| Subject: Re: capitalist incentives |
Author:
Adrian
|
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Date Posted: 21:31:06 06/15/03 Sun
In reply to:
Dena
's message, "From fansubs to capitalist vs communist philosophy..." on 21:04:44 06/14/03 Sat
>someone will give
>them the leisure to keep creating by seeing to it that
>they're fed, housed, and provided medical care.
Another debatable benefit of capitalism is that markets decide what gets produced and how resources are used.
If you have a totalitarian ruler like Saddam or Stalin, artists draw hundreds of portraits of the ruler and put them in a big museum. Centrally planned economies have their own biases about what people want, which often does not reflect what people *actually* want. Often, businesses succeed due to nepotism or corrupt relationships with officials. Not because of their products.
In a free market, businesses succeed based on the demand for their product (and their management of supply, etc.). In a free market, individuals invest in research and development only for products that will be met by demand. In this country, we don't have 1,000 artists employed making busts and portraits of George W. It's not only the artists, but we don't have miners searching for stone (natural resources) for a useless effort.
The other side of the coin is that markets allow you to invest in products that the government disagrees with. If you want to write a book that criticizes the government, you may get a return on your investment, if the book sells.
My favorite example of the superiority of free markets is Cuba. In Cuba, a neurosurgeon gets paid the exact same salary as a taxi driver. There's a standard salary for most jobs. However, concierges at a prestigious hotel get a higher salary because govt officials like them. As a result, you have a neurosurgeon who wishes that he was a hotel concierge. :)
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