META: Excess in a Free Market Place

Rick Knight (rknight@platinum.com)
Tue, 09 Sep 97 09:40:47 CST

EvMick (from Illinois) wrote:

Give me an example of (what) the excesses that can and do occur in a
totally uncontrolled marketplace....give me an example of a totally
uncontrolled market place...define excess.

Rick Knight responds:

See The Tobacco Industry in the early part of this century in the U.S.
and elsewhere on the planet in recent times.

I would say that excess has been reached when the marketplace, big on
desire and short on information and wisdom, is given the free will to
slowly kill themselves and debilitate the community at large,
impacting health care costs and productivity.

And then EvMick quoted Voltaire:

Whoever has power in his hands wants to be despotic; the craze for
domination is an incurable disease.

Rick responds:

I regard the inclination to be a despot decreases in accordance with
an increase of information and a lack of fear unless you are a
sociopath. In that case, all bets are off. Besides, it's hard to
give any viable weight to something that was said at the infancy of
the Industrial Age (that still echoed Agrarian age influence) when we
are preparing to eclispse it in this one.