Re: modern science = underfunded projects



On Sun, 26 Feb 2006, Old Pif wrote:


Straydog wrote:

Probably the worst thing going on in the USA, now, (besides our idiot
president), is this vast sea change in attitude among our executives. It
is a shift from "doing good business" to "rip off, cheat, steal, trick,
etc." any way you can. The proof is in books like Michael Lewis' "The
Money Culture" and "Barbarians at the Gate". And, US CEOs make so very
very much more than rank and file than CEOs anywhere else in the world
(this is also regularly covered in the WSJ, so I'm not making it up).


An interesting question is why this shift has happened? Apparently it
is because market conditions favor this type of business over the old
one. I think it is because of monopolization and extreme concentration
of capital in few hands. Those are conditions when you stop worrying
about "doing good business".

Good question to ask where it comes from. Here is one line of thinking: start with primitive cultures where they see white men for the first time and white men have writ watches. They all want this ASAP as if it is a status symbol, or like in ancient times all the rich people wore jewelry, gold, and purple-colored clothing (a symbol of wealth/riches), and it creates envy. And, so with the proliferation of material things (cars.SUVs/electronic junk) _AND_ a competitive spirit of wanting to own this stuff _AND_ a combination of "Be the first on your block" and/or "Keep up with the jonses" and/or "Mine is bigger than yours" we have this race for "who has the most toys, wins" mentality (and its spreading to the 3rd world: Indians now have 75 million cell phones, buying cars, electroncis, etc, as if they can't live without it). Tell me what you would change in this line of thinking?

And, for CEOs (etc), it gets to be a religious obsession: they don't just want the little stuff, they want mega stuff, giga stuff (Enron/Worldcom/$billions/giga-ego trips/etc),.

In principle, without state intervention it is a natural process. If
you open a brand new field of business and let it go most of initial
players are cannibalized and only few, in extreme cases only one,
survive. I red the statements of government officials about the FED
stance on small and medium defence contractors. They systematically
have been eliminating them giving the contracts to only large
companies. So, partially the federal government has accelerated the
monopolization process instead of hamper it.

Yeah. But, some of that might be because some item needs a big producer (not everyone can build aircraft), but also it may partly be due to the cost of making a contract; a big corporation might be able to handle more contracts with, say, DoD, and DoD might be under pressure to cut costs of procurement, so it hits the many small outfits. Not that I like this, but it might be a reason why its happening and words from our glorious leader notwithstanding.

So, as it has always been, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

Old Pif


.

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