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2010.04.13

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Mitte uus, vaid vana.

Siin tuleb ühest asjast aru saada ...lihtrahval läheb täna halvasti. Süüdi - rikkad muidugi, kes muu, kõik, kellel läheb hästi. Kes võiks pakkuda: rohkem töökohti, rohkem raha, rohkem muusikat. Hoiavad kõike enda tarbeks, eks ole.

Markomajandus - kehastab seda, et ikkagi on mingeid rikkaid. Lihtne inimene - kust raha tuleb, muidugi on see rikaste käes ja sealt tulebki. Poliitikud - valijate enamus on lihtinimesed, rõhume siis selle ebausu peale, mängime nende isiklike huvide pele ja selle peale, et nad liituvad rõõmsalt igasuguse demagoogiaga, mis annab mingit alust rikastelt midagi ära võtta, et äkki õnnestubki. Tulemus - kommunism ja diktatuur, kui läbi läheb, meeleheitlikult vahetatakse klasse ja jagatakse ümber, kuni kõik otsas on. Siis tuleb mõnest ajakohasest usast nänni - tolmulappe ja pesumasinaid -, mida ise teha ei oska. Ratas ringleb jälle edasi.

Illustratsiooniks:
http://priitp.typepad.com/fear-and-loathing-20/2010/04/makromajandus-on-uus-must.html

The Pie Fallacy

A surprising number of people retain from childhood the idea that there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world. There is, in any normal family, a fixed amount of money at any moment. But that's not the same thing.

When wealth is talked about in this context, it is often described as a pie. "You can't make the pie larger," say politicians. When you're talking about the amount of money in one family's bank account, or the amount available to a government from one year's tax revenue, this is true. If one person gets more, someone else has to get less.

I can remember believing, as a child, that if a few rich people had all the money, it left less for everyone else. Many people seem to continue to believe something like this well into adulthood. This fallacy is usually there in the background when you hear someone talking about how x percent of the population have y percent of the wealth. If you plan to start a startup, then whether you realize it or not, you're planning to disprove the Pie Fallacy.

What leads people astray here is the abstraction of money. Money is not wealth. It's just something we use to move wealth around. So although there may be, in certain specific moments (like your family, this month) a fixed amount of money available to trade with other people for things you want, there is not a fixed amount of wealth in the world. You can make more wealth. Wealth has been getting created and destroyed (but on balance, created) for all of human history.

Suppose you own a beat-up old car. Instead of sitting on your butt next summer, you could spend the time restoring your car to pristine condition. In doing so you create wealth. The world is-- and you specifically are-- one pristine old car the richer. And not just in some metaphorical way. If you sell your car, you'll get more for it.

In restoring your old car you have made yourself richer. You haven't made anyone else poorer. So there is obviously not a fixed pie. And in fact, when you look at it this way, you wonder why anyone would think there was. [5]

Kids know, without knowing they know, that they can create wealth. If you need to give someone a present and don't have any money, you make one. But kids are so bad at making things that they consider home-made presents to be a distinct, inferior, sort of thing to store-bought ones-- a mere expression of the proverbial thought that counts. And indeed, the lumpy ashtrays we made for our parents did not have much of a resale market.

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