Friday, October 15, 2010

Your betters

The biggest problem I have with GOP Daddies and our Glibertarian/Tea Party betters is their fixation on the Randian/Calvinist conceit that being filthy rich is your reward for taking risks and being innovative. Most filthy rich people either inherited their money or made it through gambling with other peoples money with minimal actual risk to themselves. Take Carly Fiorini for example. Rich beyond belief, but only because she took a huge risk at Lucent and succeeded. If, by succeeded, you mean transferring all the risk of her shady deals onto the employees and investors while she was CEO.

As far as I can tell Randian / Glibertarian ideals are founded on misunderstanding basic market economy concepts like supply & demand (let alone the slightely more complicated stuff)* so I it doesn't surprise me that they also fail to understand that in a true market economy most of our Galtian overlords (including themselves) would have been wiped out when their schemes collapsed. Of course, it's always nice to believe that the taking someone else's billions and turning it into millions for yourself while leaving them broke is Teh Awesome.

*Another major concept they don't get is that there are no profits in perfect markets; profits come from friction like location (think choosing a store that more expensive but close to you) or asymmetry of information (think finance or IP).

2 Comments:

At Tuesday, October 19, 2010 10:40:00 PM, Anonymous Forest said...

Hello PruDog,
I couldn't agree more. Although I don't know what Galtian means.

The "privatization of profit, socialization of debt" is a formula that has been working out really well for a select few for quite a while.

Say, I'm really looking forward to racing the 2011 Ronde Ohop. See you there.

 
At Friday, October 22, 2010 12:09:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Don't blame me! I voted for Killface! Welcome to you're "Doom!"

 

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