Part 1: Expensive cars.

How about Microsoft?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft#Early_history

This is the business that changed the world.

Julie

Part 2: Inexpensive guitars.

I bought one of these. It was one hundred forty nine dollars delivered. M'kay? It's essentially disposable. It's from a Chinese company which appears to be selling them by the pound. There are minor problems with the neck geometry, but nothing unusual for a modern guitar... But at that price, fixing them would cost more than the cost of the instrument. The sound is very good if not great. The back is painted black, so no one can pretend it's an elegant piece. But on the other hand, it delivers a combination of features that the Gibson line of guitars, which it richly emulates, never offered. (Specifically, it's got a faux Tune-O-Matic bridge on a full hollowbody... Not just a semi-hollowbody.) Plugged in, it sounds pretty good. Played acoustically, the tone is surprisingly deep and jazzy. I'm probably going to give it to a three-year-old in my life... And if he breaks it during horseplay before he learns to play it, no one will be too upset.

I'm probably going to buy one of these... I just can't believe people are making things like that for these prices. (South Korean.) See the pictures at the bottom of the page. Look at the color and texture of the back, and the neatly unadorned, almost military lines of the neck. The ugliest thing on this guitar is the scratchplate, which looks like plastic... But that can be easily replaced or removed.

No one is going to confuse these with the best American instruments from the middle of the 20th century. But no one with their eyes closed, including the musicians who play them, is likely to detect much difference. 150 years ago, nations would have gone to war over a guitar of this quality.

Postrel has written about this a few times. Over the course of decades, things get better and better. Cars are infinitely more reliable, and require a fraction of their former maintenance. Clothes essentially don't wear out, buttons rarely pop off, and I can't remember the last time I jammed a zipper. Phones may not sound as good as the best landlines did in 1970, but you can use them from anywhere in the city and most of the countryside. Fixtures and appliances and furnishings are made from new materials which are first regarded as less attractive... And then you notice that they never tarnish or break.

Life is still dark— Many people in the church, the government, the marketplace and the street want nothing less than the flesh from your bones, if only for amusement.

But don't kid yourself... This is a really, really good time to be alive.

This time I'm going to use a representational item:

http://www.enbrel.com/what-is-ENBREL.jspx?WT.z_co=P&WT.z_in=OTH&WT.z_ch=PDS&WT.z_se=G&WT.srch=1&WT.z_ag=enbrel&WT.mc_id=P_OTH_PDS_G_enbrel

Enbrel has taken me from someone always teetering on the verge of an inability to work to someone who is getting promotions and taking over my department. I work in a medical center...all of the talk of altruism is BS. If there was no money in research, few people would do it. Medical Science and our ability to live a life with less suffering and fewer fatal injuries and illnesses are a result of capitalism

There is hardly anything simpler than a wooden, yellow Number 2 pencil.

Despite that, no body knows how to make one. Yet, nonetheless, we have them in abundance.

Cars are infinitely more reliable, and require a fraction of their former maintenance.

The average new car takes 23.1 weeks of average income to purchase.

About the same as in the 1970s, and close to the least ever.

But wait, there's more. There wasn't enough money on the planet to buy a car in 1975 nearly as good as today's Ford Focus.

Keep that in mind next time you read about the Consumer Price Index.

Feel free to post other awesomeness that capitalism makes or made possible:

Well, duh, The Advice Goddess Blog!

Without capitalism there would be no ads supporting you, Amy, and you might just have to take a job in the socialist state-run media writing inane propaganda to earn a living (either that or be hand picking produce on a government run farm to feed the workers who toil away in non-productive factories)

How about comparing ENIAC which cost almost $500,000 (approximately $6,000,000 today). Then look at the Mac you're working on that could calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory in about 5 seconds on a busy day.

Dammit, I screwed up the links! I really regret that. There's a global recession on, and many of our lives are being significantly deformed. Permanently. With emotional consequences. Many of us are never going to feel as confident as we did ten years ago. But it's important to understand that capitalism's refinements keep on coming... And to realize that the guitars and craftsmanship being emulated came from Kalamazoo, not Santiago or Jaipur or Vilnius or Bujumbura. As Thomas PM Barnett puts it, 'America is the source code for modernity'. And that source code is still running even while things appear to be getting darker and stupider. These guitars together are worth less than the computer you're reading with right now, no matter how modest it is.

This is the first one; I bought it, I like it a lot.

It's perfectly functional, has distinctive charms, and is laugh-out-loud inexpensive.

And…

…And this is the second guitar, which I'll probably buy soon. And even if it's a stinker (which is virtually impossible), it will still be a snickeringly inexpensive mistake. (I mean, I've wasted more than $300 on horrible dates. I'm stuck with the memories of chilly women, but I can pass a less-appealing instrument to a charity and still feel good about myself.)

Here's the kind of handcrafted instrument being emulated... For somewhere between a tenth and a hundredth of the price.

Listen, fashion means more to people than authenticity does nowadays... And I think that's a great thing. Mass market goods and mass market foods and mass market medicines have enriched all of our lives tremendously. (I'll die without owning a really great archtop guitar... But because I play so badly, it doesn't matter. My appreciation of the instrument is blissfully saturated, and earlier generations of shitty guitar players weren't so lucky.)

Also, here's how middle age works: In about seven or ten years, I'm going to think "Donna" in Embrel ad that Julie linked to is a stone fox...

And not just because she's too sick to run if I chase her.

Her hair's probably not really that color. But the wood in the guitar isn't really that color, either.

7. Mr. Edwards’ “Two Americas” premise is very appealing

8. Again, his wife was dying of cancer, and thus was not an ideal partner for sexual intercourse

9. Mr. Edwards is attractive, and it is pleasing to imagine him having sexual intercourse with another attractive person

Love those kids.

Heard after the supersonic skydive.
America where even it's drink companies have a space program.

Enbrel, Adderall -- good calls, both. Let me add: Gleevec, without which I'd be a widower today.

From the article cited in Crid's first post (October 19, 2012 6:27 PM): "ACCELERATING FROM a standstill to 186 mph in 14.5 seconds is a fairly kinetic event. Very loud, tunnel vision, urge to pee."

Well, sign me right up!

@Crid: "Phones may not sound as good as the best landlines did in 1970, but you can use them from anywhere in the city and most of the countryside."

Let's talk more about those phones. Cell phones, in particular. Much easier and cheaper to set up than land lines, cell phone networks have had a revolutionary effect on communciations in the developing world. My wife tells me that, back home in the Philippines, even the poorest folks will have cell phones. Lots of people there use pay-as-you-go plans, and shops where you can buy additional minutes are all over the place (just look for the sign that says "Load Na!").

And check out this cool CNN article from last month to see how they're doing it in Africa.

> America where even it's drink companies have
> a space program.

The drink is Austrian, the skydiver was a New Zealander.

But they wanted to do something cool. Where were they going to go? Madagascar? Thailand? Uruguay?

No, they came here.

Carnegie libraries. Andrew Carnegie came to the US and worked in a bobbin factory. He provided money for 1,689 libraries in the US and made the communities that took his money agree to support the libraries and pay for 10% of the construction costs. The libraries had open stacks--meaning the patron could chose her own books and not have to ask a clerk or librarian to retrieve it. My little Montana town had a Carnegie library.

KateC brings up a good point. There is a linear relationship between capitalism and charity. If wealth is not created, it cannot be shared.

Julie

My husband's great grandfather was an original investor in Standard Oil. He paid for Helen Keller to attend college, loaned George Washington Carver his private railroad car so Carver didn't have to sit in 2nd class when he traveled in the South, and bailed Mark Twain out of bankruptcy.

> There is a linear relationship between
> capitalism and charity.

I greatly admire Gates & his Missus for targeting malaria (and other things) with his charity.

I deeply despise Slim, who displaced Gates as the world's richest person, for mocking those charitably impulses.

Apple people will snort, but Gates' accretion of wealth came through innovation, talent and hard work.

Mexican people will weep, but Slim's accretion of wealth came through politics and monopoly.

Slim is retrograde.

" Furthest Left College Assignment Ever?" unfortunately it probably isn't the furthest left.

I deeply despise Slim, who displaced Gates as the world's richest person, for mocking those charitably impulses. -- Crid [CridComment at gmail] at October 20, 2012 7:01 PM

While I can agree on the sentiment -- and some things are a community issue, not an individual issues, Slim wants to give people jobs that earn money and not just a handout.

For example giving out 1000 sleeping nets to prevent the person being eaten alive by mosquitoes, at night, will cost about $2K. Meanwhile ~$50 of DDT will kill millions of mosquitoes day and night.

Then throw in that micro-loans that allow someone to open a profit driven pharmacy in some village in back-end of nowhere that will sell medicine and will bring much more to the owner and the family than giving them $1K cash. Probably they will have employees as well.

Money makes money.

The communists know this. Do you remember the Khmer Rouge and the glasses and education?

Apple people will snort, but Gates' accretion of wealth came through innovation, talent and hard work.

His company was also convicted of an illegal monopoly while still under his guidance.

His company was also convicted of an illegal monopoly while still under his guidance. -- I R A Darth Aggie at October 21, 2012 8:35 AM

And it probably was needed. But at the same time Jobs went with a closed system approach and may soon be paying the price for it.