Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Economics, woo, and xkcd

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Homeopathy: Not enough profit for the Profit-crazies. Although recently they are catching up very fast with exorbitant prices which means no decrease in medical expenses.

Crystal Energy: Now what about specially treated silicon crystals. They convert sunlight directly into electricity. Boy oh boy the price you have to pay for solar panels.
You fell into this one by generalizing. Sorry.

The poor are becoming poorer and the rich richer. Why ? Because the rich regard the pockets of the poor as inexhaustible gold mines. The majority of modern capitalism is definitely ruthlessly
profit orientated. How many people in America alone are now living in shanties because of job losses. The fat cats wanted forty billion profit but only got 35 billion compared to the 20 billion they made the previous year.

Tatarize said...

Homeopathy may make some money, but it doesn't make anywhere close to the money that real healthcare can make. And especially if effective the price difference would be massive and it would be significantly cheaper.

Crystal energy is not akin to solar energy, and while certainly doped silicon lattices are the chief way of doing such things it has to do with the doping not the crystal. The rather typical woo form of crystal energy involve using a clear bit of quartz to invoke magic.

The poor are becoming poorer while the rich get richer because of inequality in the system. You can arrange an economy such that when the rich get richer the poor get richer too. It isn't capitalism at fault, it's the hands-off attitude treating the invisible hand of the market like a benevolent humanitarian when really it's the same blind watchmaker of nature, which above all things creates parasites.