[ExI] philosophy poll

William Flynn Wallace foozler83 at gmail.com
Tue Aug 27 20:15:55 UTC 2019


Market failures are what causes market successes. spike

OK you knew when you wrote that that I was going to ask about it.  I
thought market failures, like 2008, were caused by nearly worthless
instruments bundled with totally worthless ones and sold to dupes.  I can
see where, having made such a big boner of an error, that they won't do
that again (?), but is that the cause you refer to?  bill w

On Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 2:15 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> We were at the Louvre in Paris, last week.
> I got this picture of my favorite Descartes.
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 9:18 AM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Hi Will,
>>
>>
>>
>> I believe in market failures too.  Market failures are what causes market
>> successes.  The beauty of Capitalism is that it presents consumers with
>> both the winners and the losers.  We get to choose which is which.
>>
>>
>>
>> In communism, the unelected government dictates who are the winners and
>> the losers.
>>
>>
>>
>> This is why capitalism produces corvettes and Cadillacs, while communism
>> produced Trabis and… well, a bunch more Trabis.
>>
>>
>>
>> Fun aside for car guys: most of the Soviet-era cars were actually German
>> designs.  They didn’t change much over the years, and why should they?  The
>> factory sold all they could produce, so why improve the design?  Besides,
>> they already had the machines to make this design.  They seized them from
>> the Nazis in 1945.
>>
>>
>>
>> Another fun aside for car guys: there is a Russian car club which holds
>> occasional rallies.  If you want a lesson in the magic tricks perpetrated
>> by the Invisible Hand of Capitalism, go to that rally, look at those
>> commie-build cars, oh dear evolution, what (if anything) were these guys
>> thinking?  When the Japanese started importing cars the US in the early 60s
>> they had a reputation for being cheapy junk.  Do let me assure you, the
>> Russians defined the term and taught the Japanese.  You have never seen
>> cheapy junk until you have seen a Russian built car from the 80s, oh mercy.
>>
>>
>>
>> spike
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> *On Behalf
>> Of *Will Steinberg
>> *Sent:* Thursday, August 22, 2019 7:21 AM
>> *To:* ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
>> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] philosophy poll
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 9:33 AM Giulio Prisco <giulio at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> William James
>>
>>
>>
>> Quite a pragmatic post ;)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 10:04 <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Excellent choice.  Adam Smith had economics figured out way back in the
>> 1770s.  Had Karl Marx been a reader of English and had Adam Smith’s 1776
>> book Wealth of Nations, the horror of communism would never had needed to
>> infect the planet.
>>
>>
>>
>> spike
>>
>>
>>
>> I'm not sure where to start with this one, but maybe first off I would
>> say that Karl Marx did read WoN, and other Smith, as if it wasn't painfully
>> obvious.
>>
>>
>>
>> Capital is part of the lineage of WoN, cf. labor theory of value.  Also.
>> Smith was pretty much pre-capitalist and probably would have chosen his
>> words more carefully if he could have seen the influence that WoN would
>> have.
>>
>>
>>
>> I like to say that Capital is the book that Adam Smith would have written
>> if he had the luxury of being able to read Wealth of Nations like Marx was
>> able to.
>>
>>
>>
>> Have you read both?  Or just hate them damn pinkos, Sen. McCarthy?
>>
>>
>>
>> NB: A lot of modern day economists might take umbrage at the idea that
>> Smith "had economics figured out", especially because he was not able to
>> see modern capitalism at its finest.
>>
>>
>>
>> BTW, I am not a communist, I just believe in market failures.  As does
>> any economist worth their salt.
>> _______________________________________________
>> extropy-chat mailing list
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20190827/b684b971/attachment.htm>


More information about the extropy-chat mailing list