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From fork-admin@xent.com  Wed Aug 28 10:50:29 2002

> From: fork-admin@xent.com [mailto:fork-admin@xent.com] On Behalf Of
James
> Rogers
> Subject: Re: The Curse of India's Socialism
>
> On Tue, 2002-08-20 at 15:01, Ian Andrew Bell wrote:
> > They
> > finished their routine with the a quadruple lutz -- laying off
> > hundreds of thousands of workers when it all came crashing down.
>
> So what?  Nobody is guaranteed employment.  Laying people off is not a
> crime nor is it immoral.  Companies don't exist to provide employment,
> nor should they.  The closest we have to such a thing in the US is a
> Government Job, and look at the quality THAT breeds.
And further, why focus on the fact they were laid off and not on the
fact they were hired in the first place?
BTW: I saw someone claim that aside from the efficiency of the market
there were also gains to society from irrational behavior.
If a society has business people that systematically overestimate their
chances, that is bad for the businessmen but on net a big gain for
society.  On the social level, the law of averages works to societies
benefit in a manner it can't for an individual.
A key reason, in this view, that the US wound up outperforming England
was that the English investors were too rational for their societies own
good.
(Except, of course, when US investors were bilking them to build canals
and railroads over here.  Thanks, guys.)
=====================
Applied to telecom: a lot of dark wire (glass) and innovation will
eventually be used for pennies on the dollar, the benefits to society
and the costs to the investors.