[lbo-talk] Why Markets Fail

[Mark Bennett]

A little late, I know, but the Internet doesn't really provide a
counterexample.  The framework for the 'net was created by the Department of
Defense.  No company, certainly no entrepreneur, would have had the
resources to create the 'net, and had they had the resources they would not
have invested them in developing the digital infrastructure of a wholly
unproven technology.  Remember, Gates and Microsoft had to be dragged
kicking and screaming into the internet era; as late as 1995, if I recall
correctly, Gates was making public pronouncements that no one would give up
his Windows desktop to wait 2 minutes for a web-page to load.  Even the
first revolutionary web browser, MOSAIC, was developed at the National
Center for Supercomputing Applications, a federal agency. Left to industry
and individual entrepreneurs, there would have been no internet revolution.
When one points this out to online Libertarian blowhards, they tend to shut
up for a minute or two.  But only for a minute or two, unfortunately.

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 6:03 PM, michael perelman <michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
> wrote:


> I read it differently.  He is just saying that people who invest in
> long-lived capital do so irrationally, without taking the likelihood of
> failure into account.
>
> Ted Winslow wrote:
>
>
>  "It is safe to say the enterprise which depends on hopes stretching into
>> the future benefits the community as a whole.  But individual initiative
>> will only be adequate when reasonable calculation is supplemented and
>> supported by animal spirits, so that the thought of ultimate loss which
>> often overtakes pioneers, as experience undoubtedly tells us and them, is
>> put aside as a healthy man puts aside the expectation of death." (General
>> Theory, p. 162)
>>
>>
>
> --
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA
> 95929
>
> 530 898 5321
> fax 530 898 5901
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