Posted by TimP pp Will on Thu Sep 10 5:08:48 1998
In Reply to: Re: Definitive Site posted by TimP on September 03, 1998 at 03:52:03:
| Distribution: | paneris@i-way.co.uk | lurker@paneris.co.uk |
|---|
Production for profit is not in itself a problem. In fact it's
rather a sensible way of (a) ensuring that better ways of
doing things are found and (b) resources are devoted to doing
the things that people actually want.Profit is an important part of the functioning of the markets.
The problem comes when people confuse being pro-market with
being pro-business and pro-business with anti-everything else.If you are pro-market then you are pro-competition and you
aren't doing that right unless you get up the noses of lots
of businessmen. As it is we don't do this nearly enough.
We need much tougher competition law and much less interlekshual
property.If you are pro-market then there is no reason why you shouldn't
also be pro lots of inherently good things like socialised
education, medicine etc., if you feel that the things the
market system will do for you are inappropriate or irrelevant
in those contexts.This can all work tremendously well and does in all the small
countries of northern europe barring belgium which has its
own problems.Moral: just because both the left and the right in the anglo-
saxon world have fallen into the confusions pointed out above
doesn't mean that profit really does equal antisocialism.