Consumer’s Paradise

the importance of a pricing system is that it would lead to the most efficient allocation of resources.For instance,if you are that bread manufacturer and if you make profits,the funds and resources would flow to you.You would be able to invest these funds further in production.In this manner funds and resources flow to the most efficient people who would further invest it in production.Moreover,the stock markets divert the funds to the most efficient citizens.The fact that the most efficient citizens take hold of the production process is very beneficial for the whole of the society.This process of transferring resources to the most efficient people is lacking in the socialist system.In a socialist system who would take hold of the production process would be decided by the central planners and they would not be in a position to determine who are the most efficient people.Even if these central planners were the most intelligent people and the most virtuous men,they can’t decide what is the most efficient means of producing goods.
When you are selling the bread you have baked,In a socialist society you are the sole producer.With no competition you would not be in a position to decide the price.Moreover,the floor is to be sold by the flour producing company to the bread manufacturing company.Both are the units of the same society.It is similar to me selling a loaf of bread to myself.How can price be set under such a system?

Capitalist monopolies are impossible.It is a myth propagated by Karl Marx,and later by his predecessors that a free market would lead to monopolies.But,it is entirely contrary to the truth.It is the free market which puts a rein on the development on monopolies.Let us suppose that a market leader such as Microsoft jacks up its prices.The other firms which sell similar products would find that opportunity appealing and they would step in to sell their products at a lower price. On a free market,when a firm jacks up its prices,the available funds on the market would be diverted in to the same industry and that firm would be forced to either go bankrupt or change its policies.Even if a certain firm has near monopolistic power in the market,it would only lead to more productivity and lower prices.From 1888 to 1940, Alcoa had a total monopoly on the manufacture of aluminum in the U.S.A. It maintained this monopoly by selling such an excellent product at such low prices that no other company could compete with it. During its monopoly period, Alcoa reduced aluminum • prices from $8 to 20tf a pound (!) and pioneered hundreds of new uses for its product.Isn’t it now obvious that a free market wouldn’t lead to monopolies? If you look at it like that in India,post office is a monopoly.Electricity board is a monopoly.Monopolies happen only when government forcefully monopolizes a certain industry or when the Government grants the monopoly privilege to a certain firm,like that happened in the Railroads in the united states in the 19th Century.

One of the first campaigns of the US press against the Soviet Union revolved round the question of the millions alleged to have died as a result of the Ukraine famine. This campaign began on 8 February 1935 with a front-page headline in the Chicago American ‘6 million people die of hunger in the Soviet Union’. Using material supplied by Nazi Germany, William Hearst, the press baron and Nazi sympathiser, began to publish fabricated stories about a genocide which was supposed to have been deliberately perpetrated by the Bolsheviks and had caused several million to die of starvation in the Ukraine. The truth of the matter was altogether different. In fact what took place in the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1930s was a major class struggle in which poor landless peasants had risen up against the rich landowners, the kulaks, and had begun a struggle for collectivisation, a struggle to form kolkhozes. This great class struggle, involving directly or indirectly some 120 million peasants, certainly gave rise to instability in agricultural production and food shortages in some regions. Lack of food did weaken people, which in turn led to an increase in the number falling victim to epidemic diseases. These diseases were at that time regrettably common throughout the world. Between 1918 and 1920 an epidemic of Spanish flu caused the death of 20 million people in the US and Europe, but nobody accused the governments of these countries of killing their own citizens. The fact is that there was nothing these government could do in the face of epidemics of this kind. It was only with the development of penicillin during the second world war, that it became possible for such epidemics to be effectively contained. This did not become generally available until towards the end of the 1940s

your system does not have a market for Capital goods, not unless now you decided to bring upon such a market.

You did tell me a market for consumer goods, but not for capital goods.

Consumer good such as a Kg of wheat will sure have a price if you set up an arbitrary price on it to start with.

Lets say you said “the price of wheat is Rs 10 per kg”, now market will manipulate its prices letting you know how much supply and demand wheat has.

The price might touch to Rs 20 telling you that wheat is demanded in double amount by the people.

If wheat’s price comes down to Rs 2 and Rice’s Rs 40 that means you must stop the wheat production and increase the Rice Production.

Now I agrees you will be able to plan the consumer goods with this consumer goods market, no doubt.

But, if you started with putting an arbitrary price Rs 100, you would have had the same thing, Rs 200 tells you wheat is in double demand. The problem is these starting prices are arbitrary.

They are arbitrary because you don’t have a capital goods market.
Secondly, you will NOT BE able to plan the capital goods just like you’re able to plan consumer goods.

People are letting you know that they need rice more than wheat, but you are unable to determine whether you should use rice flour to manufacture Bread, or Wheat flour(presuming they both taste the same).

People are telling you with high bread prices that they need bread, but you don’t know whether you should use rice flour or wheat flour, because rice and wheat flour are capital goods(presume nobody uses flour for anything else).

Selfishness means rational self interest-which means:concern with ones rightly understood interests.It doesn’t mean living at any cost or infringing the rights or personal freedom of others.Ones rightly understood self interest doesn’t require breaking the interests of others.A thief isn’t acting on his rational self interest.He is simply acting on a subhuman level as robbing presupposes victims.Nor is a beggar or a welfare recipient or a social worker who lives like a parasite. The very notion that selflessness helps the survival of the weak is proven wrong by the fact that poorest in the richer nations,which always is the nations which grant individual freedom,lives much much better than the poor or even middle class in the poor nations,which denies individual rights. The beneficiary of ones actions should be oneself,not others.
Ask yourself-Why are the nations which grant individual freedom and the pursuit of self interest richer than the nations which deny the pursuit of self interest? Why are the poorest in such nations rich if the wealth of the rich are taken away from the poor?Why is the “total social product” of such nations higher? A Bill Gates/or Edison/or Gutenberg has done more good to humanity than all the “selfless” social workers are put together.Why is that so if selflessness is the greatest virtue? The biggest problem with moronic socialists is that they don’t understand that wealth ought to be produced by individuals before it is looted,mooched or expropriated.Wealth doesn’t simply exist in the nature ready to be taken over by a “Capitalist exploiter”.Intelligent men produce it when morons simply stare and scorn.

Collectivists usually think that they can make people act against their rational self interest and still have them produce as much wealth or more than what they produce now. Only a fool or a scoundrel can hold such a notion. There is no excuse for the ignorance of the fact that the richest nations of the world are the freest-nations in which men are free to act in the rational self interest to the highest extent .It can’t be evaded that the poor in such nations live much comfortable than the middle class in the poor nations. There is one thing which is evident-To cure poverty, the level of production has to be raised and that we can’t cure poverty by dividing the wealth of the richest men among the poor-It is proven by all statistics. If so, how would we tackle the problem of poverty by switching to a system under which men produce much less? When this fact is pointed out they have no answer and suddenly switch the topic to ethics and what makes them against Capitalism is its lack of morality. But, I have proven that selfishness is a virtue and selflessness practiced consistently would lead to ones death and hence is not a value or a virtue.

The Socialists calculation problem waged for over 60 years, and still Socialists were in no better position. Prashanth Perumal at least understands that and tries to take jabs at it every now and then. But you have some infinite amount of hope that “Someone somewhere must have the answer for that question”.

Somethings you say are so illogical that if I try to tell you, you will take it personally and get pissed over that.

For example every time you use the words “Capitalism” “Mismanagement” and “Resources” together.
You repeat these things like Mantra “Capitalism wastes the resources”, “Capitalism only cares about making profits”, and both of these things are contradictory.

Capitalism either tries to make profit, or it tries to waste the resources.
If Capitalists are wasting resources and still making profit(I would be hell surprised if they did that), then by minimizing the wastage of resources they can make EVEN MORE PROFIT.

But irony of the situation is, you don’t understand profit and loss calculations, but are not even a single step behind in criticizing it first hand.

All my arguments are futile to you, because of your non-understanding of Profit-loss calculations.

There is a Computer game called “Roller Coaster Tycoon”, which is the most interesting way to learn how Capitalism works.

Now the game is not intended to proselytize people into Capitalism, rather they just try to realistically emulate a real world business in an entertaining way.

This innocent-looking child’s game will provide all of the basic training in economics, marketing, and business management you could hope for in freshman-level college courses. The only difference is that this format makes learning these subjects fun, intuitive, and easy to understand.

May be you know much about agreements, clauses and reports. But every initiative has many drawbacks than it has advantages. As you know much history & civics you all can search the history for some similar events. No one on the earth was born perfect & honest. Every act has some dishonesty in it, but nevertheless you cannot ignore technology. But these are facts.
India is a developing nation, and in no ways it will try to invest heavy amounts in research in Nuclear technology. Let the country first solve its unemployment & illiteracy problems.
Also the country is not up to developing nuclear war heads to deploy on other nations. So no where in the near future are we thinking of doing research in Nuclear field. So adopting the existing technology is good for us.

We all know what problems of power shortage we face. I can pay Rs. 6 for uninterrupted supply than banging my head by paying Rs. 2 for a supply which is interrupted and worthless. If we get powercuts for 6 hours to 8 hours, why should we even pay that Rs. 2.

Che…he is a hero because he is the man of principles and for whatever he believed is needed for the society’s welfare,he was ready to sacrifice his life and did the same…By birth he was an Argentine,by profession was a doctor..his childhood days was witnessing the imperialist power and its domination all over the American continent…Right from that days he created a strong aversion and resistance to imperial power..He believed in equality of human beings…Thus his principles were shaped based on this…His curiosity to travel and to know new countries and people made him to travel all over South America where most of his idealogies got shaped…This travel made him to feel the imperial domination and its worse effects on common innocent people..Thus he got a greater view on politics and made him to believe in armed revolution as the solution…
As Che was almost ready for revolution against the dominant powers,a strong base was laid to him by Fidel Castro of Cuba,where they were also facing colonial domination…Fidel,young lawyer who wanted to resist such domination on Cuba and wanted it to liberate,formed a revolutionary group and stepped into armed revolution…Later once,Che and Fidel met and had a night long discussion regarding politics and revolution,and found that they have same idealogy and became a very good friends with mutual trust..Fidel’s excellent leadership and Che’s marvellous warfare tactics together made the Cuban revolution to succeed by Dec,1959…
From then Fidel became the Prime minister and Che-Supreme judge to trial wartime criminals,military headship,Reserve bank Governor of Cuba,Industries Minister,Cuban communist party’s Secretary etc etc and what not…Thus his role was inevitable and important in shaping the present day Cuba…

Periyaar was one among the many volunteers who offered their services to Vaikom satyagraha. He was affectionately called Vikkom veeran. But there were many other heroes like TK Madhavan, KN Namboothiri, KP Kesava Menon & Mannathu Padmanabhan. Sree Narayana Guru also played a crucial role. But Mahatma Gandhi was indeed the life-line of the movement. Most of us agree that India would anyway have got its independence irresepective [or depite] these leaders, for reasons more of economical than political. [ Ofcourse the timing and the political boundaries would have been different]. So lets go straight to the post independence era. If any of these ‘alternate messiahs’ were in charge of the affairs at that time, would they have done anythng differently? Would we have avoided a partition and mass genocide, for example ? This question probably doesnot arise if Netaji’s friends had won the WW-II.
It will be childish to argue whether Mahatma Gandhi liked all Indians or not. He belongs to the whole world. The world of Einstein, King Jr, Mandela and all others who drew inspiration from him. Indian ‘political’ independence was just another of those many ‘means’ he used to test his faith in humanity. It is no surprise if he resembles one of those lost warriors in a failing battle. But he was the one true real leader of our independence who could command the attention of the entire country with his word or with his silence.