- Capitalism and Alternatives -

I expect you'll argue on the details

Posted by: Mike Bednarz ( Wells, KS ) on August 25, 1997 at 19:17:39:

In Reply to: Competition takes credit for things people would do anyway posted by Samuel Day Fassbinder on August 24, 1997 at 22:52:06:

: *Voice of Dr. Science -- he knows more than you do* "We are SO OMNISCIENT that we KNOW FOR SURE that a perfect society, such as has NEVER EXISTED before on this Earth, and which may never in fact exist at all throughout the span of time, wouldn't invent anything. How do we know? Well, um, er, uh, we have a time machine -- and a direct line to God. So let's not bother trying to bring such a society into being."

Funny.

Were most great inventions pruduced in a non-competitive University-like setting, or under pressure and for personal "commodity fetish"? Transister, Light Bulb, Fiberoptics, Combine, Computer, Nucular Bomb, Automobile, MicroChip, Firearm, Color TV, Sewing Machine, Web Browser, Quartz Crystal, Aspirin, Toilette, Turboprop, Refinery, Communications Satalite, Rocket, Microwave, Pooper-Scooper, Watercraft, Printed Circuts, Big Mac-- all of these apply to the latter catagory. Is it an accident that competing parties produced inventions first, better, and cheaper than non-competing. I don't think so; by way of competition, people were challenged to make items better then before, standards and expectations be damned. Nothing prohibits people from inventing in socialism, theres just no reason for them to.

And one last thing: don't give me that bull about starvation; no body in the US has been *starving* for quite some time.


Follow Ups:

The Debating Room Post a Followup