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Originally posted by 1kiki:
Telephone - Philipp Reis (German)
A/C current - Nikola Tesla (Austrian) while in Paris
D/C current - no one 'invented' the D/C current, but Alessandro Volta (Italian) invented the battery
Refrigerator - William Cullen (Scottish)

No, your claims aren't clear at all.

What many famous American 'inventors' did was file US Patents. It doesn't make them the inventor, merely the US patent holder.


"Cause sometimes, just sometimes, (capitalism) is useful without hurting anyone."

So despite your previous denial you really ARE arguing for capitalism. Just so we're clear on that.

Capitalism is a currently successful economic strategy. But what it is without exception is resource wasteful and environmentally destructive. Ultimately it's non-survivable. That makes it not at all useful, not even a little bit, IMO.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
A/C current - Nikola Tesla

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Sig,

It's obvious to a 5th grader. Why would I waste my time debating it here? I have actual stuff to do.

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Look again at europe's taxation rate, and their degree of govt. control, corporate-govt. ties and their stack of long term liabilities, not to mention their labor situation. I haven't met a european on either side of the political spectrum who hasn't thought it was a serious problem at any point in the last decade, maybe two.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
Lucas doesn't attribute the improvement to capitalism.

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It's still best attributed to technology...

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Oh, and let's not forget that Paris had electric lighting long before the light bulb was ever "invented".

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unfettered development of new technology played a big role in allowing 1) money to move from Europe's nobility to the nouveau riche, 2) a creation of a middle class, and 3) improved living standards for industrialized nations. To me, these 3 results indicate that unfettered new tech development (even though it had a relatively short window) has promise as an anti-"gravity" mechanism.

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But, uhm, as was pointed out above, it wasn't Americans who came up with the new technologies. So the Gilded Age doesn't meet your criteria either.

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These technologies had important consequences for human society as well, consequences we are still trying to deal with to this day. They created excess, which, like Goodall's pile of fruit in front of the chimps, nearly always gave rise to hierarchies - more specifically male territorial (warlike) parasitic hierarchies - which lived off the excess generated by the people, and without apparently contributing anything in return except bs stories about the gods and their (the male hierarchies') divine right to be where they were, doing what they were doing, and getting what they were getting. A consequence which continues to this day, I might add.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
But it lead to impoverishment for whole swaths of populations, the previous agricultural peasant class who were forcibly displaced off their small holdings, and who filled the new factories, slums, poorhouses and streets with starving wage-slaves.

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not every technological advance is anti-gravity.

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OTOH, in this highly advanced technological world, the entire continent of Africa is poorer than ever before.

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So the creation of prosperity for all is a complex process.

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IMHO the creation of a middle class (which BTW occurred in both Europe and the USA) had more to do with labor unions than any beneficent, automatic effect of technological advance.

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So I think this point deserves more discussion about how technology can be anti-gravity, and when it might not be, and how to ensure that future advances will fill the role.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:

While Wall St. is going through the roof, Main St. is paying all the bills.

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Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
another flaw for me in the US system is how open its scientific property is, I mean imagine you have an American company, it got support, tax cuts, grants whatever help and they invest in research....a better machine on how to freeze ice, or a better offroad motorbike or a new computer chip for a phone or something...whatever the item. For me this 'item' is a product of America, yet outsourcing and crony capital globalism should not mean that an American physics product or artistic chemical product or scientific product ends up in Japan or China or Italy or India or S.Korea two weeks later...so many times have I seen and heard of America simply giving away its best technology for a few bucks it just makes me shake my head. If America invents a new engine, a new computer or new aqua vehicle or a new chemical prodict I feel the United States should have intellectual access to its products for at least 4-5 years in a controlled enviornment inside America, if it is sold then it must be sold for a high price then after 4 or 5 years of course it should be sold or give out to the rest of the world. It's ridiculous how quick America gives away items it has taken years to have studied and researched.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
First of all, why are so many nations in such trouble? It seems like every nation's cause is a little bit different from every other nation's:

The USA has a significant wealth gap, and personal consumption fueled by credit.
The USA and Britain had massive real estate bubbles.
The Greek government overspent its budget.
Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain (PIGS) didn't have personal over-consumption and a high personal debt load, but were the recipients of over-investment from other EU nations.
Despite a lot of “socialist spending” and redistributive policies, the Icelandic government ran in the black. Iceland was brought down when it's three major banks engaged in out-and-out commercial bank fraud.
Italy, which is a large exporting economy, got caught by rising interest.

If we are to prevent this all from happening again, what are we to make of all of these disparate causes? Each nation seems to belie whatever cause we want to attribute to another nation. So we can rule out Fannie and Freddie because they don't apply to Europe. We can rule out socialist spending that doesn't apply to the USA. We can rule out government deficits and the wealth gap because those don't apply to Iceland, and we can rule out personal debt because that doesn't apply to the PIGS. There is a lot they DON'T have in common!

But, the one thing they DID have in common was “investment” in projects or sectors which were not about to generate a return, even in the medium-term. In the USA and Britain, the over-investment was in homes. In the PIGS, it was in large infrastructural projects; in Greece it was also in government bonds, in Iceland it was actually in fraudulent self-dealt bank loans for commercial projects.

The other thing to realize is that this has happened before: In the 1970's, due to a huge increase in oil prices, the Middle East nations (Saudi Arabia particularly) became the holders of a mountain of cash, specifically the USA dollar, and invested in huge infrastructural projects in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina- projects which could not be supported on a cash basis due to lack of either internal or external demand. This led to the Latam debt crisis of 1982. The same thing happened to the Asian "tiger" economies of 1997: over-investment by outside money created a "bubble" which led to an ephemeral rise in GDP, leading to the illusion of growth, which sucked in more money, until the illusion of growth could no longer be sustained. The same problem started the Great Depression.

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It seems there are epidemics of horrible investments, rash investments, possibly even desperate investments, not just now but throughout history. Rich people who have bought all of the yachts, mansions and jets that one can possibly buy and are now looking to make money with their money.

So why do the investments go sour?

Well, I think in a way it's the eternal mismatch of production and consumption under capitalism. Think of it this way: If the world produces a trillion dollars worth of goods and services, but the small fraction of ppl who own the companies only pays their workers $900 billion, the companies can only sell $900 billion dollars worth. That's $100 billion worth of goods and services that's not about to be sold, and $100 billion in the hands of a few who are NOT going to “spend” all of that money, they are going to “invest” a certain amount. Now, that investment can either go to loans (to increase consumption – which won't be ultimately affordable), or to increase production (which can't be sold to ppl who can't afford the goods), or to consolidate ownership, or to increase automation (which throws even more ppl out of work,who will not be able to buy much), or to speculation (diamonds, artwork, tulip bulbs) ... Each time money goes through the production-consumption cycle, more money goes up into the stratosphere... there is a bigger and bigger bundle of money looking for a home... but there is also less and less money available to buy stuff, and sooner or later the consumption-engine runs out of steam, making all investments problematic.

So, it seems that the real problem is somewhat manifold: the concentration of wealth, the withdrawal of money from the consumption end of things and the buildup of money on the investment side.

Anyway, if you're still with me, I'll try and wrap up with what to do about it later.

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