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Originally Posted by Mohoender
Not that sure anymore. Actually yes but they are now looking at short term gains. In addition they are all getting too old and way too few go in retirement. A few month ago, when one of the french bank director was fired (he was 65), the board president came on TV: he was about 80 and could barely walk. I don't expect most of these people to encourage creativity.
A few month before the crisis (whatever you call it), one of these guys came up to me stating that I should understand two things: Money is the engine of the world and the only goal you should have is to make money. I didn't say a word (he could have had a heart seasure) but I don't agree. Human Creativity is the engine, money is only the fuel (therefore, I consider it fine to make money as long as you invest it to fuel the creativity). You can switch fuel almost with ease but don't go very far without engine. IMO, if we can switch from profit to benefit, we might stand a chance.
If the same kind of people had been in power a century ago we would still be riding on horseback. We had a discussion on inventions a few time ago. Targan was the only one that could come up with one thing invented after 1970. Everything else we could thought of had been invented before that date and often developped only recently.
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We are delving deep into various philosophies here.
Humans are selfish creatures, sometimes to the point of pathological behaviour where they would do anything to harm another. Maybe I'm delving too much into Ayn Rand here, but yes, we are all selfish to one degree or another. We do need some of that for our survival and benefit. Money is the medium of exchange to obtain items for our survival as well as a tool to acquire so we can continue the process. It's not perfect, but sometimes barter doesn't work very well and it is more moral an ethical to use than beating someone else over the head for what you want or need.
Even if someone donates time and effort to a charity, there is a degree of selfishness there where the person receives the pleasure of doing good for someone else. I've read Ayn Rand form time to time and even though I'm not an Objectivist and there are a few flaws even in that thinking at times, but she does make a good point for 90% of her beliefs and case.
Things invented after 1970? Well, I believe we are living much the same as we did then except for having a computer (and video games, but I count those as "computers" as well) in the house. We have air conditioning now, we had it then. Color TV, we have now, well, it took us until 1971 to get our first color set. Our current set is a 1982 Zenith we got in early 1983, still in use today. I think overall with the exception of biotech and computers, we have plateaued.
We talked about this at work again, the changes from 1900 to 2000 or even 1900 to 1970 was remarkable and the fastest technology rise we have seen. We went from horseless carriages and the Wright Flyer to the Moon landing. The second place winner would be 1800 to 1900, we went from horseback to steam engines and horseless carriages.
Chuck