----- Original Message -----
From: "Harry Veeder" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Vo]: New Segway Products
Harry Veeder wrote:
<snip>
A mainly capitalist world is what America wants is it not?
Ah, that nasty word "capitalist". It has a different meaning to European
intellectuals than to the origins and thrust of the US economy. Capital is a
concentration of resources to allow future work or development. A farmer who
retains a portion of each year's crop to plant the next is using his
'profits' and is a 'capitalist'. Farmers who combine resources to build
silos for storage of crops for future sales are 'capitalists'. What Marx and
other socialists railed against in England was the landed gentry of feudal
traditions who became factory owners and exploited workers as they did
tenant farmers, using their unearned wealth to build an industrial society
which indirectly benefits everyone.
The early US took a different direction, where businessmen were part of the
community. That story was well told by Bruckberger in his 1959 "Image of
America", addressed to European intellectuals. The real revolution of the
20th century was not the Bolshevik but the day Henry Ford decided to pay his
workers $5 for an 8 hour day, sharing the increased efficiency of his mass
production methods. It was unprecedented at the time, enabling his workers
to become customers and own automobiles. He was sued by the Dodge Brothers
for mismanagement [they covered their losses in the automobile business by
their income from Ford stock]. In the trial, Ford was asked if he motive was
not profit. His reply was that his motive was to make a useful, affordable
car and if he did that he could not help make money.
What has happened since is complex; mass production brought its own social
problems which took time to work out. Today, actual ownership of US business
is diffused through perhaps 50% of the population through direct investment,
but also insurance and retirement plans.
Harry is perhaps confusing 'capitalism' with a 'market economy'. It is the
latter, and free trade, which the US promotes. This releases individual
entrepreneurial energy and provides many ways for the able and ambitious
person to grow which is stifled by autocratic systems of whatever kind. One
imitative by 'capitalists' in the US is a system of microloans to people in
developing countries which enable villagers to start small businesses on the
road to independence.
Or, Harry, would you prefer continuing government doles and continued
dependence on a bureaucracy?
Or protecting Japan with a military shield
so they don't have to invest as heavily in a defense establishment, and
becoming better competitors as 'outsourcing empire'? Or maintaining a
stable
economy so the US becomes a preferred repository for wealth so that we
become increasingly dependent on others assuming our debt as 'outsourcing
empire'? Or allowing foreign investment in, say real estate and auto
manufacturing here, which are beginning to eclipse our domestic products,
as
'outsourcing empire'?
So what? The British Empire had slums at home.
Do you advocate policies which guarantee equality of outcome as opposed to
equality opportunity? Be careful of what you wish for, that produces equal
poverty for all.
Mike Carrell
