Michael S. Lorrey <mike@datamann.com> Wrote:
>this is what happened in the 30's. There was significant deflation, partly due
>to a tighttened money supply,
Yes.
>and partly due to overproduction by farmers and manufacturers that only
>knew one thing: producing.
The idea that the poverty of the 30's was because people got too good at growing
food that people could eat and too good at manufacturing products that people
could use is just too silly to debate.
> [if we had cheap fusion power] All except for the millions of people who work in
>the energy recovery, distribution, and generation industries. They'd all be out of work.
No, they'd just be out of the oil business.
>Since their industries make up some thing like 25% of our economy, at least, then
>you are talking about a major contraction,
No, because now the nuclear fusion industry would make up 40% of a vastly
larger economy.
>making a whole economy obsolete overnight, or almost overnight will cause
>a) people to not invest in anything, because they can't be sure if it will be viable
>or dead 6 months down the road,
Yes, there is a chance every cent of your investment could be lost, but that never
stopped anyone before so I don't see why it would do so now, because there is also
a chance your investment could make you filthy rich. 10 years ago when somebody
invested in a tiny company called CISCO I'm sure the thought crossed their mind that
they might never see that money again, they took the chance anyway and today are
very glad they did
>If you magically introduced one of these aircars for a price of about $20,000
> today, with a production capacity of a million units a year, GM, Ford, Toyota, Daimler
> Chrysler, et al would all be declaring bankruptcy in short order
Good! A company stupid enough to be ignorant of advances in its own industry and
ignores such a historic opportunity should go bankrupt; they're just too dumb to live.
>and you'd have millions of unionized autoworkers out on the streets unemployed.
Then who is making all those aircars?
> Are you starting to see what I am getting at?
Nope.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:09:51 MDT