[ExI] Be nice to leftists

[Adrian Tymes]

On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 8:07 AM, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:

> Surely *how* they get the money should be factored in?
>

He said "something right", not "all things right".  For instance:


> The tobacco companies got big by lying and giving people cancer. (And
> they are still doing it in the third world).


But they sell easy-to-get highs, which is desired by many.


> The medical and health
> industries have given the US the most expensive medical treatments in
> the world with comparatively poor overall population health.


Comparative to what?  Other industrialized countries have copied many
treatments from the US; in a sense, we're fronting their R&D expenses.
Non-industrialized countries tend to have worse overall health; certainly
they collectively have lower average lifespans.


> And monopolies or duopolies are
> good money-making schemes as well. Using their money to buy up or
> extinguish competition is another tactic.
>

That only works up to a point - and they have to have done well enough to
become that monopoly or duopoly in the first place.  Notice Microsoft: long
a near-monopoly power in most things computing (whatever one may think of
their tactics since 2000, they did produce the first good graphical
operating system in the '80s); these days, still relevant but the list of
markets it dominates (that we still care about) is shrinking.  Alternately,
look at Boeing & Lockheed: formerly the only solution for all things space
and most things military aviation, now losing space to SpaceX among others
and losing military aviation to Sirkosky among others.
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