reply to post by Rigel
Today, a Fruit is grown up in some islandish plantation for, let's say, 5 cents. It's then sold to some businessman, who sells it to some
businessman, who sells it to some businessman [...N x...], then it's sold at the local supermarket for half a dollar.
What happened to the ignorant, wild Banana on its road to Babylon ? Well, it just became a part of the criminal capitalist ring
In actuality, one may still purchase this wild banana for 5 cents. But to do so, one must go to the island plantation and buy it.
Your example would work more like this: The banana is grown for 5 cents. It is then sold to a ready buyer who has a warehouse where he can keep
massive amounts of bananas. This buyer has expenses: the cost of building the warehouse initially, the cost of maintaining it, the cost of keeping the
temperature controlled to protect the bananas. He also has a lot of money simply setting there so when the plantation owner brings him bananas, he can
pay them for said bananas.
Now, the guy who grew the bananas cvan decide to bypass this buyer and simply store his own bananas. But that costs a lot of money, and chances are he
just doesn't want the hassle. He wants to grow bananas. So he's happy to get that 5 cents and keep growing bananas. Not to mention, the buiyer deals
with maybe 50 different plantations, so when all is said and done, he has a lot more bananas than the plantation owner would have.
Now our buyer wants to send these bananas to where people want bananas. To do that, he needs a buyer in that location. Ideally, the buyer would buy
from those 50 plantations and then sell to a couple hundred stores. But in reality, he probably just sells to 5 other warehouses in different areas.
So he gets orders in and sells the bananas for 10 cents. The 5 cent difference pays for his warehouse expenses, and for him to be able to eat every
day. After all, who wants to live on nothing but bananas?
Now the trick is, how to get the bananas thousands of miles to the other warehouses? Simple: transportation (truck, rail, ship, etc.). The buyer now
calls up a transportation company, who has the equipment and the people who can move all those bananas to the other warehouses. Of course, the buyer
is only making 5 cents on a banana, so who's going to pay for the transportation? That's right, the warehouses he sells to! He is getting 10 cents
for a banana, but transportation is 2 cents per banana, so the warehouses are actually paying 12 cents per banana.
Now, these warehouses sell bananas to individual stores. But they don't just sell bananas; they sell bananas, cocoa, apples, oranges, potatoes,
Hamburger Helper, flour, salt, Beenie Weenies, chili, sardines, and everything else you typically see in a store. Why do we need them? Because there
are literally hundreds of places that they have to deal with in order to have that huge selection of items we are used to seeing on the store shelves.
The stores have all they can do just selling stuff to the public; they don't have time to call every different food producer and arrange for 100
bananas from this guy, 20 bags of flour from that guy, 30 loaves of bread from the other guy, and so on and so forth. Sure, they
could do that,
but then again, they would pay more
per unit to have 30 pieces of food moved from one place to another than a warehouse would to have 100,000
pieces moved. That's why WalMart can sell items so much lower than small 'Mom & Pop' stores.
These warehouses cost money to build and run, too. And they have to pay for workers who move things from the incoming side to the outgoing side. Plus,
keeping up with who ordered what and who is selling what is a logistical nightmare that pretty much screams "Computers!" Lots of computers, keeping
up with literally millions of products, sellers, and buyers. That costs money too. So when all is said and done, these warehouses sell our banana for
18 cents, making 6 cents on the deal.
Again, someone has to take the food (which includes our banana) to the store. That someone is another transportation company, probably a trucking
company. They'll charge for their service again, adding another 3 cents to the cost of our banana. It's now at 23 cents, almost 5 times what it sold
for initially.
Finally, the banana arrives at our store. that store has to pay for the building, the stockboys, the shelving (yes, those things are expensive!),
repairs, cashiers, and the like. They just paid 23 cents for that banana, but in order for them to make anything reasonable, they have to charge 33
cents for it. Oh, but wait! There's another problem... this store takes credit cards, so the people shopping there don't have to carry cash. they
could take checks, but if they make people write checks, they'll have a lot of returned checks, which is nothing more than theft of their products.
they still have to make a living,even if people are dishonest and steal their goods, so who is going to pay more? The people who buy things from them,
of course. No one else can pay more in this arrangement. So by taking credit cards, they lose less money to theft. But credit card companies charge
for the 'right' to accept those cards. The cost of our banana just went up by another 2 cents.
Now that banana in the store is costing 35 cents, but we hear on the media how farmers want to raise costs to 6 cents from 5 cents. What?!? We just
paid 35 cents and the person who grew it only got 5? That's outrageous!
But it's only outrageous if one ignores the things that have to happen to efficiently get that banana to us. How much would it cost one of us to get
to that plantation, buy the banana for 5 cents, and then get home with it? A lot more than 35 cents, that's for sure!
Sure, there's a difference between 35 cents in my example and 50 cents in yours. There should be, because I did not include the futures market where
more (unnecessary) buying and selling goes on, with a price increase each time. the trick to stopping this is regulating those who buy only for profit
and those who buy to legitimately provide a service. I personally believe any large purchaser should be required to take possession of the product
they are buying, instead of just trading 'paper'. But that goes back to my (and I believe, our) contention that our present system is being
abused... meaning it's not the fault of Capitalism per se, but rather the fault of unregulated Capitalism.
The Initiator would be : the People ( if not just peoples, ie a group within The People who'd wish this new product). That is, if any
capitalist thinker is honest, the same than in any capitalist system. I mean that, if the problem is about the people finally buying the product when
sold as a promise for the businesman to be paid back and so socially, economically and (why not?) politically crowned as a powerful citizen, well...
in an ANARCHIST system, a new product would be launched (long story short) ON DEMAND.
My apologies Rigel; I purposely posted the last post to show that things do not magically appear.
Things take time, and people are fickle. Today's popular demand is typically tomorrow's dust collector. Every year, products are phased out in
responce to new and improved products being offered. And of course, everyone wants the latest and the greatest. I am no exception, and I am sure
neither are you or ANOK. I would love to have a high-def 72" plasma TV sitting here; but since I have better things to spend my money on, I am
satisfied with my old 27" picture tube. Now if someone had come up to me ten years ago and said "Hey, I can make a TV that shows a much better
picture, that costs less to run, and that is so flat you can hang it up like a picture! Oh, and it's 3 times as big a screen as you have now.
Interested?"... well, I have to admit, my response would be "Wow, yeah!". But to date I have not bought one. If that person had opened his business
to make plasma TVs on my word alone, he would be broke today.
Luckily, there is typically someone that will follow through and buy the product, but
it is not a guarantee. This is where business does what
it does so well; it makes a new product through huge investment in research, development, production, and marketing and it manages to make it
affordable enough so enough people can buy it to make the deal profitable. As soon as enough people start buying the product, the price comes down,
because the cost to make one goes down due to volume.
In Capitalism, there is a principle that works very well to keep those who are good at this doing well and those who aren't food at it out of the
market. That principle is investment and profit. Those who fail, do not profit; those who succeed do profit. But in your arrangement, what would be
the penalty for failing to produce a wanted, needed product at a reasonable cost? The people who produced the product would suffer no real penalty,
since whatever they do profits them the same. Likewise, why work harder and longer to make the product better? You make the same just doing the same
thing you always have done.
There is no benefit to individuals in making things better for others.
You do address this issue in section 2, with the following quote:
I agree that this "good you win bad you loose" doctrine you describe as for
Capitalism is a pretty healthy dynamic of normal, basic capitalism (but still, is it ethically good, goodly moral ?).
but since post space is
running short, I will address it in the next post.
(continued onj next post)
And despite the handle, I consider
entertainment to be more than a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a bug-zapper. 
], if all the dark forces who finally put forth the Fed and other forms of lobbyism and "mega-trust'ism", hadn't finally turned
America into a mere contemporary Babylon - about to crash under the weight of its vices & excess on the theme of hyperconcentration (of power, of
economic forces, etc). 
