Damn Capitalist!

[archenemy]

Clean water comes out of the mountains; the government doesn't provide it, nor do we need them to. Everyday people are perfectly capable of designing, building, and maintaining water systems. The fact that we opted to have gov't oversee them doesn't mean that we are incapable of doing it ourselves.

[crackers]

Clean water comes out of the mountains

 

Remind me to bring a water filter with me when I go camping with you. What about those of us who don't live near mountains?

 

Everyday people are perfectly capable of designing, building, and maintaining water systems.

 

Oh, I get it, no specialization of labor. Or education. Cause we'll be too busy maintaining that water system...

 

In fact, i doubt you can find a single example of a water supply system built without a form of government. The oldest governments in the world (in iraq) were created to service the water system. In fact, the title of the Pope-Pontifex Maximus-referred to bridges for water, aka aqueducts.

 

But have fun in your dream world of self sufficiency!

[G-spotter]

Clean water comes out of aquifers. The water coming out of the mountains has significantly higher levels of fecal coliform and suspended sediment.

[archenemy]

Wow, they spoke Latin in Iraq?

I don't anything about Persian languages, but after six years of Latin I can tell you that Pontifex is to aquaduct as water bottle is to faucet.

 

And the Fertile Crescent had plenty of water. And no pontiffs.

 

I don't know how you reduced my already basic statement that a government isn't required for clean water to no labor specialization, but whatever.

 

I drink almost all my water out of Silver Creek without a water filter; but I don't live in some dream world of self-sufficiency. Say whatever you want to marginalize my opinion, but I will still say that I believe gov't #1 priority is to provide security (justice) to its people.

[crackers]

security = justice?

[cj001f]

security = justice?

if you consider bribes 'private justice' yes.. but thats the problem.

 

If you can get a large group of people to cooperate for the good of each other, that's government. Call it whatever name that makes you and your ideology happy, it doesn't change the nature of the beast.

[JayB]

yeah, too bad we penalized other countries that want to compete in their 'competitive advantage' areas.

 

What is a 'competitive advantage' anyway? Sounds to me like an article of faith from some mid nineteenth century peddler of snake oil.

 

And I thought the role of government was to provide uneconomic basic services --clean water, roadways, etcetera?

 

Pretty basic stuff. If Saudi Arabia needs large amounts of timber for construction, it will make more sense for them to sell some oil to purchase it, rather than embark upon several decades worth of capital intensive futility while attempting to grow it in the desert. If the folks in BC need petroleum, it makes more sense for them to sell some of their abundant timber to purchase it from the Saudis, rather than attempting to extract it from their own soil. If you need a car, it makes more sense for you to sell some backpacks and use the proceeds to pay for it, rather than starting the process by digging for iron ore in your backyard, etc, etc, etc. Comparative advantage.

[JayB]

security = justice?

if you consider bribes 'private justice' yes.. but thats the problem.

 

If you can get a large group of people to cooperate for the good of each other, that's government. Call it whatever name that makes you and your ideology happy, it doesn't change the nature of the beast.

 

I'd say whether or not the cooperation is voluntary or not makes a bit of a difference in the nature of the said beast.

[cj001f]

I'd say whether or not the cooperation is voluntary or not makes a bit of a difference in the nature of the said beast.

oh goody another semantical argument about voluntary Sorry JayB, there are quite a few countries where people believe in the soical contract so there contribution to government is voluntary. There are others where people feel corporations are extorting them and their contributions are involuntary

[crackers]

Pretty basic stuff. If Saudi Arabia needs large amounts of timber for construction, it will make more sense for them to sell some oil to purchase it,

 

In my opinion, that's an assinine view of economics. Where is the competitive advantage in a world dominated by the commoditization of natural resources? There isn't much value in natural resources: the value is created after extraction. To continue your example, crude oil is less than $75 for 50 gallons, but gasoline sells for $150 for the same amount. Refining, however, can be done anywhere on the planet for virtually the same costs.

 

If you are equating possession of natural resources to some nebulous concept related to a country's economic development, you are way off from the conceptual framework developed to support the (in my opinion) specious, nationalist idea of 'competitive advantage'.

 

BTW, I've never heard of

Comparative advantage.

in the literature before.

 

wow. how's that for off-topic?

[crackers]

Wow, they spoke Latin in Iraq?

 

Anyway, yeah, do some reading about why governments were first created. Basically, they were created to bring year long water supplies to communities that couldn't build the complex and difficult irrigation systems by themselves.

 

Oh, and Pontifex --at least according to john gager, elaine pagels and peter brown, the leading scholars on this stuff-- was the title originally given to the dude responsible for the bridges over the tiber and the aqueduct system delivering water to rome. Interestingly enough, yes, when the water system brought by the aqueducts fails to work, citizens might well respond to the failure of the government by relying on the private sector to sell them water bottles.

 

i thought that your basic statement was historically wrong, and while you might want to reduce the role of government to fit a particular viewpoint,it is my opinion that a firm understanding of the historical forces enjoined in creating government would be useful in discussing how Mr. Buffet chose to donate his money to Mr.&Mrs. Gates' foundation rather than to the Mellenium Challenge Corporation (the US gov'ts version).

 

I did not seek to marginalize your opinion, I simply believe that any understanding of the role of government that does not include water supply is wrong. Having worked to found a private municipal water supply, my experience is that anybody who seeks such a thing is crazy. There aren't any in the USA and its for a very good reason.

[crackers]

 

Comparative versus competitive advantage turns out to be all the rage right now!

 

shoot! I leave academia for a minute and thousands of papers pop up! My apologies Jay, I will get back to you with a new and improved critique of your position ASAP!

[JayB]

Pretty basic stuff. If Saudi Arabia needs large amounts of timber for construction, it will make more sense for them to sell some oil to purchase it,

 

In my opinion, that's an assinine view of economics. Where is the competitive advantage in a world dominated by the commoditization of natural resources? There isn't much value in natural resources: the value is created after extraction. To continue your example, crude oil is less than $75 for 50 gallons, but gasoline sells for $150 for the same amount. Refining, however, can be done anywhere on the planet for virtually the same costs.

 

If you are equating possession of natural resources to some nebulous concept related to a country's economic development, you are way off from the conceptual framework developed to support the (in my opinion) specious, nationalist idea of 'competitive advantage'.

 

BTW, I've never heard of

Comparative advantage.

in the literature before.

 

wow. how's that for off-topic?

 

That's really not what I was claiming at all, actually. It's been clear for a long time that the presence or absence of abundant naturally resources in a given country has relatively little to do with the prosperity of its inhabitants, and yeah - they're clearly worth something, as people are still willing to spend money to acquire them, but there's more value added post-extraction/harvest/whatever. I was just using oil and lumber as examples to illustrate a case of mutually beneficial exchange between two parties. Could be a doctor and an auto-mechanic, a plumber and Dell computer, etc, etc, etc.

 

 

As far as the priciple I'm talking about being nationalist, it seems to me that it's actually the direct opposite. Parties engaged in such exchanges can gain all the benefits of another country's resources without having to physically occupy them. Quite different from the notion that one must have physical posession a given geographic area to benefit from the resources contained in the said area.

[JayB]

I'd say whether or not the cooperation is voluntary or not makes a bit of a difference in the nature of the said beast.

oh goody another semantical argument about voluntary Sorry JayB, there are quite a few countries where people believe in the soical contract so there contribution to government is voluntary. There are others where people feel corporations are extorting them and their contributions are involuntary

 

Who's the semantic quibbler here? The guy punching the clock at the GM plant is in the same boat as the guy marching in the parade in N. Korea?

[Peter_Puget]

What literature. Please be specific.

[JayB]

What literature. Please be specific.

 

Here's a suggestion:

http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/ricardo.htm

 

"The idea of comparative advantage -- with its implication that trade between two nations normally raises the real incomes of both -- is, like evolution via natural selection, a concept that seems simple and compelling to those who understand it. Yet anyone who becomes involved in discussions of international trade beyond the narrow circle of academic economists quickly realizes that it must be, in some sense, a very difficult concept indeed. I am not talking here about the problem of communicating the case for free trade to crudely anti-intellectual opponents, people who simply dislike the idea of ideas. The persistence of that sort of opposition, like the persistence of creationism, is a different sort of question, and requires a different sort of discussion. What I am concerned with here are the views of intellectuals, people who do value ideas, but somehow find this particular idea impossible to grasp.

 

My objective in this essay is to try to explain why intellectuals who are interested in economic issues so consistently balk at the concept of comparative advantage. Why do journalists who have a reputation as deep thinkers about world affairs begin squirming in their seats if you try to explain how trade can lead to mutually beneficial specialization? Why is it virtually impossible to get a discussion of comparative advantage, not only onto newspaper op-ed pages, but even into magazines that cheerfully publish long discussions of the work of Jacques Derrida? Why do policy wonks who will happily watch hundreds of hours of talking heads droning on about the global economy refuse to sit still for the ten minutes or so it takes to explain Ricardo?

 

In this essay, I will try to offer answers to these questions. The first thing I need to do is to make clear how few people really do understand Ricardo's difficult idea -- since the response of many intellectuals, challenged on this point, is to insist that of course they understand the concept, but they regard it as oversimplified or invalid in the modern world. Once this point has been established, I will try to defend the following hypothesis:

 

(i) At the shallowest level, some intellectuals reject comparative advantage simply out of a desire to be intellectually fashionable. Free trade, they are aware, has some sort of iconic status among economists; so, in a culture that always prizes the avant-garde, attacking that icon is seen as a way to seem daring and unconventional.

 

(ii) At a deeper level, comparative advantage is a harder concept than it seems, because like any scientific concept it is actually part of a dense web of linked ideas. A trained economist looks at the simple Ricardian model and sees a story that can be told in a few minutes; but in fact to tell that story so quickly one must presume that one's audience understands a number of other stories involving how competitive markets work, what determines wages, how the balance of payments adds up, and so on.

 

(iii) At the deepest level, opposition to comparative advantage -- like opposition to the theory of evolution -- reflects the aversion of many intellectuals to an essentially mathematical way of understanding the world. Both comparative advantage and natural selection are ideas grounded, at base, in mathematical models -- simple models that can be stated without actually writing down any equations, but mathematical models all the same. The hostility that both evolutionary theorists and economists encounter from humanists arises from the fact that both fields lie on the front line of the war between C.P. Snow's two cultures: territory that humanists feel is rightfully theirs, but which has been invaded by aliens armed with equations and computers."

[cj001f]

I'd say whether or not the cooperation is voluntary or not makes a bit of a difference in the nature of the said beast.

oh goody another semantical argument about voluntary Sorry JayB, there are quite a few countries where people believe in the soical contract so there contribution to government is voluntary. There are others where people feel corporations are extorting them and their contributions are involuntary

 

Who's the semantic quibbler here? The guy punching the clock at the GM plant is in the same boat as the guy marching in the parade in N. Korea?

 

That wasn't what I was saying ms. coulter

[JayB]

Glad we cleared that up so that you can continue making your involuntary contribution via corporate extortion.

[archenemy]

Wow, they spoke Latin in Iraq?

 

Anyway, yeah, do some reading about why governments were first created. Basically, they were created to bring year long water supplies to communities that couldn't build the complex and difficult irrigation systems by themselves.

 

Oh, and Pontifex --at least according to john gager, elaine pagels and peter brown, the leading scholars on this stuff-- was the title originally given to the dude responsible for the bridges over the tiber and the aqueduct system delivering water to rome. Interestingly enough, yes, when the water system brought by the aqueducts fails to work, citizens might well respond to the failure of the government by relying on the private sector to sell them water bottles.

 

i thought that your basic statement was historically wrong, and while you might want to reduce the role of government to fit a particular viewpoint,it is my opinion that a firm understanding of the historical forces enjoined in creating government would be useful in discussing how Mr. Buffet chose to donate his money to Mr.&Mrs. Gates' foundation rather than to the Mellenium Challenge Corporation (the US gov'ts version).

 

I did not seek to marginalize your opinion, I simply believe that any understanding of the role of government that does not include water supply is wrong. Having worked to found a private municipal water supply, my experience is that anybody who seeks such a thing is crazy. There aren't any in the USA and its for a very good reason.

I have really missed discussions with self-satisfied patronizing assholes. thanks for making my day.

[olyclimber]

humans are an disease, but they will cure themselves.

[Crux]

Clean water comes out of the mountains; the government doesn't provide it, nor do we need them to. Everyday people are perfectly capable of designing, building, and maintaining water systems. The fact that we opted to have gov't oversee them doesn't mean that we are incapable of doing it ourselves.

 

Through our government is how we have opted to provide clean water ourselves, and we do so with remarkable efficiency.

[G-spotter]

 

You sure that it's the government, and not France?

[Crux]

Ok it's France, now and forever France.

[cj001f]

 

You sure that it's the government, and not France?

It's no Vivendi......or Veolia

[TREETOAD]

 

You sure that it's the government, and not France?

It's no Vivendi......or Veolia

 

I always wondered what that funny taste was!!