Inventor of the 20th century

[Nigel]

Nikola Tesla - Tribute

 

[Kev]

Amazing where we could be as a race/people/planet and beyond, if only we didn't have all of the greed and power struggles holding us back.

Maybe one day - that, or a zombie apocalypse  [scared]

 

[GhostFist]

I was going to post the "Funny or Die" "Drunk History" on Nikola Tesla, but then I remembered there's lots of swearing and vomit in it. You could still learn something if you look it up though.

 

[spikfot]

This is a topic I never would have expected to be breached *in* the FOG-
I welcome any LENR/ CANR followers to contact me, there are far better forums for said topics.

 

[andvari]

Yes, thank you Mr Tesla. Power tools wouldn't be much fun without electricity.

 

[John Stevens]

Amazing where we could be as a race/people/planet and beyond, if only we didn't have all of the greed and power struggles holding us back.

If your point is that life would be better if people weren't greedy and power hungry, sure, who could disagree?  As one of my buddies in high school used to say, "if fishes were wishes and Lake Placid were acid..."

Given that we can't change our nature, I find this video comforting, and well worth the 2 1/2 minutes to watch:

Milton Friedman - Greed

Enjoy!

Regards,

John

 

[Kev]

Amazing where we could be as a race/people/planet and beyond, if only we didn't have all of the greed and power struggles holding us back.

If your point is that life would be better if people weren't greedy and power hungry, sure, who could disagree?  As one of my buddies in high school used to say, "if fishes were wishes and Lake Placid were acid..."

Given that we can't change our nature, I find this video comforting, and well worth the 2 1/2 minutes to watch:

Milton Friedman - Greed

Enjoy!

Regards,

John

I certainly watched it, but "Enjoy" ... nope.

Greed left unchecked leads to massively cruel exploitation. I'm not religious in any way - but I see greed as a very evil thing ... people have goals to achieve great things for reasons other than greed and power. Unfortunately those with massive greed also seem to have very little concern for the happiness and welfare of others - giving them unbalanced degrees of success.

Milton Friedman speaks intelligently, but the things he doesn't say, just eludes to, are extremely dark. He is not a nice person.

At a fundamental level, we can change our nature. You start with yourself first. I believe it anyway.

I'll limit my comments to this as I have very strong feeling on the nature of humanity and the real reasons for it's current state.

 

[AlexThePalex]

Greed by itself is an evil thing by definition.

The desire to make money is as different from greed as that making love is different from rape.

The first two things are examples of a human's natural desire to enjoy life and to live it to its fullest potential. The latter two are examples of where that desire turns into something evil because those are the points where people are willing to hurt other people's well being to pursue their own happiness.

While I don't have a very high opinion about economists and what they call their "science" I am still amazed that a person who is held in such high regard as Friedman is not able to differentiate between the two.

An exampe of how making money is an excellent thing is when a person invents something usefull, opens a factory and sells his invention to others. The company of Festool is a great example of this. An example of greed on the other had, is that of the investment banker, bred with a silver spoon, who puts 3500 people on the streets so he can break up their company and sell it in parts in order to add another 10 million bucks to the 500 million he already has while telling the out-of-their-jobs workers they are in this situation because they should work harder and not be such lazy bums.

Funny thing about this thread is that Nikolai Tesla is a great example of how wrong Friedman is in his assumption that's it's the greedy people who thrust society forward. Tesla was known for his lack of greed, lacking the will or the instinct to profit from his inventions as he was a somehow stereotypical "nutty professor". Yet his inventions hold great value and did an immeasurable amount of good for society as a whole.

 

[John Stevens]

While I don't have a very high opinion about economists and what they call their "science" I am still amazed that a person who is held in such high regard as Friedman is not able to differentiate between the two.

His point on that issue is at 35"-39"

Was Eddy Merckx greedy?  Surely he loved to win, perhaps more than any man, and in his day he was criticized for wanting to win too much.  Who gets to decide when winning or profiting is too much, and on what criteria?  Your example of the investment banker as being greedy is a private-sector example of Bastiat's observation about "what is seen and what is not seen."  You see the destruction, but not the creation.  The investment banker buys companies that are already on the rocks, and to the extent he can salvage parts of them by wasting others, that "profit" has to go somewhere, whether he spends it, loans it directly, or loans it indirectly by "saving" or "investing" it.  No matter what he does, the money flows out of his hands and into someone else's.  The only thing that can get in the way of that is government regulating the market in a manner that favors some at the expense of others.  The problem then, of course, is not a lack of regulation by "virtuous" people to fight "greed." Perhaps we find common ground in this, but if not, we reasonable people can disagree, and I'd prefer clarity to agreement.

Regards,

John

 

[John Stevens]

Greed left unchecked leads to massively cruel exploitation.
[snip]
I'll limit my comments to this as I have very strong feeling on the nature of humanity and the real reasons for it's current state.

I agree that cruel poverty exists, and that cruel exploitation exists, but do you see greed left completely unchecked in modern Western civilization?  We've passed, and we enforce, laws against everything from murder to fraud to dumping toxic waste.

Where do you find more exploitation--in societies that have more individual liberty or more central planning?  As Joseph Schumpeter observed, "The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort."

It's a fallacy that we can have as much or more prosperity by putting restrictions on individual liberty that exceed those that are nearly unanimous in a society.  Government can't control an economy without controlling people, hence collectivism is, as Friedrich Hayek discussed at length, The Road to Serfdom.

I hope what I've written here isn't considered controversial.  If so, it's a sign that Hayek was correct when he wrote almost 70 years ago, "the people of the West...were even induced to believe that their own former convictions [regarding individualism] had merely been rationalizations of selfish interests, that free trade was a doctrine invented to further British interests, and that the political ideals of England and America were hopelessly outmoded and a thing to be ashamed of."

Regards

John

 

[Nigel]

  Towards the end of his life Nikola Tesla was working on what he believed to be his greatest invention - Free energy for all the planet.

Assuming he succeeded or at least was close,what happened to it?Why did no-one continue the work or the invention see the light of day?

Well,I reckon we all know the answer to that!

 

[Kev]

Greed left unchecked leads to massively cruel exploitation.
[snip]
I'll limit my comments to this as I have very strong feeling on the nature of humanity and the real reasons for it's current state.

I agree that cruel poverty exists, and that cruel exploitation exists, but do you see greed left completely unchecked in modern Western civilization?  We've passed, and we enforce, laws against everything from murder to fraud to dumping toxic waste.

Where do you find more exploitation--in societies that have more individual liberty or more central planning?  As Joseph Schumpeter observed, "The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort."

It's a fallacy that we can have as much or more prosperity by putting restrictions on individual liberty that exceed those that are nearly unanimous in a society.  Government can't control an economy without controlling people, hence collectivism is, as Friedrich Hayek discussed at length, The Road to Serfdom.

I hope what I've written here isn't considered controversial.  If so, it's a sign that Hayek was correct when he wrote almost 70 years ago, "the people of the West...were even induced to believe that their own former convictions [regarding individualism] had merely been rationalizations of selfish interests, that free trade was a doctrine invented to further British interests, and that the political ideals of England and America were hopelessly outmoded and a thing to be ashamed of."

Regards

John

No, greed is not left unchecked - we have structures in place now to ensure that the greedy grow wealthier. We have books and strategies on greed. We have people promoting greed and convincing the incredibly gullible that it' a foundation of our society to justify their actions.

I see the results of the worst of people on a regular basis ... lazy greed ... the sort that involves manipulating people and wealth for profit, without contributing one positive thing to our world. These are just giant leeches.

We have very different viewpoints on this. We have different viewpoints on this and if you wish to debate - I'm happy to debate via pm's.

I'll just say I have no problem with somebody producing something excellent and making a good profit. I do have a problem with manipulation for profit.

The more people sit back and accept that what we have is all we'll have and the model has evolved to it best - the less we'll have ... apart from the greedy few.