James White wrote:

Dick Morris
Yes, I know, the market is the ultimate answer for every problem.

Unfortunately not every problem. Take spam, for instance. Is there any
market solution that could work?

How about we try the old "fight fire with fire" approach: spam them
back. The standard recomendation has been to never reply to spam, but I
think that approach has long outlived it's usefullness. Spam recipients
should by all means reply to spam - early and often. If the purveyors
of spam have to sort through thousands of useless replies for every
valid one, they will be unable to cope. That may not be a "market
solution", but it could work.

Farming is such a small part of the economy that we should just do away
with it and turn the land over to more economically productive uses.

This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of economics. Economics re change
is always a margin issue. If today the marginal value of land is higher for
housing that DOES NOT mean that tomorrow it won't be the other way around.

I don't claim to be an economist, though I have taken college level
courses on economics so I think I have a good feel for it. Also, just
so there's no misunderstanding, that remark was intended to be sarcastic
and does not represent my own opinion. I have, however, seen remarks
(by individuals like Julian Simon) which do indeed appear to indicate
that an ever growing population and an ever shrinking agricultural base
is not a problem, so it didn't come completely out of thin air. What I
don't recall seeing are any significant historical examples of urban
areas that have reverted to agriculture - absent a total economic
collapse.

Extraordinary markets require extraordinary launch vehicles. You're
putting the cart before the horse.

No, the original was exactly correct. Even for a lone inventor toiling to
make the extraordinary launch vehicle----though he/she FAILS---was still "a
market" for the vehicle and willing to pay the price.

Personally, I wouldn't consider a developer, whether a lone individual
or a Multinational Conglomerate, to be a market. My point was that we
have to have a marketable vehicle before we can develop the markets - an
extraordinary vehicle if we want to develop extraordinary markets. I
think it is an important point because there has been a tendency to
believe that we shouldn't build a fully-reusable launch vehicle until
the markets exist to "justify" the extraordinary development cost based
on launch cost savings. That will not happen, IMHO.
--

James E. White
Inventor, Marketer, and Author of "Will It Sell?
How to Determine If Your Invention Is Profitably Marketable
(Before Wasting Money on a Patent)" www.willitsell.com
Also: www.booksforinventors.com and www.idearights.com
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