Jerry Kraus wrote:
> On Mar 29, 11:47 pm, Les Cargill <lcarg...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
<snip>
>
> Capitalist propagandists are consistently reduced to defining all
> other systems out of existence.
>
Mmmm. Not so much. See below.
> You, my friend, are no exception.
>
Capitalism is the heuristic that private control of production will
cause more production than other systems. It understands that
any other arrangement acts as a subsidy and is less
economically efficient ( cost of transfer of goods and services
are higher. ) This being said, no pure Capitalist systems exist.
Food production in the US is highly subsidized, in order to
remove the sensitivity to hoarding from something
so im****tant as bulk food. This is, SFAIK, empirically
defensible - people enjoy a state of affairs where, year by year,
less labor goes into obtaining food. Short term fluctuations may see
increases in price, but the long term trend is downward. Pure
market capitalism might cause negative externalities in excess of the
cost of subsidies.
The larger question of people not having to think about the food
supply outweighs any pure-Capitalist efficiency. And as oil prices
****ft, it may well be that this won't work anymore.
I'm not a Capitalist so much as I am an Empiricist. Whatever
works, works. Capitalism tends to be the choice of Empiricists,
but the counterexamples are fun, too.
--
Les Cargill
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