Burning off the useless eaters

[Steve Schear]

At 09:53 PM 5/2/2003 +0200, Thomas Shaddack wrote:
>Capitalism is a good idea, as long as it has the form of a lot of small,
>widely varying subjects. The current trend of consolidation brings away
>both the competition and the choice, and with high-enough barriers to
>entry there will be no new small subjects to disrupt the balance. Of
>course it will collapse later, but human lives have finite length, so
>longer-term waiting isn't the option I'd be exactly happy to take.

I gave a presentation at a conference a few years back in which I raised 
the idea that since Intellectual Property (e.g., trademarks) isn't, its 
really a lease, that our society should consider setting limits on the 
market penetration (say 50%, which is already in excess of the what many 
economists call the "friction free" point wherein companies can continue to 
gain market share merely by dint of their already considerable presence) of 
single companies in markets whose size (the therefore probably importance) 
exceeds some minimum threshold of the GDP.  However, instead of enforcing 
these limits via the Department of Justice, they would become a civil 
matter and one's competitors can use the courts to strip a company of its 
sole lease on a trademark or patent applied to this market.

>Contemporary free markets (we'll leave aside the fact they aren't really
>free) are driven by short-term profits. Higher investments aimed to
>distant future are rare and far between. Basic research suffers, like
>virtually everything with no immediate profitable application.

I guess then the many science (especially theoretical) and technology 
developments by "amateurs" over the past three were just a fluke?


> > Think of it as evolution in action. The burnoff of useless eaters will
> > be glorious.
>
>...if they won't rise up instead and steamroll over everything. And, as
>nobody paid enough care to the public education system, they are too dumb
>to rebuild the society in any sensible way after then.
>
>The most important thing to take care of, for the long-term future, is the
>education system (we started with the teachers, so why not to end with the
>teachers). If statistically significant amount of people will be able (and
>willing!) to think for themselves, many problems (eg, sheeple) will
>disappear or be reduced. Not only this is less stinky and more aesthetical
>(though less spectacular) approach than an outright burnoff, it can also
>be more effective.

An excellent treatise on this can be found in Leonard Peikoffs' "The 
Ominous Parallels," 1982.  The author dissects many of the parallels 
between the raise of Nazism and the then current situation in the U.S.  He 
lays much of the cause for its raise and our "ominous" future in a lack of 
development in individual thinking, especially philosophical, the kind that 
launched America.

steve