Election Thread

[kandrathe]

I was not just talking about banknotes. I was talking about economy in general, the total world economy will increase if we can produce more, so that in fact everybody can be fed.
If we have enough at the moment is already debatable, in 50 years this might be a much bigger problem.

We are often more interested in our local (national) economy. If everybody starts buying dutch shoes, food, cars etc. that is very good for the dutch....other countries will not be so happy with it.

With big companies it is even clearer. Wal mart sells a lot of stuff....with as a direct consequence that smalles shops will go banckrupt. There is only place for 1 Walton family (maybe a few) in the US. It is impossible for everybody to be a financial succes without seriously decreasing the wealth of others.

The american dream (if it really existed) will have the same end result as socialism then.
But of course this does not happen.

No, you don't understand yet.

Just because the Waltons, Bill Gates, or Warren Buffet might hold the lions share of digits on the wealth reports, does not mean that they have transferred those digits into holdings. If all the wealthy people insisted on transferring their wealth into physical assets, like land, stored grain, metals and minerals, only then would wealth hurt the less fortunate. So, the Debeers can own all the diamonds in the world for all I care, since I don't eat diamonds. If they start transferring their wealth into land holdings, and decreasing available farm land, then we have a problem.

Now, you mixed in a different issue with Walmart. Corporate success versus individual wealth.

Walmart has been successful in mastering efficiency in distribution of goods, and then obtaining a critical mass in merchandising. They are big enough to be able to tell a manufacturer, "if you make X and sell it for Y" we will buy the product from you. Vlassic, a pickle manufacturer, almost went bankrupt because of a bad deal. The power still rests in the decisions of the consumer, so if Mom and Pop's shop can keep the right products around at a reasonable price and convince people to buy their stuff they will stay in business. Walmart does well because they offer the products that people want at lower prices. From a capitalist perspective this is a good thing for consumers since they have driven inefficiency from the system of acquisition and distribution of goods, and that is reflected in the consumer being able to keep more of their wealth.

My son just asked me what I was writing to you about so I described it thus; Imagine their is a big birthday party, and we play tons of party games with the prizes being golden tokens. At the end of the party you can redeem your token for a piece of pie. So, you might redeem some tokens at the party, or leave the party with unspent tokens. But, should you get hungry later you can go into any cafe and redeem one for another piece of pie. As long as everyone plays and wins enough to get a single token in the games, then no one goes away without a piece of the pie. So the questions are; Is there enough pie to go around? Does everyone get to play in the games? Do unredeemed tokens matter to the happiness of the party goers? If Mike is skillful and lucky and wins a huge amount of tokens, would it be fair to then tell him to give away some tokens to others? Would you prevent Mike from playing the games, or make him do it blindfolded?

In the progressive socialist model everyone would be required to put 1/3 of their tokens into a hat, and they would be distributed to those who had less indexed by how few tokens they had. In the communist model, all the won tokens would be put into the hat, then redistributed equally. In the dictator model, one bully gets to determine who plays or not, then take anyones tokens at will and do whatever they want with them.