William T Goodall wrote:
>
> On 12 Mar 2004, at 2:16 am, Gautam Mukunda wrote:
>
> > The market value of something is _whatever people are
> > willing to pay for it_. If you found a new gold mine
> > that allowed you to mine gold cheaply for one-sixth of
> > the current price, you would put a lot of gold miners
> > out of work. This would not be illegal. Are you
> > saying that it should be? If you invented a new way
> > to smelt steel with less labor and thus less
> > expensively, you would put a lot of steelworkers out
> > of work. That is not illegal. We only tax the steel
> > if foreign companies sell the steel _below the cost of
> > production_, because that is dumping. But we don't
> > tax it if they are selling at a profit. Are you
> > saying that making steel more cheeply should be
> > illegal?
>
> Or there is De Beers :)
There was something in Wired sometime last year about 2 companies making
artificial diamonds, and doing it very cheaply. We may see computing
done on carbon, not silicon, sometime in the future, and cooling
wouldn't be quite as big of an issue with that.
And it would be nice to see De Beers fall apart.
Julia
has 1 diamond, doesn't want any more for awhile
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