With regard to this…
“The difference is that in free markets, competitive forces tend to minimize waste, fraud, and inefficiency. If you don’t minimize these things and your competitors do a better job at it, their prices will be lower and you will go out of business. No such forces exist in government (in general).”
Normally, I would like to take the time to get empirical studies on my thesis here but since I do not have the time right now I will give you my anecdotal experience. I am not an outsider when it comes to business. I have worked for many years in small, medium and large businesses as engineer, engineering manager and project manager. I helped grow U.S. Robotics from a 50 million dollar a year company to a 500 million dollar a year company in five years.I think the rhetoric of competition and the ‘free market’ is highly overblown. Yes, it does happen but not nearly as much as to justify the reality of the ‘free market’ ideal. Competition is itself an ideal that Adam Smith was keenly aware of but also (as I pointed out previously in part 1 and part 2) fully aware of the corrosive effect that ‘those that live by profit’ had on the ideal. He was also keenly aware of the danger of monopolies. I submit that monopoly is not a digital phenomenon but an analog phenomenon.With regard to competition, companies can, to a point, compete more efficiently by reducing labor cost or production cost and overhead. When a company reduces its labor costs it must stay competitive to retain the best workers so there is only so much room there before you hit a wall. Of course, if you move your labor intensive production to a cheaper labor market (i.e., overseas) you can, in theory, reduce your labor costs. However, that tends to favor more stable products and larger companies. When we were developing and producing hundreds of products a quarter (domestic and international) with ever new technologies we did not have the time to take many SKUs overseas to have them produced. We did take more stable, larger volume products overseas.As a large company no one could compete with the component costs we bargained down due to our large volumes. We also had the dibs on production companies overseas that were maxed out and chiefly catered to the big boys. Semiconductor foundries were also over booked and we were always the first in line because of our volumes. Small companies were a joke if they thought they could compete with us.If we wanted market share we bought it (i.e., Palm Computing). We bought companies for market share and almost always fired the people and wrecked the company. We were really only interesting in buying market share.We also had no problem getting and retaining the best and most talented employees.This may not be the legal definition of a monopoly but it effectively approximated a monopoly. Small companies cannot compete head on with multinational corporations. This is yet another case of the haves and the haves nots. This is not just unique to U.S. Robotics. Recent revelations about Goldman Sachs also demonstrate that large companies can play all sides of a competitive game and continually pummel the competition. To think that the ‘free market’ is an equal playing field is an ideal that is not reflected by reality. “Big” is a huge competitive advantage in every way.Bottom line: the ‘free market’ is rigged. You are kidding yourself if you believe differently.Another topic…When I stated this…
“Another topic, I have wanted to address your criticism of the scientific method as pertains to neuroscience and brain studies but have been really busy lately. Just a question – do you believe the scientific method can provide evidences based on multiple small studies from randomized testing (careful, there is quite an elaborate history behind this) or do you think only an exhaustive large scale, extended time study is credible? Do you think that polls have any credibility? I think this direction of inquiry borders on the real meat of your critical concerns…”
Your response was this…
“Regarding my criticism of the scientific method… Hopefully I have not given the wrong impression in my various posts on this topic. I am a huge fan of the scientific method and think it is basically critical thinking put into action. I have criticized not the scientific method, but rather scientists, for failing to maintain their objectivity in certain (many) cases.”
I am having a hard time reconciling this with this…
“From what I can tell from the studies, enlarged brain structure (of the two different types) are correlated with liberalism or conservatism, but again, the studies (as far as I could tell) do not tell the reverse: whether liberalism and conservatism are correlated with the two enlarged brain structure types. So my original point still holds; it could be the case that 80% of those with an enlarged amygdala are conservatives, but only 0.01% of conservatives have an enlarged amygdala. If I’ve missed something in the studies, please let me know.”
The idea is that you do not have to do a large, multi-year study to exhaustively prove that conservatives are generally going to have larger amygdalas than liberals.