Steve Schacher

The Moral Basis of Capitalism, by Robert Tracinski -- Capitalism Magazine. Excerpt: quote:With the fall of communism and the alleged end of the "era of big government," many commentators and politicians grudgingly acknowledge the practical value of capitalism. The free market, they concede, is the best system for producing wealth and promoting prosperity; the private economy, in Bill Clinton's words, is the "primary engine of growth." But this has not led to the triumph of capitalism. Quite the opposite: Federal taxes as a percentage of gross domestic product are at their highest rate since the Second World War; antitrust assaults on the market's winners are growing; the regulations on the federal register continue to expand by 60,000 pages per year; even the Republicans' recent tax cut proposal would only mandate a minor decrease in the projected growth of government revenues. By practically every measure, government interference in the free market is growing. If capitalism is recognized as the only practical economic system—then why is it losing out to state control? The reason is that no one, neither on the left nor the right, is willing to defend capitalism as moral. Thus, both sides agree, whatever the practical value of capitalism, morality requires that the free market be reigned in by government regulations. The only disagreement between the two sides is over the number of regulations and the rate of their growth. What no one has grasped yet is that capitalism is not just practical but also moral. Capitalism is the only system that fully allows and encourages the virtues necessary for human life. It is the only system that safeguards the freedom of the independent mind and recognizes the sanctity of the individual.

The role of profits, by Walter Williams, the former head of the Economics Department at George Mason University. Excerpt: quote:So what are profits? Put simply, profits are a price, just as wages, rents and interest are prices. Profits are the prices paid as residual claims to entrepreneurs in their role as risk-takers, innovators and decision-makers. Just as workers will not provide their services without wages, entrepreneurs will not provide theirs without profits. Profits, like other prices, steer resources from low-valued uses to higher-valued uses.

quote:Therefore, while the range of options may be vast, the choice is not free, because workers and consumers have no substantial say in the content or nature of the available options.Workers have a say in the options available to them based on the occupation they choose to pursue. Some occupations/vocations have a wider range of options than others. Consumers have a say on a range of choices in that the choices that consumers reject will eventually disappear and be replaced with choices more favorable to the consumers. It's called voting with your dollars.

quote:not the ground breaking animated movie it was hyped up to beI thought it was going to be a toy commercial.

quote:and it sells faster than ginger lynn's undies.Have you been playing Wing Commander III again?

quote:AND, the verdict is? In one word, Weston.

Enough, already. More of this and I'll close the thread.

quote:Also, if I offended I apologize. No need to apologize to me. I don't get offended by what happens here.

Well, despite the trouble, I kept buying more HP. I don't know why -- perhaps I became familiar with it. My wife uses the scanner, mostly. The scanner, coupled with a printer makes a copier, coupled with Winfax makes it a fax machine. She's always copying something, or faxing something. If you're going to use it often, get a durable one. If not, then get a cheaper one and replace it in a couple of years if it wears out.

quote:There are other places democracy can manifest itself. The next frontier I believe may be the work place. Corporate structure is based on the military concept of command and control -- one manager for about 16 people. It was developed during the industrial revolution when it was decided that it was more productive to have a dozen people each doing one thing well than one person doing a dozen things poorly. A democratized workplace would be more in line with cooperatives (commonly called co-ops), or even communes, where the workers or inhabitants share in the running, and/or upkeep of the organization. quote:I think corporate systems while effective at getting the bottom line for a select few...does not hold a true interest of people in heart.The corporate "systems" are only interested in one thing -- maximizing shareholder return. quote:Every day a small group of profiteers gets to force its' will over the rest with no clear path to accomplishing a positive goal...This is the second reference to the few who profit. Whom do you think makes up the NYSE, NASDAQ, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Nikkei, et.al.? Companies buy the seats, but shareholders trade the stocks all over the world. Why do you think that there are only a few who profit? quote:However we wage economic war and we call it free trade...It is economic war when we embargo and sanction. However, I wouldn't consider NAFTA to be economic war -- that was supposed to be a boon to Mexico at the expense of American workers (remember Perot's complaints of a "giant sucking sound" coming from the south?). If you want to talk about trade wars, you can look at how the Japanese flooded the American market with below-cost computer chips in the 1980s, or how the Japanese restricted the sale of American autos in Japan, or even rice, while at the same time flooding the US market with cars. Now, I don't blame them for the cars since Detroit was putting out an inferior product and needed a kick in the behind, but when Detroit got its act together and tried to break into the Japanese market, they closed the door. That is economic warfare. The United States is the largest donor of economic aid around the world. I don't think one can sustain a charge of the US involved in economic warfare.

I have the HP Scanjet 5400c. Prior to that, I had earlier versions but they kept burning out somehow. I don't know why, but the bulb was always on unless you downloaded a patch to manage it better. After a while (a year or two), the computer would stop recognizing the scanner. I think HP finally got it right. They added a power switch.

Anyone see this gem? (I know it's Pravda, but...) World Cup Bomb Excerpt: quote:South Korean football player Lee Young Pyo has declared that the Portuguese star player, Luis Figo, elected FIFA World Player of the Year 2001/2002 proposed that both teams should play for a draw.

Nick, You make it sound so simple. quote:They developed the marketplace and how it functions, thus the marketplace functions to serve their interests above all others. It's like inventing a game that everyone must play, but the rules are always in one's favour. Pardon me for not respecting that.They developed the marketplace, but not the market. You need consumers, as well as producers, to have a market. If people won't buy, sellers can't sell. Therefore, it is not a game that everyone must play. quote:If a country loses its farmers then it becomes dependent on other countries for food. The food imports would be more expensive because of the lack of domestic competition. The higher cost of food in that country would increase the costs of production in every other sector of the domestic economy, hence other fields of endeavor would also be disadvantaged.How would handle countries that can't support farming because the terrain is too frigid, or too mountainous, or too desert? For these countries, trading for food is the only option, which in your words, would make them dependent on other countries for food. I don't understand your connection between the cost of food and the cost of production of other goods. Production costs are based on the cost of material, overhead costs, labor costs, and profit margin. Unless you are referring to having to increase labor costs because laborers need more to pay for food that is imported instead of locally produced, I think you're overstating the impact of food costs on overall production costs across the board. quote:They're already selling the product nationally; now they are trying to sell internationally to expand the consumer base. A larger consumer base enables the producer to expand operations. But in order to compete internationally, they are demanding that the other producers somehow change their ways in order to force their way into an existing market. That is simply not the way that it's done. If you can't make it outright on your own, you don't belong in the market. quote:A larger consumer base enables the producer to expand operations. Operations can only expand up to the ability of the producer to produce. Small countries do not have the resources to compete on the global scale against already established producers. Wishing it to be so will not make it so. quote:If a product's consumer base is purely national then multinational producers, which are capable of selling products at a lower price, can move in and undercut the national product, thus eliminating domestic competition. That is one threat that the developing countries are facing; the other is the usage of export subsidies (when government gives funds or concessions to exporting producers in an effort to reduce prices to more competitive levels), which is what they're complaining about.The problem for developing countries is that they're developing too late. The Industrial Revolution occured 100 years ago. The time to strike was then. Some smaller countries are in the plight they're in because they are small countries that are in remote corners of the world, which either resulted in: 1) the world passing them by on the way to modernization, 2) them being too remote for cost-effective trading, 3) their own cultures not keeping up with the rest of the world (for various ethnic, religious, or political reasons), 4) lack of resources, education, etc.

quote:...we must assume that if they desired for the law to cover aircrafts they would have mentioned them...You give our current Congress way too much credit.

This is why we have to get Sens. Leahy and Schumer to stop blocking Bush's Judicial appointments.

quote:I swear, the intersection of Flamingo Rd and Sunrise Bld was literally empty when I moved up here. When I moved out there, Oakland Park Blvd wasn't even paved all the way out to University. They finished that one six months after I got there. 44th street finally got paved into Inverrary after I graduated high school. Pine Island was considered the boonies.

quote:To tell you the truth, I moved because we ran out of space and the equity helped in getting a bigger place... Besides, it wasn't my idea. I was lazying about (as usual) minding my own business, when a woman... sauntered into my office... My wife is looking at doing the exact same thing. We've been out looking at houses. However, it is a LOT more expensive here in the Bay Area than in South Florida. quote:Sure thin....oh wait!! what are you trying to say!? That you did'nt come to visit me in Sunrise because it wasn't an exclusive area? There was a time when that area was exclusive. You had Inverrary just down the road (Jackie Gleason lived there and hosted his annual PGA tournament there). I've been back to Florida mostly to visit ailing relatives. I will look you up the next time I'm out, probably in November.

I'm not sure exactly how this article fits into the discussion, but let me drop it here: Poor Nations Demand Market Access Excerpt: quote:Led by Cuba, developing countries on Tuesday demanded greater access to international markets and an end to export subsidies, saying fairer free trade was the only way to end world hunger. On the second day of the U.N. World Food Summit, leaders of the world's poorest countries called on the United States, European Union and other exporting nations to give poor farmers a competing chance to sell their wares. "We are poor. You are rich. Level the playing field!" Teofisto Guingona, foreign minister of the Philippines, said. "Do not in the name of free trade deny us time to integrate our resources, and having integrated them deny us access to your rich markets."At what point do economies of scale overrule moralistic principles? The farmers are "demanding" that existing producers somehow curtail or change their method of doing business. The existing farmers have been in the business for a long, long time, and probably had a hand in developing the marketplace and how it functions. What are they to say to a new farmer who just comes along and demands to be included without having paid the dues like everyone else? -- (the dues being what it took to create the marketplace, not the hardships of life) Who can tell the farmer that being a farmer in an already saturated global market makes no sense? Even if farming is all that the particular farmer has to depend on, it doesn't justify changing the marketplace just to satisfy the demands of someone who chooses to be a farmer. Perhaps the farmer should choose another field of endeavor (like tourism, for instance). If a Cuban farmer feels that he can help the plight of other Cubans by farming, that is great and more power to him. But why should a Cuban farmer try to sell his produce on the global market when he surely has a market at home that would eagerly consume his produce?

quote:I recently moved from Sunrise to Weston. Ahh... moving on up! I've made several trips to WPB to visit my family these past few years, but they were solemn occasions so I couldn't venture far (except for the week on-site at WDW, but that's another story). I always thought about stopping by Sunrise, since I went to high school there, but never did find the time to visit. Now that you're in the exclusive part of town, I'll have to look you up next time!

quote:That would come just nine days shy of Ford's 63rd birthday."Indiana Jones Saves Social Security" This may be too tough, even for him!

"Indiana Jones" awaits next big-screen adventure Excerpt: quote:More than 20 years after seizing the Lost Ark from the clutches of Nazi agents, Harrison Ford may be pushing 60 but Indiana Jones is ready to dust off his fedora and come out of retirement. Oscar-nominated writer and director Frank Darabont is near a deal to write a fourth "Indiana Jones" movie, with Ford set to return as the bullwhip-cracking archeologist, a spokesman for director Steven Spielberg said on Friday. According to Daily Variety, the film is aimed for a July 4, 2005 release from Paramount Pictures, the studio owned by Viacom Inc. (VIAb). That would come just nine days shy of Ford's 63rd birthday.

quote:Trust me on this.We'll see...

quote:I can’t say I like the two party system in the US myself as I have trouble deciding which party I loathe more and so I agree that some change is necessary, but probably not in the same direction you are thinking.The best thing about the two-party system is that it guarantees that one candidate will win a majority of the vote. Remember Ross Perot? His entry into the 1992 campaign resulted in Bill Clinton winning the presidency with only 40% of the vote. Clinton was a plurality president, not a majority president. Both Gore and Bush got more votes than Clinton did. That is what a three-party system will do. quote:Recent history has seen a quantum leap in average education levels...we are at the tip of the iceberg.From the AP: quote:Florida County's New History Exam for High Schoolers Makes 23 Percent a Passing Grade The Associated Press Published: May 30, 2002 WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - You can get three-quarters of the answers wrong and still pass this test. Palm Beach County high school students taking a new history exam this week need to answer just 23 of 100 multiple-choice questions correctly to pass. To get an A, they need to get just over half the answers right. A B grade requires only 39 correct answers. The new final exam for American and world history classes was developed by school district officials to ensure students learn state- required lessons that include history about women, Africans, African-Americans and the Holocaust.

Never mind about the "telephone connectivity" tax we all pay that was supposed to go towards wiring all the schools to the internet. The schools are all wired -- why am I still paying the tax?

quote:The government will file three lawsuits against Florida counties alleging voting rights violations resulting from the bitterly disputed 2000 election, a Justice Department official said Tuesday. TWO OTHER LAWSUITS also will be filed, in Missouri and Tennessee, by the department’s civil rights division, Assistant Attorney General Ralph Boyd told the Senate Judiciary Committee.This is much deeper than you think. Florida - we all know what happened there. Tennessee - Gore lost his home state. Missouri - Ashcroft's home state. There is a mole on the loose in the Justice Department.