tive and unplanned, those participating in it will be devoting their resources, both intellectual and capital, to short-term gain, short-term profit, short-term increase in market share. The reasons for that are pretty straightforward. Let's imagine that there are three car companies: Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler. Let's say they're really competitive. Then suppose that General Motors decided to put its resources into dealing with problems of global pollution or even trying to produce better cars ten years from now that would be better than those of Ford and Chrysler. At the same time its competitors Ford and Chrysler would be putting their resources into increasing profits and market share tomorrow, next month, next year. During that period, General Motors would be out of luck. They wouldn't have the capital and the profits to carry out their plans. That's exactly why in countries like Japan in the 1950s, the ministry that directed and organized the Japanese economy, together with the big corporate conglomerates, explicitly and openly decided to abandon free-market illusions and to carry out national industrial planning aimed at Japanese development in "strategic sectors" with high long-term potential. In newly developing industries, the industries of the future, the startup costs can be quite considerable. Profit doesn't come for some time. In a competitive, more capitalist society, you're out of luck. But in a more managed society you can deal with that. There are many well-known free-market inadequacies that typically lead capitalist entrepreneurs to call upon the state to intervene for their benefit. In Japan this led to a conscious decision to carry out substantial, organized, planned interference with the market mechanism so that the economy could prosper. Questions of pollution are perfect examples. If one company tries to devote resources to effects on the environment, they will simply be undercut by other companies which ...
