Point/Counterpoint: Did capitalism save the Chilean miners?

maryf

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sat Oct-23-10 08:27 PM
Original message

Point/Counterpoint: Did capitalism save the Chilean miners?

Edited on Sat Oct-23-10 08:54 PM by maryf

Below are two articles with very different viewpoints on whether capitalism helped save the miners, the first from the Wall Street Journal, guess which they contend?

I have to say, and reiterate below, that the main point of the wsj article appears to be that innovation saved the miners, the author seems to believe that innovation is motivated purely and solely by profit; I disagree, and on edit have to say that the second article rings far truer to me, but post both articles (see links for entirety) for your consideration:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527487036...

Capitalism Saved the Miners
The profit = innovation dynamic was everywhere at the mine rescue site.

It needs to be said. The rescue of the Chilean miners is a smashing victory for free-market capitalism.
Amid the boundless human joy of the miners' liberation, it may seem churlish to make such a claim. It is churlish. These are churlish times, and the stakes are high.

<snip>

This profit = innovation dynamic was everywhere at that Chilean mine. The high-strength cable winding around the big wheel atop that simple rig is from Germany. Japan supplied the super-flexible, fiber-optic communications cable that linked the miners to the world above.

<snip>
That's right. In an open economy, you will never know what is out there on the leading developmental edge of this or that industry. But the reality behind the miracles is the same: Someone innovates something useful, makes money from it, and re-innovates, or someone else trumps their innovation. Most of the time, no one notices. All it does is create jobs, wealth and well-being. But without this system running in the background, without the year-over-year progress embedded in these capitalist innovations, those trapped miners would be dead.

Some will recoil at these triumphalist claims for free-market capitalism. Why make them now?

<snip>
The miners' rescue is a thrilling moment for Chile, an imprimatur on its rising status. But I'm thinking of that 74-person outfit in Berlin, Pa., whose high-tech drill bit opened the earth to free them. You know there are tens of thousands of stories like this in the U.S., as big as Google and small as Center Rock. I'm glad one of them helped save the Chileans. What's needed now is a new American economic model that lets our innovators rescue the rest of us.

ah the last sentence I can concur, but I don't think innovation has to be motivated or inspired by profit. mf

Here's the counter point...
Au contraire below...

http://www.fair.org/blog/2010/10/18/capitalism-sav.../

'Capitalism Saved the Miners'? Part Two
10/18/2010
by Steve Rendall
The emerging hero of the Chilean miners' story--in Latin America and elsewhere, if not in the U.S.--is Luis Urzúa, a topographer who took a job at the San José mines as a shift foreman while awaiting the start of new a job in his field. NASA officials working on the rescue called Urzúa "a natural leader," but his most important accomplishment was getting the 33 miners through the first 17 days of their crisis, when all they had was enough food for two days, dirty water and no idea if a rescue effort was even underway.

Besides implementing food rationing and a 24-hour watch to listen for rescuers, Urzúa is credited with unifying the men and mediating conflicts in the desperate situation. As a topographer, Urzúa also had technical expertise useful to the rescue team. He was the last miner to be brought up because of his value to the effort.

Urzúa, whose father was a Communist leader murdered by the Pinochet regime, and whose stepfather, a Socialist mining union leader, was in turn killed by anti-left government violence, explained his leadership approach to London's Guardian:
Speaking from a hospital bed at the San José mine, shift foreman Luis Urzúa--the man who kept the Chilean miners alive for two months--said his secret for keeping the men bonded and focused on survival was majority decision-making.

"You just have to speak the truth and believe in democracy," said Urzúa, his eyes hidden behind black glasses.... "Everything was voted on.... We were 33 men, so 16 plus one was a majority." So the hero of our story, a mine foreman, says he discarded corporate, top-down decision-making in favor of workplace democracy.

The last few paragraphs point to how Hennigers article fails to mention that capitalism could be blamed for the accident by extension, and how Urzua's story helped prove that capitalism was far from being the salvation...read at the link!