I was a regular in Bill Mandel's KPFA audience for years. Taped the program
for it's rare information. And I admire his mind. Coming upon the current
dialogue, and the evolution in his views, I haven't seen addressed the
answer to three points for which I've always faulted capitalism:
1) Waste. The enormous waste of resources in the production of redundant
consumer products, the over production (the new proliferation "99c stores"
to at least sell the left over stuff to someone rather than destroy it, is
small relief--why didn't it cost 99cents in the first place?)
2) Immediate profit over any real interest in conserving dwindling
resources for any future there might be. A society that planned for the
future of the human race is what I'd hoped we'd get from the socialists, but
did they even have that ethic?
3) Wasn't the Soviet Union's problem that it didn't have access to the
world's resources the way the U.S. did (and secured with it's military)?
Wasn't that a key reason USSR couldn't compete, notwithstanding any accuracy
of the other reasons Bill gives? And for that matter isn't the lack of
access to all the world's resources (and of course various social issues not
to the direct point of this thread) the reason inhabitants of countries like
Haiti emmigrate to the U.S.? The goodies are here, not the least of reasons
being that whatever is there has been brought here to manufacture U.S.
goodies out of. So: more goodies here, poverty there, people come here.
Elmer LIghman
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