[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by AntEater

Ideology aside, I'm not so sure wether trust in the producers and consumers that much today.
If we had Henry Ford speaking to Congress, I'd agree, but we don't.
In many ways, today's CEOs are simply overpaid clerks.

That's all well and good, a great number of liberals feel the same way, but what alternative is there? There will always be a market, and the worst things you can do to a market are to attempt to centralize control of it or drive it underground. The results are never pleasant for the rest of us.
So, while I will admit that you have a good point in saying that markets are not perfect and that marketing makes the issue of consumption a bit more difficult for the average person, I have yet to see any better ideas.

They're basically interested in their salaries and their boni, if then corporate interest comes second, you have a good executive. If he thinks of the cooperation at all, you have an average one.
They're not corporal WW2 generals, but corporate 16th century condottiere (warlords).

I wouldn't agree with the sweeping generalization above as many CEO's have a vested interest not only in their industries and companies but also in the welfare of their workers. Of course, many do not, and you also make a good point here. However, the worst examples of these types of CEO's tend to manifest themselves in large industries that consistently fail and yet cannot die because of Federal regulation. It is extraordinarily difficult to start a business in the U.S. because of the sums of money for licensures, permits, and legal representation involved and this only eliminates competition to companies that have become inefficient and no longer satisfy people's needs. I should know a bit about that, I work for one of them.

If you'll alow me to meander for a short while, the freight railroad system in the U.S. is a customer's worst nightmare. The railroads own the rail lines, and these lines are extremely expensive, and often impossible, to produce more of. Furthermore, only a handful of major railroads exsist, and they essentially have a monopoly over land-based heavy transport. Since our customers generally own large, expensive facilities, they can't exactly pack up and move elsewhere. The result is that we consistently overcharge them and deliver their goods late. After all, they can't go anywhere else. However, even then, capitalism forces them to choose the most efficient path, as transporting huge quantities of goods by truck is often uneconomical. In this particular case, deregulation is needed in the form of "freeedom of access legislation" where any railroad can use any track without a fee. The result would be that railroads would actually have to compete with each other for customers, and the consumers, as well as the most efficient railroads, would benefit more. This approach was tried with the energy industry, but the Feds forgot the all-important step of getting their hands off of the generating facilities, so results were mixed.

On the other hand, leaving a multibillion dollar enterprise in the hands of one or serveral personal owners is not the solution either, a modern multinational corp. simply can't work this way.

Surely, you must be joking. Modern multinational corporations operate this way all the time, and generate a great deal of wealth not only for themselves but also for subsidiary corporations and investors and employees all the time. The alternative is to put such an industry in the hands of the state, and there are a lot of countries, including India, Russia, and China, that will produce a lot of examples as to why this is a bad idea. Large corporations do have their problems, but profitability and longevity generally have a direct link except where the state is involved.

First of all, a whole industry, the biggest industry in the US is PAID to cloud his judgement. Second, today's markets are so complicated that even without that much advertising, keeping abreast of the flood of information would be a full time job.

It could be argued that the legal industry, for which I have nothing but disdain, is actually the largest "industry" in the U.S., but that's neither here nor there. The average citizen, thanks to the technological marvels provided entirely by private industry, has access to virtually all of the information in the world in the space a few seconds, thanks to the internet. As the complexity of markets increases, so does the consumer's ability to cope. Finding the best price and value for an item is hardly a full-time job, it's just a few keystrokes away.
If someone can't be bothered to spend a few minutes evaluating their purchase decisions in the information age, I have no sympathy for them.

With regards to the auto industry, the logical thing would be "let 'em fail".
With state support, the state actually rewards the very same people who caused this mess and has zero guarantee that they won't screw up again.
A full scale nationalization would be an alternative, but I think not really feasible in the US.
Problem is, if you let the whole auto industry of america go down the drain, there's no one to step up in their place.
Without state support, not even foreign manufacturers would suddenly start to invest big scale in US production.
Auto industry in the US would just stop. From a libertarian standpoint, this is acceptable, the US big three screwed up and deserved it.

If i had never heard anything you ever said before, this statement alone would be enough to convince me that you are a liberal. The U.S. auto industry is nothing more than a dinosaur waiting to be confined to the dustbin of history, because the U.S. no longer has a manufacturing economy, but a service economy. The next step is a corporate economy, which our representatives are working hard to counteract, because auto manufacterers have lobbyists, too.

For a country like the U.S., where cheap industry labor is rarely available, but the economy is (generally) strong and the currency is also comparitively strong, the next logical step for any company is to transition to an international corporate nature where labor is outsourced and the administration simply places itself in the location where its' ventures are the most economically feasible. We shouldn't fear a transition to this type of economy. Should the U.S. embrace a lenient and business-friendly economic policy (no corporate taxes, simple licensure procedures, simple, but strong and effective legal codes to prevent fraud and theft) it matters little where the goods are actually produced, because the lion's share of profit from production comes here anyway.

Blue-collar factory jobs become service industry jobs, and the entire economy moves up a step, benefitting all of us. Some disagree with that asessment, but the GNP per capita (despite our increasing population) and the PPP per capita says otherwise.

The goal of the U.S. now, while it still holds some semblance of economic dominance, should be to embrace free-market policies for once and attract every type of business around the globe. This approach worked marvelously well for the Southeast Asian Tigers, and one can only imagine the effect such a policy would have in a nation like the U.S.
Naturally, our European friends would likely not be far behind, or at least, they need not be, given the typical strength of the collective European economy.

While I don't have a solution for the whole world, and indeed, noone does, the U.S. and other first-world nations still have the ability to remain powerful engines of economy.

Taking a pessimistic point of view, the above might be considered an economists' version of utopia, but the fact remains that economic growth must continue one way or another, as long as it is driven by an expanding population and the resultant need for resources.

Economic success is most effective in a free market, where companies compete for customers, resources and labor. It has long been a source of perplexion to me as to why liberals, who supposedly seek to improve the plight of common people, consistently champion shortsided measures that slow the economy and reduce competition for labor, which in turn reduces wages. Tariffs, corporate taxes, and the state's obsession with inhibiting competition by making it difficult for venture capitalists to start competing businesses, all harm the plight of the common laborer, as less economic activity means that his services are not in demand as much.
Furthermore, the nationalization of industries harms the economy significantly, as they typically are not as efficient as their private counterparts, for obvious reasons, and actually remove wealth (in the form of taxation) from the populace in order to operate.

At the last, I will ask you this; If decisions relating to economy are not to be trusted to the market, and its' millions upon millions of representatives who vote with their money, who should it be entrusted to? How will you ensure that the right people are appointed to govern such a complex system? What do you do when they fail?

As much as I would love to see someone come along and provide all the answers for a perfect economic system, such a person does not exsist, and any arguments to the contrary can be easily dismantled and even supported by historical precedent and common sense. So now I wait for some ingenious response as to how the world's economic problems can be solved by more intervention by the enlightened few who actually understand the unfathomable number of factors that affect the economy.