Suggested Answers to the Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

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Question 1

Did our author, George Gilder, write 24 months before our focus book (Life After Capitalism: The Meaning of Wealth, the Future of the Economy, and the Theory of Money) was released 5/30/2023 – an article simply entitled “Life After Capitalism”?

Answer 1

Yes.

Question 2

Did the article comprise 5,022 words, or about 11 Microsoft Word pages?

Answer 2

Yes.

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[NB: The remaining questions pertain solely to the article.]

Question 3

Does George Gilder state that he had long criticized the assertion that Communist regimes were merely capitalist in a disguise of incompetence?

Answer 3

Yes.

Question 4

By way of background, does socialism feature governmental ownership of the means of production, and does communism feature “from each according to her/his ability and to each according to her/his need”?

Answer 4

Yes.

Even though modern usage of “socialism” has often been bastardized to mean progressive policies (i.e., wealthier people pay proportionately more and/or poor people receive proportionately more).

Since George Gilder (age 83) is in the same age range as Yours Truly (age 81), we will use the TRADITIONAL meaning of socialism.

Question 5

So have so-called communist countries such as the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China really ever been communist? Or were they forced to stop at socialism in order to provide incentives for individuals to work, which meant that they were NOT being remunerated in accordance with their need (vs. what was required to get them to work)?

Answer 5

No, neither the Soviet Union nor the People’s Republic of China have ever been communist.

[Indeed, USSR is an acronym that stands for Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics.]

Both were forced to stop at socialism in order to incent individuals to work.

Question 6

So isn’t it intuitively obvious that if socialism (including so-called “communism”) features governmental ownership of the means of production, it would be purely fortuitous if the governmental managers produced what consumers want (contrasted with businesses privately owned and their success/failure governed by their ability to produce what consumers want)?

Answer 6

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 7

But back to George Gilder’s article, does he then argue that banks no longer make loans to start-up companies, COVID wreaked havoc on the economy, energy production is distorted due to global-warming concerns, and education “is run by manipulative ideologues with lifelong tenure and government appointments, funded by $1.5 trillion in guaranteed student loans”? As a result of which we “live in a new twilight zone beyond capitalism”?

Answer 7

Yes, though IMHO that sounds like a proverbial “word salad.”

Question 8

In more understandable terms, does George Gilder’s article explain the first sub-title of his subsequent book (“The Meaning of Wealth”) as comprising KNOWLEDGE rather than MATERIALS?

Answer 8

Yes.

Question 9

In other words, did he argue that ancient cavemen had all of the materials that we have today but lacked the knowledge of what to do with them?

Answer 9

Yes.

Question 10

Would a good relatively-recent example (not mentioned in the article) be Jimmy Carter who posited that the world has only a limited supply of oil & gas? Which caused him to de-regulate domestic oil & gas prices (to reduce consumption) but impose a “windfall-profit” tax so that oil companies didn’t reap the benefit since he believed there was nothing they could do to increase supply?

Answer 10

Yes and Yes.

Question 11

Would the “windfall-profit” tax have made sense if Jimmy Carter’s assumption of limited supply had been accurate?

Answer 11

Perhaps.

But it wasn’t accurate.

One would have thought that a Nuclear Engineering graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy would know something about science -- in addition to which he might investigate a bit the scientific facts rather than just make them up “out of thin air”!!!

Question 12

But would it eliminate any economic incentive to explore in new areas and to increase technology (our author’s famous “knowledge” is “wealth” thesis) so that worldwide oil & gas production today is many times the amount during Jimmy Carter’s reign?

Answer 12

Yes, it would eliminate any economic incentive.

And if Jimmy Carter had bothered to ascertain the facts, he would have discovered that under then-exiting technology only a small fraction of the oil & gas in place could be produced and offshore drilling could only be accomplished in relatively shallow water.

Question 13

Indeed, isn’t “gas fracking” one of the reasons why the U.S. achieved energy independence a few years ago? And, BTW, a major reason why the U.S. production of greenhouse gases declined because natural gas produces less carbon per unit of power than oil?

Answer 13

Yes and Yes.

BTW, EVERY TIME OUR ORGANIZATION HAS CONSIDERED GLOBAL WARMING (AKA CLIMATE CHANGE), WE HAVE ALWAYS ASKED FOR A SHOW OF HANDS BY ANYONE WHO WOULD FAVOR INVADING CHINA MILITARILY (THE WORLD’S LARGEST CARBON POLLUTER BY FAR) TO FORCE IT TO STOP BRINGING ON LINE A NEW MONSTER-SIZE COAL-FIRED ELECTRIC-GENERATION PLANT EVERY WEEK OR SO.

AND NOBODY HAS EVER RAISED A HAND!!!

A REVIEW OF OUR 53 PUBLIC-POLICY CAMPAIGNS AIMED AT NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL LEADERS OVER OUR 18 YEARS OF EXISTENCE (please see viewforum.php?f=23&sid=28730457fa2536fe64cc6d7c2b316a8e) DISCLOSES THAT EACH TIME WE HAVE CONSIDERED GLOBAL WARMING (AKA CLIMATE CHANGE), WE HAVE ALWAYS –

(1) opposed wind/solar/etc. since they are so much more expensive than carbon fuels and would probably require military action to force carbon polluters to adopt uneconomic energy sources; and

(2) strongly recommended thorium fission because it is a 100% carbon-free energy source that is much cheaper (unless government “red tape” purposely mushrooms its true cost) than oil & gas.

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The public, unfortunately, is unaware that there is an ECONOMIC carbon-free energy source that is abundant and safe.

Primarily because Hollywood has done the “heavy lifting” for the oil & gas industry and for OPEC (aka the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) by FALSELY portraying nuclear energy as dangerous.

Thorium/fission was proved feasible in the 1960’s when the U.S. National Nuclear-Research Laboratory at Oak Ridge TN conducted a successful 18-month continuous demonstration project comprising a thorium-fueled nuclear reactor.

But President Nixon caused the nation to turn away from thorium (and toward uranium and plutonium) because thorium is incapable of exploding or being utilized to produce nuclear weapons.

INDEED, THE LARGEST THORIUM REACTOR IS THE EARTH ITSELF WHICH IS WHY MOLTEN LAVA BILLOWS FROM ANY RUPTURE IN THE EARTH’S THIN SURFACE AND WHY THE CENTER OF THE EARTH IS 7,000 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT WHICH IS HOTTER THAN THE SUN’S SURFACE.

Both conventional uranium fission and proven thorium/fission share all of the following advantages: (a) producing no greenhouse gases; (b) eliminating the dependence of the U.S. and its allies on members of OPEC (the long-standing Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries) and, in the case of Europe, natural gas imports from Russia (in addition to oil & gas imports from OPEC); and (c) eliminating the gaping U.S. balance-of-payments deficit and resulting piling up of our foreign national debt.

However, proven thorium/fission has the following advantages over conventional uranium/fission –

[These advantages are virtually identical to those listed by Dr. Victor Stenger in The Huffington Post - https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-s ... 92584.html.]

(1) LFTR’s (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors) require minimal containment chambers because meltdowns are physically impossible since LFTR’s operate near atmospheric pressure (this is both a safety and cost factor).

(2) LFTR’s do not require elaborate cooling systems because they operate well below the boiling point of molten salt and can be passively cooled (this is also both a safety and cost factor).

(3) Thorium is so stable that, as mentioned above, it is impossible to make a nuclear weapon from thorium which is why the U.S. turned to uranium and plutonium instead of thorium.

(4) Thorium has such an incredibly-high “burn-up” that there is virtually no long-lived radioactive waste.

(5) LFTR’s can safely consume uranium from decommissioned nuclear warheads and from spent uranium-reactor fuel rods. Indeed, the Oak Ridge MSRE in the 1960’s was able to use U-235, Pu-239 and U-233 at the same time as thorium. [NB: Since former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of NV prevented the opening of Yucca Mountain NV as the repository for our spent uranium-nuclear fuel rods, the spent uranium-nuclear fuel rods have been left on site at each uranium-nuclear plant to remain cool in the equivalent of home swimming-pools even though many of those uranium-nuclear plants are situated in high-volume air corridors!!!]

(6) Because LFTR’s are economically practical in small sizes, they can be mass-produced in factories and assembled near electrical demand so that the huge energy losses during electricity transmission are virtually eliminated -- though to replace huge uranium reactors, it would only be necessary to assemble several of the small modular thorium reactors into a larger plant.

(7) In addition, thorium is so plentiful that proven thorium supplies are capable of supplying 100% of the world’s energy (not just electricity) for more than 1,000 years. Indeed, virtually all of India’s “sand” beaches comprise thorium.

[Our calculation was 80 years of “proven” reserves of uranium for current (electricity only) usage multiplied by 3 (the minimum abundance factor of “proven” thorium reserves vs. “proven” uranium reserves) multiplied by 99 (usable thorium energy content vs. usable uranium energy content) multiplied by 5.8% (the percentage of total worldwide energy including transportation fuels, that comes from nuclear plants) = 1,378 years.]

[ThEC15 was a worldwide conference on thorium research that was held in Mumbai, India, in 2015 by the Government of India and two of its agencies, BARC and NPCIL, along with HBNI and IThEO. The ThEC15 website (http://www.thoriumenergyworld.com/thec15-mumbai.html) contains 127 papers and speeches by 46 speakers from 30 different nations.]


Question 14

Is another major theme of George Gilder’s article the idea that wealth should be measured in terms of TIME – how many hours/minutes workers have to spend to purchase goods/services?

Answer 14

Yes.

Question 15

And have “time prices” plummeted as knowledge (aka technology) increases?

Answer 15

Yes.

Question 16

Do “time prices” always plummet as the result of knowledge increases, or can they also plummet because jobs are exported to take advantage of low-wage workers, workers who are not protected by environmental and safety concerns, etc. (and, in some cases, slave labor)?

Answer 16

Unfortunately, “time prices” can also plummet because jobs are exported to take advantage of low-wage workers, workers who are not protected by environmental and safety concerns, etc. (and, in some cases, slave labor).

Question 17

Is another major thesis of George Gilder’s article that under capitalism, capital migrates not to those who can spend it best, but to those who can expand it best”?

Answer 17

Yes. But do you believe it??? Let’s discuss!!!

After all, George Gilder defined “wealth” as knowledge (please see Q&A-8 and Q&A-9) though he may quibble with whether “wealth” is the same as “capital.”

But more importantly –

(1) What about inherited wealth/capital???

(2) What about new ideas whose inventors didn’t require significant wealth/capital for their discoveries???

(3) What about one of the biggest wealth/capital-generation ideas of the last 3 decades – exporting American jobs to low-wage countries???

(4) Etc., etc.???

Question 18

Is it possible to summarize George Gilder’s ideas? Or are there so many that you feel that many economic courses would be needed to consider each of them properly?

Answer 18

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 19

Do you think his zillions of ideas, whether you agree or disagree with each, are fun to consider?

Answer 19

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

[IMHO, the answer is a resounding Yes.]