extremely high price of petroleum would be an incentive for businessmen to develop LED lights. LED is Light Emitting Diode. LED lights are very efficient in the use of electricity, about 99% light and 1% heat. Also can produce very high quality light. And can last about 20 years before they burn out. What remains to be done is to bring the price of LEDs down. Again the price of petroleum goes down because of reduced demand for it.

I've installed thousands of dollars of LED fixtures, and regard them as the greatest lighting invention since the incandescent light bulb. Once the initial obstacle of color correction was overcome, now you can't tell the difference. The Capitalist free market is already bringing down the prices.

People should become like LED's... generate more light than heat.

Greg

You just wanted the filthy lucre. You're just another capitalist pig. ("Don't wrestle with a capitalist in the money pit; you'll get filthy but he likes it.")

--Brant

serve man (baked, broiled, bioled, bried fried)

[Gary Fisher]

" will attempt to explain again.<br><br>

Imagine all the known petroleum on planet Earth is in one spot. (Obviously an imaginary scenario; in reality petroleum is all over; it is rare that all of any one resource is in one spot.) Imagine you own that spot. Now you are set up to make a lot of money. Imagine you jack up the price as high as you want.<br><br>

I say the price of petroleum would eventually come down. Not immediately but in time. Why?<br><br>

The extremely high price of petroleum would be an incentive for businessmen to find other spots with oil. Then they could compete with you by charging a lower price. The price of petroleum goes down.<br><br>

The extremely high price of petroleum would be an incentive for businessmen to develop alternatives to petroleum. "<br><br>

-jts<br><br>

I don't find this argument very convincing. For instance, you are arguing in favor of monopoly by pointing out the benefits of its no longer being a monopoly. And those benefits would have happened anyway, even if the monopoly in question never existed. <br><br>

Secondly, no one would seriously argue that a benefit of famines in Mao's China was that it incentivized people to find ways to grow and hunt their own food. Creating a problem may incentivize people to solve it, but maybe it's a better idea not to create the problem in the first place.

[jts]

I don't find this argument very convincing. For instance, you are arguing in favor of monopoly by pointing out the benefits of its no longer being a monopoly. And those benefits would have happened anyway, even if the monopoly in question never existed.

It's amazing how people find ways to misunderstand. I'm not saying that a monopoly necessarily has benefits but merely that problems with a natural monopoly are over-rated.

[Selene]

I don't find this argument very convincing. For instance, you are arguing in favor of monopoly by pointing out the benefits of its no longer being a monopoly. And those benefits would have happened anyway, even if the monopoly in question never existed.

It's amazing how people find ways to misunderstand. I'm not saying that a monopoly necessarily has benefits but merely that problems with a natural monopoly are over-rated.

jts:

That is because Gary is from one of the "best" colleges in America.

Ask him, he will tell you.

He has a Masters in Misunderstanding.

A...

[Jules Troy]

Hahaha!

[moralist]

Brant writes:

You just wanted the filthy lucre. You're just another capitalist pig.

Money isn't filthy when it's earned honestly. And nobody gives you freedom, because it isn't an unearned entitlement. It's an earned merit.

So if you want to be truly free in America...

...you have BUY it.

Greg