In message <caeqgtwb1hr9qdsaefy+gm35aoxvbek3kqft++arhjyjjd3u...@mail.gmail.com> Noah <[email protected]>wrote:
>This is why I do not understand what my brother Paul is going on about and >I am trying to understand his view point because it does not make sense. I tried, in my usual long-winded way (which probably nobody bothered to read) to explain what I think is the basic underlying viewpoint. Capitalism has, in general, and over a long period of time, shown itself to be a more efficient basis for the allocation of scarce resources. And when I say "more efficient" I mean relative to the alternative, which is to have some bureucratic "governmental" or "regulatory" authority deciding who should get what, based on some criteria *other than* who is willing to pay the highest price. This is NOT a small point. After 70 years, the old Soviet system which was based on a so-called "command economy" which was run from the top down, fell apart under its own weight, largely because it was so grossly inefficient in the way it allocated resources. And there are many other and similar examples in history of "command economies" failing due to the mis-allocation of resources, where that mis-allocation itself was a product of nepotism, fraud, or just plain inept planning on the part of the state bureaucrats who were doing the allocating. So there is something to be said for just allowing what the economist Adam Smith called the "invisible hand" of the free marketplace to guide how scarce resources are allocated. Pure capitalism may not work well in all circumstances, and it may fail to produce just and equitable outcomes that make allowances for widely endorsed social priorities (like keeping assests within some local region or assuring that non-profit organizations are not starved to death), but it is still usually preferable to having some uninvolved (and possibly uninformed, and possibly crooked) bureacrat doing all of the allocating of resources. Regards, rfg _______________________________________________ Community-Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.afrinic.net/mailman/listinfo/community-discuss
