carey_jim

Capitalism in Jeopardy?

It might be that we have simply got used to a lot of wrong thinking.

For example, most of the technical innovations that led to the computer revolution that started in the early seventies were a result of the race with Russia to put a man on the moon, and came from government spending on the Space Program.

Most of the drug discoveries of the last fifty years have come from government controlled state universities (and private universities) and not Big Pharma.

The Internet came from the Arpanet project which was started by the Defense Department.

The list goes on.

To cite only one example of a failure of laissez-faire (in my opinion,) why do people choose Microsoft over Apple and both of them over Linux when reason tells us that Linux is superior to Apple, and Apple is superior to Microsoft?

It is because the market does not always work and people are often more influenced by advertising, greed, conformity and habit than reason.

This is not an argument for embracing central planned socialism and doing away with free enterprise, it's just an argument for thinking things through more carefully.