Re: Diesel 9,5$/gl in Norway

On Jun 3, 3:06=A0am, Tom Plunket <to...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> trader4 wrote:
> > >=A0Advancing the technology that
> > > we use to trans****t ourselves around could only cut the profits, so
wh=
y
> > > would any profit-motivated cor****ation want to do that?
>
> > For the same reason every other advancement in every other commercial
> > field has taken place. =A0 Advancing technology is how you increase
> > sales and stay in business. =A0 If you have a better product at a
better=

> > price, people will buy it. =A0 This is economics 101.
>
> Economics 101 makes assumptions that are not true, then. =A0We /have/
> advanced technology in many areas, but the companies don't have
> incentive to release them when the present technologies have a higher
> margin. =A0This is real life, not some utopian textbook vision.

Nonsense.  Exactly what economic assumptions of basic economics do you
claim are untrue?

 In free markets, if one company doesn't release the technology,
another company soon enough will, because they see it as an
op****tunity to gain business, lower costs, make more profit, etc.
What do you think would happen if Intel decided to not introduce their
newest processor for a year?  AMD would eat their lunch.  Suppose
Boeing decided to hold back their newest jet for a couple years.   You
think Airbus is gonna just sit around and do the same?    What
happened to IBM and DEC, when they tried to ignore the PC and protect
their existing business?   IBM is still with us, after massive losses,
layoffs, and restructuring.  DEC went through the same, only to be
swallowed up by Compaq, which was only a little upstart competitor a
decade earlier.


>
> > > There's as much bloat in the private sector as there is in
government.=

>
> > That's laughable. =A0 =A0Of course that isn't true, because with
> > government, there is no competition. =A0I see the results here in NJ
> > every day. =A0 They just spent millions to redesign a local traffic
> > circle into a roundabout. =A0 Now, to me, and to most people, they are
> > the same thing. =A0 After spending 6 months and lots of money, they
have=

> > something remarkably similar to what was already there.
>
> Perhaps ironically, in California the road construction is done by
> private cor****ations (and I thought it was this way around the country).
> People don't want "better," they want "cheaper." =A0You buy the cheapest
> product available and you're still surprised that it sucks?
>

That is exactly how it's done everywhere I'm aware of.    The
politicians and political hacks control the process though from start
to finish.   They write the specs, control the bidding process and
make sure the contracts get steered to their buddies who provide
campaign funding and/or bribes.    Which is exactly my point.   The
more contracts they issue, the more they can reward their friends who
own the various companies involved, the more campaign money and
kickbacks they get, etc.    So, if they wind up re-building a road
twice instead of once, it's actually to the benefit of the politicians
and connected companies.


> > That level of incompetence would never exist in the private sector...
>
> LOL, ok, I guess I've worked in different companies than you have.


What happened to the likes of Digital Equipment, Lucent, and Enron?
Have you seen any govts go bankrupt or out of business?  On the other
hand, we have had massive govt programs that went on for decades and
continue to this day.   Like the war on poverty, started by Johnson.
Despite trillions spent, the poverty rate remains the same.



>
> > ...because the business would have failed long ago. =A0Why do you
think
> > institutions like public schools are dead set against voucher
> > programs, which would allow parents to use them to decide where to
> > send their kids?
>
> Ok so we agree that public school sucks.

And exactly why is that and why are they so afraid of vouchers?



=A0The solution then is to cut
> their funding? =A0I don't see how we can assume that we're going to turn
> out people worth hiring in the private sector if we don't care to
> educate them.

So, the crappy school has 20% less students and 20% less funding and
that's "cutting their funding?"  Seems very reasonable to me.   Less
students means less buildings needed, less teachers, less supplies,
less overhead, etc.  Meanwhile the 20% have a better education and now
the poor school has an incentive to improve.

Here in NJ the liberal Supreme Court ruled a decade ago that it was
unconstitutional for public schools in poorer areas to not be
receiving as much money per student as more affluent areas.    Never
mind that the NJ constitution says nothing to that effect.   And even
better, the court turned it around to where for the last two decades,
these Abbott districts have been receiving far more in revenue that
even affluent school districts.    Only problem is, the Abbott
district schools are still miserable failures.   Proving that money
had little to do with the problems.



>
> ...unless you admit that only those who come from money are worth
> educating, but that would just mean that you would prefer that "the
> poor" turn to more crime against you.


This is the liberal notion that poor equals crime.   There are plenty
of rich drug dealers and plenty of poor people who never commit a
crime.   No matter how good a school is, it's not going to do much
good if the kid comes from a home with no father, no sound parenting,
etc.




>
> > > The difference is just that shareholders are happy regardless of the
> > > cost in private industry as long as the company makes a profit,
wherea=
s
> > > the same expenditures in public industry are labelled as "waste".
>
> > No, the difference is that in the private sector if you have a big
> > bloated company with waste, a competitor in search of making profit
> > and that is better run will force them to either get competitive or go
> > out of business. =A0 Do you see what happened to the likes of AT&T and
> > their spin-offs, like Lucent? =A0 How about companies like Digital
> > Equipment that ignored technology change and new ways of selling
> > product? =A0 =A0 Even IBM was in perilous straights in the 80's
because
> > upstart competitors were offering better, cheaper solutions. =A0
That's
> > how competition in the private sector works. =A0 In the govt sector,
you=

> > have no competition.
>
> There is no law that says one cannot have competition in the government
> sector. =A0But- people want it as cheap as they can get it. =A0You can't
g=
et
> "cheap" at the same time you get "good," which seems as much Economics
> 101 to me as I can figure.
>
> Your examples prove this out, in fact. =A0

No, they do not.    AT&T, DEC, IBM and Lucent all were sent reeling
not by foreign competiton, but by American competition.  Foreign
competition had very little to do with it at all.  These were big
bloated companies that did not react to changing markets, new
competitors, and technology.


Americans would rather buy junk
> made in China than junk made in the US, and they'd rather buy junk in
> general than anything of any quality. =A0But again- at least lots of
> people are making lots of profit, the world and our communities be
> damned! =A0(Not my vision of a utopian society!)
>
> -tom!
>

What's your problem with people freely choosing what products they
prefer?    So, someone decides to buy a cheap light duty hand tool
from Kmart for using around the house a couple times a year, instead
of paying 2-3X for a more durable one, like Craftsman or Snap-On.
That's supposed to be a bad thing that's ruining the world?   These
companies are simply giving people what they want, which is how free
markets work.   They'll never be perfect, but they are far better than
any other system anyone has found.