Why is the world in such dire economic straits, and what can we do about it?
POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Sunday, August 23, 2026 20:19
VIEWED: 10090
PAGE 6 of 9
Telephone - Philipp Reis (German)
A/C current - Nikola Tesla (Austrian) while in Paris
D/C current - no one 'invented' the D/C current, but Alessandro Volta (Italian) invented the battery
Refrigerator - William Cullen (Scottish)
No, your claims aren't clear at all.
What many famous American 'inventors' did was file US Patents. It doesn't make them the inventor, merely the US patent holder.
"Cause sometimes, just sometimes, (capitalism) is useful without hurting anyone."
So despite your previous denial you really ARE arguing for capitalism. Just so we're clear on that.
Capitalism is a currently successful economic strategy. But what it is without exception is resource wasteful and environmentally destructive. Ultimately it's non-survivable. That makes it not at all useful, not even a little bit, IMO.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Telephone - Philipp Reis (German)
A/C current - Nikola Tesla (Austrian) while in Paris
D/C current - no one 'invented' the D/C current, but Alessandro Volta (Italian) invented the battery
Refrigerator - William Cullen (Scottish)
No, your claims aren't clear at all.
What many famous American 'inventors' did was file US Patents. It doesn't make them the inventor, merely the US patent holder.
"Cause sometimes, just sometimes, (capitalism) is useful without hurting anyone."
So despite your previous denial you really ARE arguing for capitalism. Just so we're clear on that.
Capitalism is a currently successful economic strategy. But what it is without exception is resource wasteful and environmentally destructive. Ultimately it's non-survivable. That makes it not at all useful, not even a little bit, IMO.
I think there's a middle ground between you and Sky.
I would make the case that Americans improved upon European fundamental discoveries, improved them, found new ways to utilize them. Often many Americans contributed individual small modifications to a product or process, with the cumulative result that the product evolved very quickly-- the steam railroads are a good example.
Dozens of American railroads innovated individual changes during the 19th century, leading to hundreds of locomotive and car designs, each an improvement on the state of the art, each specialized for its own situation.
The simple, large number of people working to improve the product led to rapid improvement by trial and error, each little improvement being adopted by others, further modified to fit a particular circumstance, caused an overall improvement.
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Quote:Tesla's Serbian-American (eye rolling). You couldn't even get his original nationality right. And he invented A/C while he was in America. Yes, he proposed the idea first in Paris, but he made it work in America.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
A/C current - Nikola Tesla
I'm not even going to bother with the rest.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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"It's obvious to a 5th grader."
Hello,
This is why no one can have a conversation with you.
--Anthony
_______________________________________________
"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner
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"Dozens of American railroads innovated individual changes during the 19th century, leading to hundreds of locomotive and car designs, each an improvement on the state of the art, each specialized for its own situation."
The railroads were the exact opposite of what you describe, according to this article.
"For this reason, Railroaded, Richard White’s trenchant history of the political economy of the first Gilded Age, told through a close examination of the transcontinental railroad corporations, could not be more timely. Parts of the book read like a Matt Taibbi exposé of fraudulent high finance and venal politics, but the bulk of it resembles a Vanity Fair article that gasps even as it sympathizes with insiders divulging the details of how things went terribly wrong. ... By 1890 six companies had completed seven separate lines in Kansas, overlaying the state with more miles of track than New York had and for a population less than one-third the size. Even the inveterate Kansas booster (and crooked US senator) J.J. Ingalls had to admit that “empty railroad trains ran across deserted prairies to vacant towns.” The overbuilding of track, like the overbuilding of housing today, was not spurred by demand. It was the handiwork of insiders looking to get rich through chicanery and government largesse. “The entrepreneurship so apparent in the 1880s involved innovations that combined financial manipulation, the waste of capital and labor, and the construction of railroad lines that fulfilled little or no discernible need except the enrichment of the promoter...” "
http://www.thenation.com/article/163050/trains-vain-richard-white
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"Tesla's Serbian-American (eye rolling)."
Whatever. Have some facts to go with your eye-rolling -
"Born an ETHNIC SERB in the village of Smiljan (now part of Gospić), in the Croatian Military Frontier[1] of the Austrian Empire (modern-day Croatia), TESLA WAS A SUBJECT OF THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE BY BIRTH and later became an American citizen.[2]"
Ethnic Serbian, citizen of the Austrian Empire.
Oh, one more correction to your sloppy reading.
http://books.google.com/books?id=--giwZy0FpkC& pg=PA109&lpg=PA109& dq=%22For+the+first+time+in+history, +the+living+ standards+of+the+ masses+of+ordinary+people+have+begun+ to+undergo+sustained+growth&source=bl&ots=LPutGXA_PV&sig= TEdNtbaYEI6r2eZuQwbnVksAYvs &hl=en&ei=wFq_ To3iGZPViALyu4WNAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8& ved=0CFUQ6AEwBw#v=onepage& q=%22For%20the%20first%20time%20in%20history %2C%20the%20living%20standards%20 of%20the%20masses%20of%20ordinary%20people%20 have%20begun%20to%20undergo%20sustained %20growth&f=false
"In the words of Nobel Prize winner Robert E. Lucas, Jr., "For the first time in history, the living standards of the masses of ordinary people have begun to undergo sustained growth ... Nothing remotely like this economic behavior has happened before"."
But reading an actual selection from his book (not that I expect you to, but one can always hope), Lucas doesn't attribute the improvement to capitalism. It's still best attributed to technology and the large-scale exploitation of non-biological energy.
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Quote:So go away and do it, then.
Sig,
It's obvious to a 5th grader. Why would I waste my time debating it here? I have actual stuff to do.
Oh, wait, you DO want to debate it!...
Quote:
Look again at europe's taxation rate, and their degree of govt. control, corporate-govt. ties and their stack of long term liabilities, not to mention their labor situation. I haven't met a european on either side of the political spectrum who hasn't thought it was a serious problem at any point in the last decade, maybe two.
Hmm... OK. Germany's total tax, about 45% of GDP. Public debt, about 80% of GDP. Real growth rate, abut 4%. Unemployment, about 6%.
USA, total tax revenues about 17% GDP. Public debt, 95%. Real growth rate... eh, maybe 2%. Unemployment, about 9%.
Yes, I see how terrible it is!
www.indexmundi.com
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Oh, and let's not forget that Paris had electric lighting long before the light bulb was ever "invented".
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I'm surprised at how interesting this thread was, normally I find talk about money andthe economy boring and hard to understand, but this was actually interesting.
I like the marbles and donkies stories. CTS, the idea of the 11th marble being slavery is really interesting and I'll have to consider it further.
Magon's, my little brother went through a marbles phase when he was six or seven, we made marks on the basement carpet with tape so he and my stepdad could play. He's nine now but I think he'd still like it, he probably forgot about it after the tape got pulled when we painted that room and got a new couch.
Sure there were things that got notably better for many people in the 19th century, as well as things that got worse for other people. That being said I'd not like to go back there thank you.
"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya
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Quote:Neither do I.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Lucas doesn't attribute the improvement to capitalism.
Quote:Which was precisely my point. Unfettered technology development.
It's still best attributed to technology...
Read my lips. Unfettered technology development. Do you see the word capitalism in there?
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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