[extropy-chat] Re: riots in France

[John K Clark]

"Jack Parkinson" <isthatyoujack at icqmail.com>

> Presumably, you will be impressed when this (silly riots in France)
> directly degrades the quality of yours and your families lives

Anything that directly degrades the quality of my life or that of my family
impresses me; but a bunch of ignorant kids in France pretending to be
American gangster rappors is unlikely to do that.

> Some of the richest countries are also Muslim.

A few Muslim countries through a lucky geological break happen to be sitting
on top of a lake that contains 2/3 of the world's oil and so are rich, but
that hasn't stopped Nigeria, a Muslim country with lots of oil, from being
the second poorest country on Earth, beaten only by Mozambique, another
Muslim country.  Continuing on our list of the poorest countries in the
world we have Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, The Congo, Bangladesh, Angola and
Afghanistan, all are predominantly Muslim countries.

Let's look at a subset of the Muslim world, the Arabs. There are over 250
million Arabs and they have most of the world's oil, but nevertheless the
GNP of the entire Arab world is less than that of Spain, a country with no
oil and a population of only 40 million. One reason for this may be that the
number of books translated into Arabic over the past thousand years is about
the same as the number of books translated into Spanish just last year.

> Poverty is the root cause of discontent.

No, if everybody is poor you're not angry, just sad. Envy is the root cause
of discontent.

> Spoilt rich kids always praise their own benevolence

I may be spoilt but I make no claims of benevolence, I make no claim that I
earned the right to be born in a western non Muslim culture, I was just
lucky.

> No one is ever delighted at earning 7
> cents an hour.

Quite untrue. If everyone you knew was making zero cents an hour and was 24
hours away from starvation and you were making 7 cents an hour and was a
full 48 hours away from starvation you would feel like Rockefeller.

>They want a house with a manicured lawn, a membership of the
> golf club and an SUV.

The people of South Korea have all that now, but 50 years ago they were on
that infamous list of the poorest countries on the planet. Things changed
when the Korean's complained about the injustice of it all so the rich
countries piled gold onto huge cargo ships and sent it to Korea until
everybody was equal. No wait, I misspoke that's not how it happened, now I
remember: The Korean workers said they'd rather not work for 7 cents an hour
and would prefer 70 dollars an hour and their employers said sure no
problem.

Or maybe it was because the Korean people valued education in things other
than in a book of superstitions written 1500 yeas ago, and they had a very
strong work ethic, and they embraced capitalism with a vengeance. Maybe
that's why South Koreans were issued 15,000 patents over the last 20 years
while the entire Arab world had fewer than 400.

The contrast between North and South Korea is also interesting, both started
with the same culture and the same language, but one had a tightly
controlled economy "to help the common people" and one did not.
Look at them now!

Me:
>> would it be more moral of me to fire 99 workers out of 100 and pay the
>> remaining ones 7$ an hour

You:
> Yes.

Your position is indefensible morally and economically.

Moral nonsense:
For every person I can hire there are a thousand lined up outside the gates
of my factory begging for chance to make the huge sum of 7 cents an hour;
and you, allegedly an advocate of more equality, advise me to make things
even more unequal by firing 99 out of 100 of my employs and give the
fortunate survivor the ridiculous salary of 7 dollars and hour.

Economic nonsense:
Now that I have taken your advice my expenses are the same as before but my
output is only 1% of what is was, so I must charge 100 times more than what
I did before for my product, but at that price nobody at Wal-Mart will buy
it. Thus whatever my intentions I no longer have the money to pay my single
remaining employee 7 dollars an hour, or even 7 cents an hour, he now makes
zero cents an hour and I'm dead broke too.  And this is the way to cure
world poverty?

> There is plenty of wealth in the world.

Baloney. There is no way the wealth of the world could be divided up among 7
billion people so everyone has a decent lifestyle, and you and I, the
pampered product of rich western culture, would be among those howling in
pain the loudest. However this need not always be true because Extropians do
not think the economy is a zero sum game, in fact it's about as far from a
zero sum game as you can get.

>  I don't think this free market creature does exists and even doubt
>  that it really can exist.

Any particular reason?

> Current 'free markets' are simply manipulated, tightly controlled
> strategies

Yes, most markets are controlled by governments much more than is rational,
without that interference there would be far fewer poor people, perhaps none
at all.  The freest of all free markets is the black market and that's why
it thrives.

> to put the power and profits into corporate HQ's in the US and Europe.

You almost make that sound like a bad thing.

> Japan is in deep economic trouble now

Trouble is a relative term. Japan is in economic trouble compared to the USA
perhaps, but compared with any Muslim country it most certainly is not, it
is in hog heaven because despite its difficulties Japan still has the second
largest economy in the world.

> India is riding an economic boom

Yes, India has improved in the last few years after it started to back away
a bit from decades of socialistic laws, regulations, and other brakes on its
economy.

> China is likely to take the top spot as world number 1 economy within the
> next ten years

Perhaps, but I don't see the point you're trying to make, it certainly can't
be that capitalism is a bad way to make the economy grow and the population
of a country rich.

      John K Clark