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To begin with, there would be no problem if the actual producers (the people who make things) of products were the ones who profited from their own labor. The disconnect comes with the fact that capitalism is designed to allow a very small percentage of the population to live in luxury, via the exploitation of other people's labor.
Secondly, your reference to avoiding polio is richly ironic. Jonas Salk received no profits from the polio vaccine. When asked about the patent, he said: "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"
Some people will make significant contributions to the world for the sake of humanity, science, or even personal achievement. These are among the truly great people in history.
Other people will see it as a game of wealth accumulation--with themselves as the winners, and the losers be damned. These are the true representatives of capitalism.
No. Because the people who shout the loudest -- namely journalists and university professors -- are in positions that have zero bottom-line awareness. The average newsroom is hemorrhaging cash. The average university professor has zero awareness of the school's balance sheet. All they do is talk about the way things should be rather than live in the world of how things are.
Most university professors make far less than you think. A few (at the top universities) do quite well but not the majority.
The polio vaccine was a fruit of freedom to the extent that it existed in the market system, specifically its not-for-profit component; science and research are enhanced when people are free to pursue and/or fund whatever research they please versus the command-and-control of central planning. Profits and wealth creation add to the resources available for people to realize values that cannot be expressed in terms of money or profitability. Not all value freely given or exchanged in an economy need be monetary or for profit, and indeed it would be a dark day for man's existence if all did need to be monetary or for profit considering the value that we realize from not-for-profit endeavors.
Perhaps the best example of not-for-profits' place in the free market would be private universities, almost all of which have been not-for-profit throughout the entire history of such institutions, even when and where state support or regulation of the sector was absent. The core element of the free market is freedom of trade, not the pursuit of profit; when let be most people in most of their exchanges seek monetary profit, but that's just one of many uses of freedom and a market system to people.
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Originally Posted by TrexDigit
Conveniently leaving out all the SUBSIDIES afforded by capitalism.
All this R&D did not happen in a vacuum. Tesla, Verizon, you name it.....
If research is so valuable and can only be done by government* and is such a boon, especially to the private sector producers, compared to the taxes collected to finance it one has to wonder why the other 96.6% of the federal budget that isn't research (source) is conveniently never mentioned when it comes to what producers get out of government. If producers gain such a benefit out of research, thus justifying government taxation of them, one has to wonder why more of the tax they pay isn't devoted to research and development than 3.4%.
*It's worth noting that before WWII almost all scientific and engineering research was supported by the private and charitable sectors and few if any argue that either pure or applied science were suffering in the 70 years before WWII compared to the 70 years after.
The problem with you liberals is if you did get rid of all the conveniences you have as a result of capitalism you'd be crying like a baby because life is harder.
In other words, liberals will never be happy.
Liberalism / Occupy = HYPOCRITES
Give it a rest dude.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CSD610
I went 10 years without owning a television, we do not have cable/satellite for the television which I haven't watched myself in more than 15 years.
We do chop wood, we do not have a house phone, we do have cell phones but with a handicapped Mother, business travel and grand children those are a necessity, we cannot have horses on the property here because it is not allowed by city ordinance, the only lights on in our home when it is dark is the desk lamp on my desk, can't have cows either, we are technically within the city limits.
I went 10 years without owning a television, we do not have cable/satellite for the television which I haven't watched myself in more than 15 years.
We do chop wood, we do not have a house phone, we do have cell phones but with a handicapped Mother, business travel and grand children those are a necessity, we cannot have horses on the property here because it is not allowed by city ordinance, the only lights on in our home when it is dark is the desk lamp on my desk, can't have cows either, we are technically within the city limits.
next........
You don't take any medicine, do you?
Oh, what a life. I bet everybody is dying to have your lifestyle.
Most university professors make far less than you think. A few (at the top universities) do quite well but not the majority.
Yes, I'm quite aware. But that has a great deal more to do with the exploitive way university administrators run things than a lack of funding.
And your point isn't really relevant to my point, namely that the people who do most of the kvetching work in jobs that have zero profit/loss awareness.
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