>That's the way Wall St. has been spinning it, but is the need for
>ever newer high-tech infrastructure *that* compelling?
>Somewhere - I wish I could remember where, but I can't - Marx
>describes competition as a kind of forced march for capitalists (the
>portion of the quote I remember is something like "March! March!").
>That's where the compulsion comes from - invest or die.
>Doug
The crucial thing is speed, so long as you are assuming capitalist competition. Yesterday's WSJ had a delightful piece finding the silver lining in the tech bust. The benefits of wasted IPO mania "would have happened anyway, and to be sure, there was a cheaper way to get them without annihilating billions in wealth and taking the economy to the brink of recession. But they wouldn't have happened as quickly."
Christian