Mr. Z.:
That sounds like a great idea! Let’s do that. 
argyle: IIRC, among other things, Malthus failed to account for possible improvements in food production technology, new sources of food, etc. In any case, the fact that there are more than 6 billion people in the world and plenty of food to feed them (although it does not always reach them) far after Malthus predicted we would be in ruins pretty definitively disproves his theory.
Quicksilver; I didn’t say that the rich have a responsibility to feed the poor, I was just asking what if they took their money and tried to do so.
Well in that case I must side with those saying that world hunger is largely a distribution problem rather than a lack of food availability.
Also, I must add that the old addage about giving a hungry man a fish vs. teaching him how to fish applies strongly here. I don’t think any amount of charity or wealth will be enough if all we do is give things away. Education is ultimately far more beneficial in the long run.
On people not getting enough food and living in bad areas:
It has been determined that with the proper infrastructure, Bangladesh could be on e of the leading food producers in the world. All you would have to do is build a number of dikes, plow fields, that kind of crap. Of course the ammount of work to be put in wouldn’t pay off for years. It’s too risky for most agri-business companies. So, the people of Bangladesh starve. Here is a case of simple econmics letting people starve.
Also the total wealth owned by the 358 richest people in the world, the dollar billionaires, is greater than the annual income of almost half the world’s poorest inhabitants, in other words about 2.6 billion people. That’s a scary thought
Damn, I take one day off and wouldn’t you know it, it is the day that someone levels an insult at me. I like to respond to these before teh moderator steps in. <<Sigh>> well, at least I can jumop in before Argyle appologizes.
And I was not thinking of Thomas Moore. I was thinking of {b]Dennis Moore** who steals from the poor and gives to the rich and is quite fond of Lupins.
Number one, Malthus was not concerned with overpopulation.
Two, there has been a lot of research regarding famine which proves that it is not caused by overpopulation. Teh nobel was won for a study on exactly this subject in 1998 by a guy named Sen (I think that is his name. Lord knows I don’t want to get a name wrong here.)
Three, A minister hypothesizing about food production and overpopulation, without knowledge of food production nor the intricacies of population balance does not come anywhere near credibility.
Four, and most important, you will kindly refer to me as Mister asshole or, if you prefer you may call me “Slack jawed mouth breather.” Your choice.
I would like to clarify my previous post about the super-rich and how much they suck. The billionaires of the world simply are what they are. They’re the best adapted to succeeding in the current global economic situation. They are brilliant at business, are excellent at communicating with subordinates (one super-rich guy even claimed to make 100 phone calls a day), and most importantly they love money. I saw an interview of John Cleese where he described a meeting of super-rich guys where everyone expected that the billionaires would all get along great since they are so good at communicating. WRONG, they all hated each other and sat in silence refusing to speak to one another about anything. (I’m afraid all I know about this supposed meeting of billionaires is what John Cleese mentioned in passing). Apparantly, though, making 100 phone calls a day to their underlings is all these guys can do (Cleese’s words, not mine).
What makes me so angry and bitter is not that billionaires exist and are so rich, it is the praise and admiration some poor people seem to have for these guys. What the hell is wrong with these people? Don’t they realize that for them to crawl up out of poverty and start a business and become well-off then they will have to compete with these super-rich bastards for market share. If you want to open a hardware store, or a sporting goods store, or a candy store, or any kind of base level retail outlet then you will be in direct competition with Walmart and you will be crushed. This is not an attack on your business abilities but merely a statement of fact. If you want to sell sporting goods then I suggest you put on a blue vest and a name tag and go work for Walmart at minimum wage. If you want to praise the late great Sam Walton then I suggest you do it out of earshot of me. The only retail outlets that can compete with Walmart are ones that specialize in stuff Walmart doesn’t sell such as high-end stereo equipment or used motorcycle parts or whatever. Walmart and other discount chains have consumed the entire low end of the business (i.e. the most profitable part of retail). The opportunities to start a successful small retail business have been greatly reduced. That is what the super-rich do, they make money in any way possible, every way that they make money is one less way for you to make money. If Walmart started selling high-end stereo equipment that would be the end of the road for all the other stereo shops in town. There is no way they could compete head-to-head with Walmart.
I have been asked before if I would prefer to pay high prices, no, I don’t want to pay high prices I want to charge high prices and I want you to do the same. Call me kooky but I want to be paid well for my labor and investment. That is, I would like the oppurtunity to open a retail store in a populated area and not have to compete with corporate giants. Doesn’t anyone else realize that if things keep going the way they’re going then one day we will all be employees of giant corporations. There will be no other opportunities for anyone to earn money but to accept a position with some Mega-corp and take all the crap they dish out and like it. It will become impossible to start a small business of any kind.
What do I suggest we do about billionaires and multi-billion dollar corporations? I suggest that all corporations be broken up when they reach a certain size, the way the federal gov’t is breaking up Microsoft right now. There doesn’t need to be any trial or finding of anti-trust violations, just break-em up when they get too big. As for billionaires I say force them to retire, let them play golf the rest of their lives, I don’t care. I think, somehow, we’ll get by without their brilliance, life will go on without their greed.
SarumanRex, you’re quite the character. Whether you accept this or not, it is fact that your life is considerably better than it would be if aggressive people like you describe did not exist. I know, I know; these people did not create a better life for you because they love you, they did it because they enjoy work and it’s rewards. Well guess what: most people enjoy a better life and whether it came to them through charity or greed is not important.
Your proposal to break up businesses would result in a decrease in the rate of improvements we enjoy in our life. Pure and simple. And to what end? So that you get some private joy seeing the strong weakened.
Your politics are nothing short of destructive and hurtful.
And they’re rooted purely in jealousy.
It is distributive justice. The only way we are going to reverse it is with campaign finance reform. No more PACs, federal funding for candidates, limited campaign windows and caps on spending. No perks from monolithic corporations (also known as the rich), or giant donations to political campaigns for the slimy terminal valves in Congress. Power-hungry freaks like Bush Jr., Gore, and Bush Senior, for that matter, Reagan, Clinton, Nixon; this is what our country has to offer for statesmen. It is all it can until we distribute power more equitably…
I am not a socialist if that is what you are implying. I do not hate “owners”, quite the contrary in fact, I say 3 owners are better than one, and 30 are better than 3 and so on. That is, one company controlling a market is a monopoly, 3 companies is better but still far too few, 30 companies competing for the same dollar would be even better. In the words of FDR to the chairmen of the Big 3 auto giants in Detroit who were in the process of buying out or destroying all their little competitors during WWII, “there is not going to be a Big 3, it is going to be more like a Big 8 or a Big 10”, or words to that effect. FDR died shortly after making this statement, and the BIG 3 dominated the auto industry for years until foreign competitiion took over the world auto market and never looked back. Let me ask you, would this country be better off if only one corporation controlled every manner of making money available in this economy? Of course not, in fact this situation would be practically the same as communism. Having the means of making money spread out over a million little comapanies instead a few giants allows for greater competitiion, better products and service, and the opportunity to start your own business without billions of dollars in capital investment. What I am suggesting is the exact opposite of destructive, hurtful, or selfish. It is capitalism at its best, not its monstrous worst. If there is something to be gained from the uniformity of product a monopoly offers (let’s face it, who wants 30 different operating systems to choose from when Windows works well enough) then what we need is a gov’t standard that all companies will conform to. That is, 30 companies will be making nearly identical versions of Windows and competing for your buying dollar. As technology improves the standard will be updated, this is why every TV manufactured since 1950 can decode and display a modern TV signal (in black and white of course). Not until HDTV becomes the new standard will 1950 model TV’s be forever obsolete. Do you honestly think that the TV sets people own today would be better if they were only one or two giant corporations in the TV manufacturing business?
SarumanRex has some pretty weird ideas about how things should work. I’m not sure that a discussion with him is beneficial.
But let me try by posing this scenario/question:
Do you really believe that we’d all be better off if corporations, who’s existence depends upon being able to deliver goods and services more cheaply and/or efficiently than their competition, were split up according to the whim of some federal bureaucrat who answers to and is liable to noone?
As an aside, how do 30 companies that must all write to the same standard innovate? I despise Microsoft as much as the next guy, but they would accomplish zero, zip, nada, if every time they want to add or improve a feature they were forced to file paperwork with a federal agency so that the government could ammend the standard prior to the new product being released. What happens when Word crashes Windows every time “new…” is clicked if Lotus Notes is open already open? Do we wait the 12 months that it takes for the standard to be changed just for the consumers to get a decent fix? Remember that you can’t just declare an emergency and change the standard as there might be 29 other companies using the standard now in effect without crashing. How about when Microsoft, McAfee, Norton, and Novell all want to modify the same API set, but in different ways? How does the conflict get resolved in a way that actually benefits us, the consumers? The feds will form a committee where the U.S. House of Representatives gets 3 seats, the Department of Justice gets 2 seats, the Senate gets one Democratic seat and one Republican seat, the DNC and RNC each get 4 more seats, the White house gets 6 seats just because they’re the white house. That’s 21 committee members – if everyone votes there’s no chance of a tie. Except of course that noone on the committee is qualified to make the decision.
As I said, I despise Microsoft as much as the next guy. Nor am I a lover of WalMart and several other behemoths. But that’s personal choice, not prejudice. Sam Walton built his empire by opening a single dry goods store. He borrowed, begged, mortgaged, and scavenged every nickle that he could to open the first store. Once he had his foot in the door he grew a company to where his personal worth was more than 50 billion, and made many millionaires in the process.
same to you
It’s called enforcing the law, and no one in our gov’t is answereable to no one, not even supreme court justices are beyond impeachment. The law would specify an arbitrary net value and percentage of market share (maintained for more than one year) that would automatically trigger a break-up. Companies would know when they are approaching the cut-off point and they will have to choose between growing larger and being broken up, or maintaining their current size and market share. This is NOT a new idea, it is already illegal for one company to control 100% of the market share of any business unless they can prove they have not used any anti-competitive practices to crush all their competitiion (yeah, right). Let me ask you, are we all better off that we have a government of laws and not of men? Emphatically YES. Does it do a disservice when people dismiss our gov’t as a bunch of bureaucrats? YES! Are we better off because of the Sherman Anti-trust Act that broke up the big monopolies and trusts that were ruining America? Again YES. Is anyone better off when a big corporation gets even bigger, yes its stockholders (who aren’t necessarily even Americans) and no one else. NO ONE.
Do you own a phone, or a TV set, or an electric appliance? Are products like these manufactured by a plethora of companies? Do they offer many different features which are constantly being innovated? Do they all meet certain standards to insure that a phone which works in Boston will plug into a wall jack and work in LA? That a cable ready TV in New York is still cable ready in Seattle? That any electric appliance made in America will plug into a 120V/60Hz A/C power line? These are the sort of standards that I am recommending be used to insure a certain uniformity to everything. The idea that we need a giant corporate monopoly to set a good standard for any type of product is absurd, but some people like to say that Microsoft is a good thing because they have created a “standard” operating system. As to what the standards for an OS will be, I can not say, but I would assume that they would insist upon the point and click user interface pioneered by Xerox and subsequently copied by Apple and MS.
AND because of what Sam Walton did it is now impossible for you or I to ever do the same thing. This is exactly the sort of hero worship that I despise amongst my fellow poor people. If you or I was to beg and borrow and mortgage and scavenge for every nickel we could to open a dry goods store we would quickly be crushed by Walmart and left pennyless. To compete head-to-head with Walmart would require an initial investment of many billions of dollars to build a string of discount stores nationwide to rival Walmart’s bulk purchasing power. I consider what Sam Walton did to be on the same level as environmental destruction. The way a strip mine destroys the environment for wildlife and farming, Walmart has destroyed the business environment for small start-up retailers. That business environment needs to be restored the same way a stip mine needs to restore the top soil when they are finished removing the coal underneath. For starters I would recommend making Walmart a franchise chain like McDonald’s. That is, instead of having the corporation own the individual stores, local entrepeneurs would buy each Walmart store and take some of the profits that would have gone to the corporate shareholders.
That’s a pretty naive statement. The entire might of the U.S. federal government cannot today tell us who hired a bar bouncer as head of White House security. 275 million people living in the U.S. and noone is able to figure out who should be in trouble for Al Gore’s missing e-mail.
Go check your local courthouse for zoning variances. Chances are that the authorizing signature on the last controversial variance is a clerk. Some peon making 22K a year that had the choice of signing the variance or looking for a job.
The U.S. does not dictate Japanese, German, or British corporate law. What you suggest will remove the U.S. from the global markets while sending half of every dollar you spend to the Emporer, Chancellor, or Prime Minister. The world’s a lot bigger than the block where you live.
There’s a world of difference in saying that if you want to make a 110VAC appliance that it must be grounded and use the same plug that has been in this country for the last three generations. If you’ll check, you’ll see that your PC already conforms to this standard.
Software standards are a completely different matter.
And if Sam Walton hadn’t built the WalMart empire, you’d be buying your CDs from KMart, or Kroeger, or some foreign entity.
SO I wonder, what do you do for a living, SarumanRex?
Are you good at it? Does it bring you more work?
Did you know that every time you succeed and land another contract, you put one of your competitors out of business? There really is no diference between you and Sam Walton. Except of course for the jealousy thing.
And that Sam is dead, giving Rex a very-slight edge in the looks department.
ROTFLMAO! **
On a more serious note, it is true that if I started a small business I would take away from the business environment a small share of all the profit there is to be had in this world economy. I am not saying that making a living is wrong. To further clarify my previous statements, a person’s intentions are everything when determining the right or wrong of their actions. Take hunting for example, is it wrong for a man to shoot a buck deer to feed his family? ABSOLUTELY NOT. I am willing to be very lax in my moral standards when it comes to a man putting food on the table. I would go so far as to overlook hunting out of season or with an inappropriate weapon such as a .22 caliber rifle which can’t make a quick kill of a full grown deer. Is it wrong for a man to kill a deer to cull the herd in accordance with all relevant hunting laws even if he has no intention of eating the meat? I don’t have a problem with it. Is it wrong, though, for a man to kill a deer just because he takes pleasure in killing, in exerting his dominance over a weaker living thing? YES. From this example, I think we can conclude that destroying even a tiny part of the world environment just for the hell of it is wrong.
To expand this example to include the business environment, a man going out into the world and scraping up enough money to keep a roof over his head and feed his family is OK with me as long as he isn’t breaking any laws. As a person becomes richer, though, I become far more strict in what I consider to be a right or wrong way to make more money. Just because it was legal for Sam Walton to do what he did does not make it right in my book, and I have trouble fathoming why any other poor people would see it differently. Once you have accumulated great wealth (I set it arbitrarily at $10 million in net personal worth, where would you set it? at infinity?) then you are just being greedy if you want even more money in this world of poverty. What are you going to do with $100 million or a billion dollars, build a mansion so huge it has an indoor golf course? Don’t you people see that as you become more and more wealthy the range of acceptable profit making schemes becomes narrower and narrower until you are walking a tightrope of business decisions?
It is OK to produce a high quality low price item for sale to the general public if you do NOTHING to drive out competition from other hard working Americans who also want to produce low-cost high quality products. I was accused of being naive about gov’t employees who ostensibly work to serve the public, but aren’t you being incredibly naive about billionaires who are working only to serve themselves and don’t even try to hide it. Why would you come to the defense of such people? Do you think you actually have a shot at their kind of success? Now who’s being naive? If you disagree with me then take the next few hours to explain why Bill Gates needs another billion dollars, and why we (the public and our gov’t) should do nothing to interfere with his greed. I liken such arguments to sheep defending the rights of wolves.
I’m sure all the subsistence farmers of this world appreciate your support. I mean, really, this is absurd. Making more money than “scraping” by means a harder and harder time passing your ethical test? Why is it so hard for your to fathom that people might just have the drive to create? Create a business as well as a fortune?
Your bitterness and envy has gotten the better of you, it seems. It must be a very small world that you live in where instead of people looking up at others who have ‘made it’ and saying “I want to succeed like that,” you think they are all moping around thinking about how shafted they are because Sam Walton made more money for himself and his family than he could possibly spend.
If you are doing nothing to drive out competition, then you have no business being in business. Why do you think people advertise? Make comparisons between products and services? What kind of widget-seller would I be if my strategy was ignoring everyone else selling widgets? The whole idea is to be the best widget-seller at the expense of your competitors. Of course they are thinking the same thing, thus free market competition, thus drives for new widget innovations.
Everyone wins in this scenario. Even the maker of lousy widgets who goes out of business and realizes he’s better off creating some other good or service.
YES! If that is what I wanted out of life. Turns out for me, I don’t. I’m a biologist. Not in the business world at all. I’ll never be rich. I’ll never reach entrepreneurial heights. But I certainly don’t begrudge those that reach for those heights. I hope more people become wealthy. I harbor no bitterness or jealousy. Besides, I think it is better for the country.
Hopefully the “sheep” of this country don’t listen to the likes of you. “Or poor me, I’ll never be rich like that guy, I should just never try. The only fair thing is to put a cap on earning power. It’s immoral to earn that much, so I’ll just sit here and cry. Boo hoo BAAAAAAAAAAA.”
Quotes in italics were originally posted by divemaster
Quotes in bold were originally posted by SarumanRex
As a person becomes richer, though, I become far more strict in what I consider to be a right or wrong way to make more money.
I mean, really, this is absurd. Making more money than “scraping” by means a harder and harder time passing your ethical test? Why is it so hard for you to fathom that people might just have the drive to create? Create a business as well as a fortune?
A person can create all they want, I’m not suggesting otherwise. As far as business goes, though, IMHO a person can “create” up to $10 million dollars in personal wealth before my moral noose starts to tighten. You don’t seem to understand that there is no limit to the greed of some people. It has nothing to do with being creative or wanting to watch their business grow, it is just pure avarice. I think of life as one giant buffet. In this analogy the billionaires are giants who are shoving people out of the way so they grab food and cram it in all their pockets, more than they could ever possibly eat in 10 lifetimes. While they are doing this people are literally starving at the back of the buffet line. According to you, though, these giants are just finding creative ways to store food, more power to 'em. As to the starving people of the world, BOO HOO, let 'em starve.
*It must be a very small world that you live in where instead of people looking up at others who have ‘made it’ and saying “I want to succeed like that,” you think they are all moping around thinking about how shafted they are because Sam Walton made more money for himself and his family than he could possibly spend. *
I’m not bitter because I envy billionaires (I don’t even want to be rich), I’m bitter because people like you admire them. What is it about these people that you admire other than their ability to accumulate wealth they don’t need? Is it their terrific ability to compete in the business environment and crush little competitors before they even have a chance?
It is OK to produce a high quality low price item for sale to the general public if you do NOTHING to drive out competition from other hard working Americans who also want to produce low-cost high quality products.
*If you are doing nothing to drive out competition, then you have no business being in business. Why do you think people advertise? * (I cut out a bunch of other crap about the company with the best product winning in the end)
Is this how you think the world of business really works, or is this just what they taught you in grade school. Advertisement is OK unless you libel your competitors and there are already laws against libel so everything’s fine. When I talk about destroying a competitor, though, I don’t mean through honest advertisement. In another thread I described a businessman who undercuts his competition’s prices by outsourcing all his manufacturing from his plant in the USA to a prison labor factory in China. This is illegal but according to what I have heard, it happens every day. There is no practical way for American authorities to insure that products made overseas were not produced by slave labor, so anybody can get away with it. Billionaires are in a position to pick and choose whatever country they want to manufacture their products, tiny start-up companies don’t have this option. As more and more of the business environment is dominated by corporate giants it becomes more and more difficult to start a new business no matter how good your idea is. You seem to think that the biggest companies have the best products, the architects of communism thought the same thing. They speculated that one production facility for an entire nation would be more efficient than lots of little competing facilities. In reality (you should visit sometime you might like it) the exact opposite is true. Giant state owned production facilities produce the crappiest products on earth because they have no competitiion. In the capitalist world, the bigger the companies are in a given market, the less the competition, the lower the quality, and the higher the price. Take the big three auto makers for example, does anyone remember how much cars sucked before foreign competition forced Detroit to clean up its act.
Why do you come to the defense of such people? Do you think you actually have a shot at their kind of success?
YES! If that is what I wanted out of life.
Pardon me, but you couldn’t make a billion dollars with a printing press and a license from the mint.
If you disagree with me then take the next few hours to explain why Bill Gates needs another billion dollars, and why we (the public and our gov’t) should do nothing to interfere with his greed. I liken such arguments to sheep defending the rights of wolves.
Hopefully the “sheep” of this country don’t listen to the likes of you. “Or poor me, I’ll never be rich like that guy, I should just never try. The only fair thing is to put a cap on earning power. It’s immoral to earn that much, so I’ll just sit here and cry. Boo hoo BAAAAAAAAAAA.”
You still haven’t explained why Bill needs another billion. You also don’t explain why he has any more right to make money than anyone else, yet he repeatedly bought out or crushed smaller competitors on his way to becoming the richest human being in the universe of all time. Only now is our gov’t stepping in, probably because there are so many people like you who don’t have a problem with Gates since you weren’t one of the little guys getting crushed. Your argument is like saying that arsonists should be allowed to burn down as many houses as they want as long as they don’t burn down YOUR house, since it keeps the home builders busy.
Top ten millionaires? They don’t have anywhere near the amount of money that the top 10 billionaires have, vanilla.
When I go to the store they have these $5 $10, etc, cards you can buy that feed a family somewhere for a week for $10.00, you know of those???
I’d sure like to know where they shop!