less cars : roll on $2 per litre

Travis wrote:
Travis wrote:


These strategies would work in a completely free market where


I mean, the strategies would *NOT* work without government regulations
to facilitate them.

You could use your examples to argue that the law is an ass, but its a
long shot to call this a failure of a free market capitalist system,
which would imply that the antidote would be markets which are more
regulated and less free.

Lol, keeping on pumping. A FMCS (oxymoronic) does not exist in a vacum.

Travis wrote:

Microsoft. Arguably they inefficiently produce a product that is inferior
in many ways to some that cost much less, but they are the leader through
marketing (going back to the days of DOS 3.3 and Win95).


They efficiently produce products which the market wants.

I guess that depends on your definition of "produce". Theft and thuggery
might be good economic principles, but most of us disagree.

Again, you either understand "Advertising", i.e. FUD specifically, or
you don't.


50 years later, the North doesn't have enough electricity to light
their cities at night. The south is an economic powerhouse, admired
all over the world.

Do you want to post the aid figures for each side {:-).
Lets face it, Cuba shows that socialism can survive in a vacum, i.e is
self sustaining but there is no corresponding capitalist example,
because capitalism is a unsustainable consumerist ideology that relives
on access to new resource to perpetuate.



A pretty positive experimental result showing the advantages of
capitalism over socialism don't you think Dave?

Nope, just another example of how you can always find positive exconomic
examples if you narrow the viewpoint sufficently.

Dave Hughes wrote:
On Sat, 19 Aug 2006 23:26:06 -0700, Travis wrote:


They efficiently produce products which the market wants.


They've made the market want their products,

Not quite. They used the law to the maximum to undermine their
competition, whilst stealing their competitors idea, thus making
competitive products uneconomic.

Every microsoft "development" has been copied or stolen from elsewhere.

Travis wrote:

Examples of where people and companies have NOT played fair and have
distorted a free market are not black marks on the free market, they're
black marks on anti-competitive behaviour.

Lol, I just love how "all the failings are somebody else's fault" Waah,
waah, waah.

In aus.bicycle on Mon, 21 Aug 2006 17:55:41 +1000
Terryc wrote:
vaudegiant wrote:

The free market and the profit motive is effective, only for the reason
that the true 'cost' of market activities is rarely factored into the
cost of a good or service. Many negative impacts are not costed into
the value of a product of or activity, thus skewing the true 'cost'. If
all features and effects were considered, much of the free markets
activities would need to be reconsideredl.

Plus, there are very few, if any "free markets".

And they don't stay free without a lot of state intervention because
the consumer isn't perfectly informed. And the sellers don't compete
just with products.

The free market is like communism really - never been tried.

Zebee

Zebee Johnstone wrote:

The free market is like communism really - never been tried.

Free markets haven't really been tried, there is always political
interference from people that would like a free market except for a few
industries they'd like to subsidise or protect with subsidies etc.

But you can't say the same about Communism. Its been tried repeatedly
in various places. It was a dismal failure.

The totalitarianism that communism degenerated into in every place
communism exists is inevitable. When you wish to control all
production, fix all prices at levels grossly different to where they
would be if natural supply and demand set them, suppress private
enterprise and make people perform work without giving them any
financial incentive, the only way to keep the wheels turning is either
by appealing to people's altruistic and patriotic emotions, or pointing
a gun at them and forcing them to work.

Lenin knew this from the start, which is why as all students of Soviet
history know Lenin was the guy who founded the secret police. The
idealistic hope though was that after a while people would get used to
the new ways and think like a soviet man should, and work for
patriotism and altruism. They never did disband the secret police
though because the soviet man was as much a fiction as any subspecies
of Homo Economicus.

You know what's funny? Right now there is a thread in aus.invest,
crossposted to aus.cars, which has turned into a discussion of the
merits of cycling to work. And here we are in aus.bicycles talking
about economics.

Travis

"Aliens have been visiting Earth for many years,

Yep.

and there has been high level contact between
the US government and these aliens.

Lol, that is the funny bit. Wishful thinking. It would have to be stupid
aliens that did this.

No, no, the *real* US government.

On 2006-08-21, Travis (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:

Zebee Johnstone wrote:

The free market is like communism really - never been tried.

Free markets haven't really been tried, there is always political
interference from people that would like a free market except for a few
industries they'd like to subsidise or protect with subsidies etc.

But you can't say the same about Communism. Its been tried repeatedly
in various places. It was a dismal failure.

I thought all attempts at communism have only been an approximation to
true communism, so as such, it hasn't yet been tried.

The totalitarianism that communism degenerated into in every place
communism exists is inevitable. When you wish to control all
production, fix all prices at levels grossly different to where they
would be if natural supply and demand set them, suppress private
enterprise and make people perform work without giving them any
financial incentive, the only way to keep the wheels turning is either
by appealing to people's altruistic and patriotic emotions, or pointing
a gun at them and forcing them to work.

Of course, if you let capitalism free, and got rid all all government
intervention, the natural state is for companies to merge until the
point where there is a single company only, in each industry. And
then any semblence of competition disappears, and you no longer have a
free market. Well damn, there go our assumptions. But it's not
capitalism's fault!

1) Examples: Digital^WCompaq^WHP
2) Microsoft buying out all competition (then promptly ditching the
better aspects of the code stolen/bought).
3)
http://www.theage.com.au/news/nation...098464004.html

_"Media changes won't reduce diversity: Coonan"_
Senator Coonan tonight said that under a proposed new test, the
number of media owners in Sydney would only reduce from the
current 12 to five if it was approved by the Australian
Competition and Consumer Commission.

(incidentally, 12 down to 5 is "not a large change"??)

Then there's the deals where the end consumer has no choice about what
they are buying. It is impossible to buy a laptop without windows
installed, because all laptop manufacturs have made a deal with
Microsoft -- in order for MS to support the hardware at all, the
hardware must be exclusively distributed with windows pre-installed.

You know what's funny? Right now there is a thread in aus.invest,
crossposted to aus.cars, which has turned into a discussion of the
merits of cycling to work. And here we are in aus.bicycles talking
about economics.

So um, that car. The one with wheels... Nice car, eh?

--
TimC
Kleeneness is next to Godelness.

On 2006-08-21, Terryc wrote:
Every microsoft "development" has been copied or stolen from elsewhere.

Objection! As a counterargument, I present unto thee, Microsoft Bob! So
good, the project lead actually married Bill Gates! (Then again, I'm not
sure if that would count as a reward or a punishment.

--
My Usenet From: address now expires after two weeks. If you email me, and
the mail bounces, try changing the bit before the "@" to "usenet".

On 2006-08-21, TimC wrote:
It is impossible to buy a laptop without windows
installed, because all laptop manufacturs have made a deal with
Microsoft -- in order for MS to support the hardware at all, the
hardware must be exclusively distributed with windows pre-installed.

nitpick
http://www.apple.com.au/store/
/nitpick

--
My Usenet From: address now expires after two weeks. If you email me, and
the mail bounces, try changing the bit before the "@" to "usenet".