Technology R&D Needs Unification

First, I would like to apologize for taking so long in responding. It has been a hectic last few days (Exams will do that to you. I should probably get back to those…) I will start off by quoting my opponent. "While it is true that a unification would eradicate capitalism, the positive consequences would far outweigh any petty price difference that would probably arise." I am both shocked and amazed that my opponent would call the eradication of capitalism a "petty price difference". Capitalism is one of the founding principles of America. The idea that any man can rise to fame and fortune if he works hard enough, that is capitalism. My opponent also does not seem to realize that this will not only take every major tech company and force them, against their will, to become one mega corporation, but it will stop any entrepreneurs from emerging in the field. What will happen to America's famous "little guy"? The man that comes up with a brilliant idea, works hard for it, and makes it rich, he will no longer exist. Because, if he comes up with any breakthrough technology idea, he will immediately have to join a massive, most certainly government run, company. Which may sound good and fine, but many entrepreneurs leave are entrepreneurs and not managers because they don't want to work in a company. They want to be their own boss. http://news.medill.northwestern.edu... Although this isn't a totally tech related example, it is how many entrepreneurs think. This person would not have been able to leave the corporate world and start her own business had what my opponent is proposing been in effect and she was in a tech field. Next, I will address my opponent's rebuttal to my point about an organization having too much power. He said that it has a certain amount of risk, but that it will eventually benefit all of humanity. I contest both of those statements, and the first I will address now and the second is what this entire debate is arguing. Here is a simple, easy to imagine scenario: The upper managers of the Super Company become slightly corrupt. They do not even need to be evil or cruel or totally under someone's influence, just a little corrupt. So, they decide to raise the prices in a country that they don't like, or have been told not to like, and lower the prices somewhere else, maybe their home country. They don't have to change the price much, just a little bit, maybe $1 higher, and a dollar lower. It really doesn't seem like much, until you take into account the millions of purchases made ever day on tech products. Suddenly, one country is paying billions more every day, and one country is keeping billions. That builds up, and a country is suddenly much wealthier than the other. Its influence rises, its power rises, and everything is unstable. A minor change, just a dollar, and suddenly the balance of power is gone. Having a computer run a massive company like that is almost as bad, as computers do not have imagination or intuition, both of which are more important than the cold logic that it posses in spades. If a person came up with a new, amazing product, the computer would do what computers do, which is judge it on logic. If it wasn't a logical decision, then the computer wouldn't make it, where a human might see promise and take the risk. That isn't even mentioning the organization that could make the companies come together. Who has the power to make Apple and Microsoft managers work peacefully together? Or the power take a small business run is, say, Japan, uproot it against it and Japan's government's will, and force it to move to a new country, say the US, where they have new bosses, work ethics, and coworkers. Do we need an all-powerful, all mighty group of people that can do whatever they want wherever they want? What if they become corrupt? What happens then? Once again, I will quote my opponent: "Though a unification would set a precedent, such a thing is hardly important." He goes on to cite Standard Oil, and how it was a precedent. I believe that this is a great example. For if we don't learn from the past, we are doomed to repeat it. I would like to point out to the judges (you the readers), that Standard Oil was started twenty years before the first anti-trust laws came out, and as soon as they did, attorneys almost instantly attacked Standard Oil, which was an oil monopoly. Why would they do this, you might ask. They did it because they recognized the danger that monopolies pose to an economy. Standard Oil had many advantages: they were all in America, they paid American taxes, and they had very efficient oil production, making it cheaper than their opponents. So, if it so obviously beneficial to an entire country, why dissolve it? I will quote (yes, I know I do this a lot) a congressman said when arguing for the act: "trusts have made products cheaper, have reduced prices; but if the price of oil, for instance, were reduced to one cent a barrel, it would not right the wrong done to people of this country by the trusts which have destroyed legitimate competition and driven honest men from legitimate business enterprise". -Representative William Mason http://en.wikipedia.org...... As for the Manhattan project, I will make this brief (not because the subject isn't relevant or important, but I am tired. Sorry, lol). At its most basic, the Manhattan Project was driven by competition. The United States believed that Germany and Japan were building and atomic bomb as well, and so that motivated them to start and finish the Manhattan Project in the amount of time that they did. So, if you look at the US and Germany as companies, they were racing to develop a product that would eliminate the competitor. The US, driven by this sense of urgency, made the bomb first, and because of it, won the war. If they hadn't, then Germany or Japan would have had it, and the US would have lost. http://en.wikipedia.org...... Finally, I do not suggest, nor do I personally that people can only be motivated by money. But, that is what makes most businessmen as driven as they are. Scientists are allowed to be driven by curiosity and a moral conscience, but, usually, if a businessman does that before he is extremely successful, he will be eaten by the other businesses. I eagerly await your rebuttal.