DesideriScuri
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ORIGINAL: njlauren
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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
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ORIGINAL: DomKen
electrification was a utility, i.e. government supported monopoly (socialism).
computers development was driven by WW2 and the space program (government spending not private enterprise)
internet was created by DARPA (part of the US government and given away to the world, socialism)
So all the things except windows you attribute to capitalism aren't.
Yeah, the government funded all those inventors way back when, didn't they? I didn't realize Bill Gates had anything to do with WW2 of the space program. The initial creation of the internet may be the backbone of today's internet, but it wasn't DARPA that drove it to what is today.
I am surprised at you, Desideri, you usually think a bit more deeply than this, I have heard the same crap argument from the tea party nitwits, the Sarah Palin crowd, and it is just plain stupid on their part.The key thing about corporations, especially big ones, is that they are risk averse, and more importantly, they won't spend money on things that aren't already monetized, beancounters are the heart and soul of corporations and their imagination is limited to shifting decimal points around and shifting numbers to make something look good, they have the imagination and creativity of a wet sack of dog doo doo, in other words.
The point Ken made is a valid one, and it is dead spot on. It is government that funds almost all basic research,and without that, Bill Gates would probably be a corporate lawyer or something like that. For example, Microsofts rise to power and fame was with the IBM PC, creating the operating system for it (well, not really, they bought DOS from a company called Seattle Digital, who built DOS for its own uses...hint, DOS 1.0 if you dumped it using debug, still had "Copyright Seattle Digital" in it with the words "SD-DOS". ). But if it wasn't for the microprocessor, that made PC's possible, would have happened..and the integrated circuit that became the microprocessor was funded by Uncle Sam. The VLSI technology that allowed the incredible modern pc's, laptops and smartphones, was developed on Uncle Sam's dime. The TCP/IP protocol that is the operating protocol of the Internet was developed by, you got it, Uncle Sam (or funded by them), packet radio, that is now WiFi, came from Uncle Sam, as did basic ethernet networking that most computer networks rely on. Fiber optics, that carries a lot of the internet traffic, was developed, not by Dow Corning or by ATT, but by Uncle Sam's funding. The grandfather of the whole thing, the transistor, was never patented, because *ta da*, was developed on Uncle Sam's dime. LCD technology was developed in many places (Siemens usually gets credit), but a lot of the funding for developing that came from military research into things like heads up displays, and most of it was governmental, both US and Germany. Companies don't do basic research, and without that, the wonders that allowed Bill Gates or Steve Jobs (yep, hypertext, the mouse, the GUI, were developed at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center..but they had funding from the federal government as well, that allowed them to run the lab without having to pay for it all by themselves). Companies package basic research, but they suck at doing it, don't do it, and rather wait to see what comes out of the labs then finds a way to package it, patent it and sell it..which is all fine and good, but making it seem like private industry is this hotbed of creativity, creating new things, is a crock of tea party bullshit, and it has only gotten worse, between wanting to please stock analysts and CEO's caught up in their own greed, what little they spent on R and D has been pissed away even more.
I am tired of hearing what Mencken called Boobus Americanus bleating like the sheep in Animal Farm, that capitalism good, government bad, Businessmen good, government stupid, those morons are bleating the Ayn Rand party line because they are too stupid to think. Businesses don't operate in a vacuum, and even in the 'hallowed' 19th century of the idiot branch of the GOP, businesses relied on the government for a lot of things. Carnegie made several fortunes, first by selling railroad bonds (that in large part were because of the huge government incentives that made building railroads incredibly profitable, or in Carnegie's case, building bullshit railroads whose primary purpose was to get the land grand rights and sell bonds to the suckers dumb enough to buy them; his second fortune was in the steel used to build the US Navy Fleet, Carnegie made a huge fortune supplying steel for that fleet and for weapons.....government and business don't operate apart, and they have their particular strong and weak points. And yeah, government has given us some boondoggles, like studies on why people say ain't, or in programs of dubious merit like ethanol designed to make corn farmers rich, but so has private industry, Dilbert exists in large part because corporations make hilariously bad decisions (think about the asshole providing meat to McDonald's in China who thought they were pulling a fast one, really brilliant corporate decision making). When business pretends it is all knowing and operates rationally head for the hills, especially when so called conservatives claim that businesses always make better decisions and don't need the burden of regulation, given the chance they will once again fuck everyone up the ass when they tank the economy and come out of it with huge bonuses, paid for by the rest of us, because conservative mantra seems to be privatize profit but socialize risk.
That isn't the conservative mantra at all. It might be the current GOP leadership's mantra, but, I contend, that isn't conservatism.
The biggest difference, imo, between corporatism and capitalism, is what you refer to as the conservative mantra. The Free Market system rewards success and penalizes failure. "Too big to fail" doesn't exist in a free market system. Those banks that made all sorts of stupid choices in mortgage lending and then created securities based on those shitty mortgages should have been allowed to take those losses. There should be no spreading the losses to the US taxpayers. Fannie and Freddie were buying up pretty much any mortgage written shortly after the ink dried, presenting very little risk to the mortgage lenders. The lenders were writing mortgages based on the risk to them. It made financial sense for them to write as many mortgages as they could, because it didn't matter how shitty they were. They were going to make money on the mortgage and weren't running the risk. How is that a good thing?
Cheap money (low rates set by The Fed) and reduction of risk to the mortgage lenders created the housing bubble. When reality set in, and Fannie and Freddie stopped buying up everything, lenders were left with shitty ass mortgages they just wrote, and that's when the "credit crunch" set in. Instead of freeing up the just lent money for more loans, lenders actually had to deal with the loans.
You mentioned the S&L crisis. The S&L crisis was caused by the government initially limiting the rates they were allowed to set (and limiting their range of offerings). When interest rates rose above the amount they could offer to lure savings, the industry was fucked. Government lifted that rate limit and allowed them to offer more products. Yes, some S&L managers went apeshit and got greedy, and abused their newly gifted freedom. I don't disagree with that. When Congress saw those going apeshit, they had kneejerk reactions and reimposed the product limitation rules. While this didn't kill the industry outright, the forcing of fire sales to get rid of products that they were no longer allowed to offer did them in. Had Congress allowed the S&L's to hold onto the loans on their books they had, but not allowed future ones, things would likely have been okay for S&L's. Let those no longer allowed loans to mature and leave the industry by attrition, rather than forcing them to take losses through the fire sales. That's what killed the S&L's; Government action.
Profits are signals in Capitalism that what you are doing is what the consumer wants. Losses are the signals that what you're doing isn't right. Losses are the impetus to change. Bail outs short circuit that signal, allowing bad business practices to continue. We agree that losses shouldn't be "socialized." The Bush bailouts, continued by the Obama stimulus continuation allowed those that were "too big to fail," to get even bigger. Both of these Presidents chose to take those business losses and foist them on the taxpayer.
Was the internet created for the purpose and use that it now serves? No, it wasn't. Yes, it's basic creation was funded by the US Government. It's application, however, was taken by private companies and used to benefit society.
Carnegie sold steel to the Navy? Good for him. If he didn't have to compete to get the job, that was an error by the government, not by Carnegie. If his money was spent to grease the wheels and purchase the rights to sell the steel, then, that's also on government for being buyable.
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What I support:
- A Conservative interpretation of the US Constitution
- Personal Responsibility
- Help for the truly needy
- Limited Government
- Consumption Tax (non-profit charities and food exempt)
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RE: Another interesting article... - 
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