Doesn't their existing infrastructure, and social dependency on that infrastructure, give them a somewhat legitimate need for a bailout? If other, smaller, more efficient companies can replace everything the telecom behemoths do, then let the big boys suffer, but is that the case? Can smaller tech savvy companies do everything the large telecoms do or are we talking strictly about broadband internet?
Doesn't their existing infrastructure, and social dependency on that infrastructure, give them a somewhat legitimate need for a bailout?
As far as I know, the citizens of the US are engaged in an ongoing "bailout" of the Baby Bells... that's what all of the tariffs, etc. on the standard phone bill are for.
We've *paid* for the infrastructure, allowing the telcos to profit from their regional monopolies for decades.
I think that it is time to reclaim our ownership of it, decouple the infrastructure from the services by making infrastructure maintenance the province of non-profit organizations, forcing the the Baby Bells to compete for services on a level playing field.
Of course, it will never happen - the Baby Bells spend enormous amounts of lobbying money at both the state and federal level to retain their "ownership" and control of "their" infrastructure, and the fact that our money was spent to build out their regional infrastructures is something they'd prefer everyone ignore.
Oddly, one of the justifications that the Baby Bells continue to use for tariffs is to guarantee services in low population density areas... yet these regions are still lagging far behind more populous locations in DSL availability (and even quality POTS lines) because it isn't "cost effective" for the Bells to roll out such services there, despite the fact that the tariffs are supposed to eliminate cost considerations in such places in the first place!
Further, the ILECs continue to prevent competition from CLECs whenever possible.
True story: Here in Upstate NY I had a customer that wanted high speed Internet access... they are located in a small rural town, and a T1 line wasn't an option due to the cost. The POTS lines are lousy (and have been for the nearly 2 decades that I've done service there), and the local cable company didn't offer cablemodem services because their infrastructure couldn't support it and the owner wasn't prepared to make the financial commitment to rebuild the cable plant in town.
The ILEC in this case (Verizon) wouldn't even offer them ISDN, which was in theory available, would have been at least acceptable for their Internet needs (which were basic email and light Web-browsing for some 20 LAN users).
Well, after some searching, I found a CLEC that could offer DSL albeit "only" at 256Kbps due to distance) and local business dialtone service as well. There was much rejoicing, and plans were made to roll it out. A few other companies in town discovered what this company doing, and they too expressed an interest in DSL for their Internet access. It looked like a "win-win" for everyone: My customers would get cost-effective Internet access, lower cost business telephone service, the CLEC would get business that Verizon couldn't (or wouldn't) provide and my company would make money installing the firewalls, routers, mail servers, etc.
When Verizon found out what was going on, they closed the POP from which the CLEC was operating, splitting the services between 2 small cities in the area, citing "lack of demand for services" from that location as the reason for their actions, thereby eliminating the CLEC's ability to deliver local dial tone and DSL services to that town.
This is the same Verizon that is now allowed to offer long distance services because they have sufficiently opened up the last mile to competition...
The more things change, the more they stay the same, at least here in Verizonland.
It's obvious to me that so long as the RBOCs have control of the last mile, continue to have it supported by tax dollars, credits and tariffs, and abuse their monopoly control over it, that they will *not* compete, but will simply continue to ask for more money from us and the government when their mistakes cost them money.
Time to wean them from the public teat. No more bailouts!
There's a commercial running in the Wash, DC area about the curious condition of SBC (another of the Baby Bells). Seems that one of the financial officers was boasting to Wall Street that the company was so flush with cash (the amount $5B comes to mind), that they didn't know how they were going to spend it all! A mere week later, the company announced layoffs of 11,000 and now they want a bailout from the Fed Govt.
There's a commercial running in the Wash, DC area about the curious condition of SBC (another of the Baby Bells). Seems that one of the financial officers was boasting to Wall Street that the company was so flush with cash (the amount $5B comes to mind), that they didn't know how they were going to spend it all! A mere week later, the company announced layoffs of 11,000 and now they want a bailout from the Fed Govt. >>>>>>
Maybe they studied math with the Enron accountants?
Well put - you hit the nail on the head. I can't say I'm surprised to hear about your troubles with Verizon upstate. Reminds me of many stories I could relate...
What amazes me about them is how blatant and unapologetic they always were in flouting the TA96 regulations; even down to the middle- and lower-management. We watched them directly, blatantly and constantly bludgeon their "competitors." The FCC always seemed at best paralyzed by the political fight, and once Bush took the election, the writing was on the wall...
Your idea about maintaining the infrastrcuture with non-profits and converting the RBOCs to client status is an excellent one. Makes you wonder why they didn't do it that way in the first place.;)
Your idea about maintaining the infrastrcuture with non-profits and converting the RBOCs to client status is an excellent one. Makes you wonder why they didn't do it that way in the first place.;) Same reason these things always happen. Somebody had a lot of money, and some other people were willing to sell out the public to get their hands on it.
Verizon is still a protected monopoly hereabouts (with exclusive territories), from back in the day when GTE was the poor little downtrodden local telecom trying desperately to compete (but not doing so well largely due to crap service, which certainly hasn't gotten any better). Now that they have, per latest numbers I've seen, 83% of the market, will someone explain to me why they're still a protected monopoly with exclusive territories??
This area can't get DSL because Verizon won't update the bad DMS station (it's 15 years old and was defective/outdated when it was installed, and they can't get parts for it. So I was informed by the poor sucker in charge of maintaining this station.) It's also why dialup here peaks at 26k, and why there is lots of voice dropout and static.
I finally threatened Verizon with making a complaint to the dreaded Public Utilities Commission, and that got a response from some mid-level manager. But from the lack of followup (they failed to report back as promised on the results from testing the DMS), it's pretty clear that response was just to shut me up. Methinks a chat with the PUC is now in order.
Doesn't their existing infrastructure, and social dependency on that infrastructure, give them a somewhat legitimate need for a bailout?
No.
In fact, quite the opposite. The ideal combination of market and regulated solutions would be to strip the infrastructure part of the task away from the ILECs and create a new category, WC. The Wiring Carrier would handle building out infrastructure, and would sell it to whatever LEC pays the bills. That would put CLECs like Covad on semi-equal footing with the ILECs, who currently use their monopoly over physical infrastructure to beat the competition down like a red-headed stepchild.
I say "semi-equal footing" because in all likelihood, the people constituting the WC will be ex-ILEC lifers, the type that have proven their willingness to creatively interpret job orders in such a way as to screw the competition. After time, though, they'll die off and the WC will deal with whoever pays the bills.
It's our infrastructure. Our universal service fees have paid to make sure it gets built. However, it's managed in a way that allows the incumbent to screw the competition and screw the customer. They've had their day. Let's take it away.
Hi! I'm one of the primary authors of the FCC Letter. We *do* say that network continuity, especially dial tone continuity, is a big issue, especially as the companies that provide it begin failing left and right. I do not have any easy answers, but we are going to have to deal with it, and it will require some serious thinking. But one of the characteristics of a "right answer" is that it should not be an excuse to let the dinosaurs live into the age of mammals!
This is why we should seriously consider abolishing the government and leaving everything to the market forces.
I don't know about you, but I'd sure miss the powers granted to me by the fact that I live in a democracy right now, and the rights granted to me by my country's constitution.
Go back to the jungle, or participate in a free fight, if you think that's best for humanity. But please allow the rest of us to strive for some civilization. Thanks.
Contrary to popular American belief, The USA isn't the only country in the world, you know. It isn't even the only country in the world with a constitution.
I live in the Netherlands. A constitutional democracy since 1848.
libertarian Pronunciation Key (lbr-târ-n)
n.
One who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state.
anarchism Pronunciation Key (nr-kzm)
n.
The theory or doctrine that all forms of government are oppressive and undesirable and should be abolished.
As the previous poster suggested, in either case its survival of the fittest, or the law of the jungle if you prefer. Just remember this warning when you're lying in the gutter being butt-fucked by AOL/Time Warner and the local warlord at the same time.
Yes, and have given the rest to the corporations for free. Because nobody bothers to limit the political power that comes with their wealth, they are virtually in complete control of what once was a democracy.
It's sad, considering the great way how it was started, but I'm glad that I was not speaking of the United States when I referred to my country.
I don't know of any rights granted to me by the constitution.
Read it again.
Compare the government of the United States with governments typical 250 years ago and with various contemporary governments in other parts of the world such as North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Iraq, Zimbabwe, etc.
Most U.S. citizens are spoiled by not having direct first-hand experience with a big league oppressive regime. Take a 6 month bus tour of Central America and tell me when you get back that we aren't lucky to have the luxury to be actually arguing over something like a ballistics database.
Personally, I rather enjoy the right to not be woke up in the middle of the night by jack-booted thugs displeased with my criticism of some leader in government.
But he is still right, the USA constitution, while it does have a "bill of rights" attached, the main purpose of the document is to list the FEW things the government is allowed to do, state many things it cannot do, and decaalre that its citizens can do as they please within this framework.
declare that its citizens can do as they please within this framework.
Aye, there's the rub.
My government is powerful, so I'm grateful for restrictions placed upon its use of that power.
But my life is full of interactions with other non-governmental organizations, such as my employer, my telephone service provider, my credit card company, etc, that have a substantial impact on my life.
They are free to require quite a lot of things of me that the government is not permitted to do.
To be sure, if I don't agree with the terms of that interaction, I'm certainly "free" to go live a pauper's existence in a cabin in Montana. A rotten choice, though, to give up some privacy for material comfort.
Please piss in this cup as part of the pre-employment screening. Video surveillance of the premises is done for your protection.
Personally, I rather enjoy the right to not be woke up in the middle of the night by jack-booted thugs displeased with my criticism of some leader in government.
Which is why every day, I consider leaving the US.
I did read it again. Apparently, I understood the words it contained. It doesn't grant rights; it recognizes them. The notion that rights exist only because a piece of paper says they do is rather horrifying. The Constitution exists to spell out the specific powers of the government, not the specific rights of the citizenry.
Here, look
Amendment 9: The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Translation: Just because we mentioned a few rights doesn't mean others don't exist. They do, because this document isn't the source of rights.
Amendment 10: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Translation: This document says what the government can do. If it doesn't say the Feds can do it, then the Feds can't do it. If it says the states can't do something, than the states can't do it. Other than that, let the people decide how they want their communities to be run.
Yeesh. Before making pronouncements about what the Constitution says, maybe you should try understanding it .
They're trolling you on a technicality. When they say that the Constitution does not give them any rights, what they mean is that they have those rights because they are human, and the Constitution merely acknowleges that those rights exists and spells out the protection of the preexisting rights in black and white.
I don't know of any rights granted to me by the constitution
Well, he's right, but not in the way he intended. The Constituion doesn't grant rights to the people, it witholds powers from the government. That is and always was the intent when it was created and ratified. The Bill of Rights, enumerating basic human rights explictly, were included in the Constitution at the same time as a safeguard. This was done at the insistence of those framers who were afraid that people/govt would forget that original intent. It's probably contributed to some confusion over the years, but in retrospect it was probably a wise decision.
As the saying goes, a government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.
Most U.S. citizens are spoiled by not having direct first-hand experience with a big league oppressive regime. Take a 6 month bus tour of Central America and tell me when you get back that we aren't lucky to have the luxury to be actually arguing over something like a ballistics database.
I one hundred percent agree with you. It bears repeating every time this point is brought up, however, that the insecurity in many other countries (especially S. and C. America) is a direct result of US foreign policy.
That much is not arguable. What is debatable is to what degree our peace, prosperity and relative liberty has been purchased with the blood of our neighbors to the south.
In a probably vain attempt to be on-topic, attempts at de-privatizing (and sometimes nationalizing) resources like telephones and such have been some of the justifications that we (as a citizen of the US I think it necesary to use the first person plural when referring to the government) have historically used to fund/incite revolutions in these very nations under discussion.
This is why we should seriously consider abolishing the government and leaving everything to the market forces.
Like health care? "Sorry, sir. I know there's a gaping wound in your skull and that it hurts, but your credit is no good here. Please go away and die outside in the gutter with all the other poor people."
Like law enforcement? "I'm sorry, sir, but there's nothing we can do. You have not paid for our police services. We cannot dispatch officers even if there's a murderous psychopath banging on your door with a bloody knife in his hand."
Like rescue services? "I'm sorry to hear that your house is on fire, sir, but we are a business not a charity. You should remember to pay your bills next time."
And so on...
People like Friedman and Hayek have proved
You can't really prove anything in even hard sciences like physics. Saying that something has been proven in economics or sociology is just ridiculous. Like psychology, economics and sociology are not hard, predictive sciences (some would say that they're not science at all) in the same sense as physics or chemistry.
If capitalism were a scientific theory, it would have been dropped a long time ago because it has no real predictive power and often contradicts with the real world observations.
Like law enforcement? In fact it was like this in Britain with the fire brigades. Each fire brigade was owned by an insurance company and they would fight a fire in your house only if your house was insure by the appropriate insurance company, while letting the fire burn your neighbour's house. This crazy system was later replaced by local/national governement controls.
Another area where governements are necessary is pollution control. The private electricity industry in the US pollutes (proportionally) 6 times more than the (previoulsy or still) state owned electricity industry in Europe. This is a staggering number.
Like health care? "Sorry, sir. I know there's a gaping wound in your skull and that it hurts, but your credit is no good here. Please go away and die outside in the gutter with all the other poor people."
It might not be that way with a head injury... but it's that way with AIDS patients in lots of cities. Not to mention those needing an organ donation. And lots of other cases since the HMO's became popular.
Not in Europe and Canada. Aid's victims have full access to healthcare, just like an accident victim, or a smoker. You must be thinking about backwards countries like the USA.
Like health care? Like law enforcement? Like rescue services?
LIKE PHONE SERVICE? "I'm sorry, but your account is past due -- no service for you. If you pay us all of the access charges, universal service charges, 911 charges, number portability charges, in addition to our wildy overpriced monthy rate, we'll be happy to restore your poor-quality analog line. Wonderful.
We subsidize certain services (Police Fire, sometimes health care) as a matter of public policy. Why should we subsidize a nice-to-have-but-not-essential service if it wasn't a public service to begin with, especially if it impairs the adoption of better technology that would probably cost less than the crap we have now? Investors bought telco stocks and bonds, knowing that certain risks were involved, premature obsolescense being damn near the top of the list.
For the most part, the US economic system does a wonderful job of purging itself of obsolete companies. The death of such companies creates opportunities for better competitors.
We think nothing of closing a factory and moving it to Mexico or China in search of cheap labor; how is this any different? It's tragic for individuals in the short run, but in the long run, we're all better off when people migrate to more competitive industries. If the telcos have to die anyway, get it over with. If we grant European-style subsidies to every industry that has a problem, we'll have sky-high unemployement, and a reduced standard of living (like the Europeans do). Once everyone is getting a subsidy, the tax burden will choke off any possibility of economic growith.
My retirement plan may be adversely impacted by the telcos demise, but it will have time to bounce back. Having subsidized telcos won't change my expectation that they will continue as a underperforming investment. Thanks, Uncle Sam, but no thanks.
I have absolutely no problems with the idea of dropping state subsidies from the likes of telcos, shipbuilding docks, steel industries and airplane manufacturers.
I do, however, consider it a fundamental function of a state to provide reliable and affordable health care, education, transportation and welfare to all. Those who have plenty, should give to those who are in need; thus progressive taxation. These strategic functions should not be privatized. Competition would perhaps drive the costs down, but the lowest bidder isn't always the best option for critical services.
I do, however, consider it a fundamental function of a state to provide reliable and affordable health care, education, transportation and welfare to all. Those who have plenty, should give to those who are in need; thus progressive taxation.
Joe Blow makes $1,000 a year, and pays 10% in taxes. That's $100.
Sounds like the rich pay more under a flat tax, doesn't it?
I very much enjoyed your post. I don't agree with all of your points, but you nailed the gist of it: anarchy is NOT a reasonable form of government. It's tyranny in that it's the law of the jungle replacing the rule of law. It never ceases to amaze me how one man's wasteful program is another man's vital public service. I think that, overall, the Founders were pretty bright guys. And if they wanted EVERYTHING to be dictated by a market, there would be no postal service, no census bureau, no govermental services at all. They didn't go that route. I'm a rabid capitalist, but I recognize that in a civilized society, some things should be publicly available to all. You can debate what they are, and at what level services should be provided, but it's foolish to just say "let the market handle it".
Like health care? "Sorry, sir. I know there's a gaping wound in your skull and that it hurts, but your credit is no good here. Please go away and die outside in the gutter with all the other poor people."
Give me a second to go call the media so the people in this town can get all riled up and come and firebomb your hospital... oh, or what were you saying about treatment?
Actually, "Pay your bills or we won't service you" is EXACTLY how some privately operated fire departments work. They're essentially subscription services paid for by their customer base, because they get little or no gov't funding (and they're also the only fire dept. available). Even if the crew are volunteers, someone's still got to pay for that pumper truck and the diesel it drinks. Anyway it's a fairly common situation in rural Montana, don't know about elsewhere.
And I am happy to know that if I am burgled or mugged the criminal will rarely have a gun and that it's even rarer that the gun will be used. Regardless of whether the cops will catch the criminal, I can cope with losing some money or property.
Health care? You have only to go to a socialist country to see how that works. They won't throw you out in the gutter, but they will make you get in line, possibly for months to remedy serious ailments such as cancer.
Well, you could say I've been to a socialist country: I was born in a one with mostly state controlled economy. I am currently living abroad in a Northern European country which has had a large socialist party in the government for the last twenty decades. And you know what? The living standards are excellent in both countries. Working public transportation, no people living under the poverty line (check out the US and UK stats in the CIA worldbook for comparison), free public schooling, public libraries and goverment subsidized university level education to allow even the low wage blue collar workers' kids to have an advanced degree if they so choose. Crime is low because the social "safety net" will provide you with basic necessities even you go completely bankcrupt.
As far as your medical care argument goes, you couldn't be more wrong when it comes to Northern Europe and Scandinavia (UK public health care is in real shambles, though). As I've pointed out in one of my recent posts, I've undergone several surgeries. The latest problem with the eye was diagnosed at a private clinic (you know, private clinics are allowed even if the public health care is run by the government!), I got a referral to the local hospital (state run university hospital) and was under the knife in a week. I spent another week in the ward and paid $200 for that - the $8000 operation itself was paid by the society. I pay the progressive 28% income tax gladly for a system like that that is accessible to all citizens regardless of their income (unlike insurances).
You should know more about practical socialism before your spout nonsense like that. That's the kind of black and white reasoning that's not realistic. There is a middle ground between dog-eat-dog capitalism and total commitment to a government run economy, you know.
I wonder...I'm in the US, middle class. I pay about 30-ish% federal income tax, probably (ballpark, not pulling out the figures to look) 10% state income tax, social security tax, medicate tax, sales tax (6.5%), personal property taxes, etc., etc., etc.
I would estimate that over half of my earned income goes back to the government in some way, shape, or form. Would over 50% taxation make the US a socialist nation?
I've got 28% income/social security tax, 0.5% state church tax and I pay a 5% - 28% sales tax depending on what I'm buying (books cheap, electronics expensive). If you're drinking a lot or drive a car a lot you end up paying a lot more as there's an outrageous tax on alcohol and gasoline. Property in general is not taxed unless you own several expensive apartments, stock worth of hunderds of thousands of Euros or luxury yachts.
You wouldn't have to. Only protestant christians get inducted to the state church upon their birth if the parents so wish. Only the members of the church pay that tax.
I could avoid the tax just by leaving the church, but to save just 0.5% in my taxes isn't worth the effort of filling that form. I consider it as an advance payment for my place in the graveyard, so that my family (or whomever's left behind) doesn't have to pay for it.
0.5% of $40,000 a year (not that I know what you earn!) comes out as $8,000 over a 40 year career. Surely that's quite a lot of money for a hole in the ground?
What you should be asking isn't "how much of my money needs to go to taxes to make this a Socialist nation," but rather, "what am I getting for 50% of my income?" We probably *could* afford single-payer health care if we spent less on pork, questionable defense projects, etc. It's not a matter of how much money the government spends, as a matter of what we are spending it on.
As far as your medical care argument goes, you couldn't be more wrong when it comes to Northern Europe and Scandinavia (UK public health care is in real shambles, though)
I visited Norway recently, and while I was there heard several horror stories in the media about medical care that was slow and incompetent. My (native) host also believed that the system had significant problems in that regard. Granted, this is a very small dataset; I'd be interested in seeing a more scientific take on the subject.
There are problems such as shortage of nurses and doctors refusing to go and work in small communities in the rural areas.
The first one is a direct result from the necessary cuts in the public spending in the 1990s depression. Nurses get ridiculously small pay for the physically and mentally heavy work they do. Better pay could now be afforded but the conservative right wing section of the government would usually rather spend the available money on military hardware and law enforcement.
Second problem is a social one and in my mind cannot be addressed by economical means.
I just moved back to the states from the Uk, having lived there for 3 years and 1 year in Switzerland.
I found the health care in switzerland to be excelent, even though it was private. You had to have healthcare, to be registered in a city.. which you had to be to legally rent an apartment. The taxes where I was living was about 14% total, not including taxes on things like Garbage (yes,a stamp had to be put on every bag you take out.. at 1 dollar per bag, it encourages you to recycle everything you can).
My wife went to the doctor a few times, for this and that, and was quite happy with the modern clinic. The doctors seemed progressive and would offer medicine that was both herbal and western in nature. (No robotusin for a cold, but a herbal concoction you get at the pharmacy).
Anyway, I loved the swiss method of handling things, and at 1% un-employement, and guarding their borders in a way that would make the queen of england prooud, they don't seem to have a lot of the problems that other EU countries have with the poor and destitute.
Now, england is a complete flip-side. I have spent more hours sitting in a clinic waiting for the bloody doctor to just show up for work. (No appointment at my local surgery). When the doctor does show up, they seem to not give a damn about what the problem is. My wife sat waiting to be seen for almost 6 hours. No joke. A co-worker waited 7 months for status on a testicular lump that he was worried might be cancer. Yada yada.
When we found out we where having a baby, our first, we decided to pack our stuff up and move back to the states. Pretty scarry stuff. I can't speak for the rest of the EU, I am sure that they are in better shape than Uk. I was watching a debate on Brittish TV, and there is a statistic that if you get stomach cancer, your chance of survival is 6%. In the US your chance of survival is 61%. Fricken nuts.
And as for shoving people out the door. When we came back the US, we didn't have a job or much money. We immediately qualified for medicade and even after I got my new job, the state took care of the child birth and all the expenses including 6 months of birth control after the child birth for my wife and 3 follow up visits. Now we are back on private health care with my job, but to say that the hospital kicked me out is plain false.
I don't think that my case is special. I don't think that a lot of people realize is that in the US, there is help if you really need it. I am not a bum out on the street, but when we moved back to the US.. we did need some help, and I am glad we had it.
Private sector will always be better off than public, even in healthcare. What they need to do is put legislation in to keep the mall-practive law-suits under control and help keep the costs down so insurance isn't expensive for everyone. Look at the mortality rates across the board, you will be surprised what america's health care is churning out. It was a big enough difference for me to move across the world to have our baby.
You made the parent's point: America's medicine *is* socialized, albeit haphazardly. Do we want to release it into the free market?
If you look at the amount of money involved, the problem is not malpractice suits. It's health insurance that incourages both the patient and the doctor to over do it. Why don't people buy generic drugs? Because their insurance is paying for it. Why do OB/GYN run a test for Downs Syndrome in utero? There's nothing they can do about it, (except abortion). They run the test because it's a few extra bucks. The mother to be lets them because it's not her money.
Another problem with health costs? Everyone is guaranteed treatment...but only in an emergency. These emergencies are expensive and the cost is picked up buy those who can afford it. Much of the cost could be alleviated by guaranteeing cheaper preventive medicine to everyone.
The end result is a society full of people who scoff at law, and refuse to participate in a corrupt system of government.
....and what was the voter turnout in the last US election ? You claim tht is a result of 'statist' economic policies, but really, is there any G8 country where the above statement is more applicable than the US ?
The primary reason most people advocate capitalism is ETHICAL, not scientific. It was liberals and their endless dreams of micromanaging the perfect society that gave birth to that study.
Indeed - you only have to look at the fine examples of capitalistic ethics provided recently by companies such as Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing etc to realise how unnecessary government regulation in the free market is.
As far as your other statements, many of us wish there WAS no police force. I am perfectly capable of defending myself, and have a license to carry a Ruger.38 to do so.
Ah yes, and of course the police do nothing that giving everyone a gun wouldn't. It's like I've always said: you can't beat a heavily-armed lynch mob for a meticulous and professional criminal investigation leading to a fair and open trial.
Health care? You have only to go to a socialist country to see how that works. They won't throw you out in the gutter, but they will make you get in line, possibly for months to remedy serious ailments such as cancer. Even dialysis machines are hardly easily accessible.
And of course, limiting access to healthcare according to personal wealth or employability is such a fair way of arranging things, isn't it? After all, it's obviously entirely your own fault if you're poor or unemployed. I'm sure many of the/. readers left jobless by recent events in the tech industry will back me up on this one.
Incidentally, which socialist countries are you thinking of? How about Cuba as a counter-example? The health service there is excellent, and completely free at the point of use.
Ah yes, and of course the police do nothing that giving everyone a gun wouldn't. It's like I've always said: you can't beat a heavily-armed lynch mob for a meticulous and professional criminal investigation leading to a fair and open trial.
Actually, the police do little to stop real crime (i'm not talking speeding tickets here i'm talking robberies, assault, murder, etc.). They are little more than glorified paper pushers labeled as a deterrent. Basically you have to commit murder before any investigative part of the police force is brought in. The local police where I live, always give the lame excuse that they are undermanned (even though there is like 1 cop per 100 people in the city). Its more like they are to busy enforcing traffic violations and petty civil issues (loud music, arresting people who haven't paid their late tickets etc.) to do anything except show up and write an incident report when a real crime occurs.
I am apparently one of the few people who doesn't take the "we need more police" line seriously. More police != lower crime rate. Even though that is usually the reason given to hire more. Instead I see 50 cops standing on street corners "showing presence" in groups of three or so on a friday night when I go downtown to drink. Since, the town I live in is pretty laid back its rare to actually see them doing anything. Most of the 'disturbances' probably occur in the bars which already have hired security there to check id's and deal with such problems.
Basically what i'm getting at, is you probably have a better chance of stopping crime if nearly everyone carried a gun. Effectively, you have a 99% of the population as a police force. Instead of the first instinct being "call the police!" the first instinct should be "lets go stop that!" Five to ten minutes later when the police show up there is a good chance that the burglar has run off with a few valuable things, the rapist has finished up and ran away, or the murderer is half way across town.
Basically what i'm getting at, is you probably have a better chance of stopping crime if nearly everyone carried a gun. Effectively, you have a 99% of the population as a police force.
No, you have 99% of the population as an untrained armed mob. Would you really feel safer if you knew that every junkie, angry drunk, borderline sufferer of mental illness and road rage perpetrator you met was packing heat? Reducing crime by arming the whole population is like limiting the probability of nuclear war by giving everyone their own atom bomb!
How about I present you will the other side of your unlikely situation.
If an angry mob (with or without guns take your pick, although I should point out most angry mobs in the US in the last few years were partially armed) were to attack your neighborhood. Would you want to have a gun to defend your home, wife and children? On the other hand you can call the police, and hope they can get though in time, or you can hope that you can escape from your house trailing your wife and children and hope that no one catches you, or your loved ones. Again, if you decide to run would you like to have a gun with you?
It's like I've always said: you can't beat a heavily-armed lynch mob for a meticulous and professional criminal investigation leading to a fair and open trial.
Is being lynched by a mob any worse than having a gang of cops shove a plunger up your ass, or being shot 42 times by the police on your way home from work?
Indeed - you only have to look at the fine examples of capitalistic ethics provided recently by companies such as Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing etc to realise how unnecessary government regulation in the free market is.
Please don't do that. That's fraud and theft nothing more.
And of course, limiting access to healthcare according to personal wealth or employability is such a fair way of arranging things, isn't it? After all, it's obviously entirely your own fault if you're poor or unemployed.
Whose fault is it then? Mine? Yours? The evil corporation? If you want my taxpaying help to send your poor sorry corpse to the doctor at least have some grace about it.
Incidentally, which socialist countries are you thinking of? How about Cuba as a counter-example? The health service there is excellent, and completely free at the point of use.
It might be free, if you don't count the fact that you're not. They are also usually out of many medicines so they don't have much to charge you for. Been there? Used it? Not with that opinion.
like I've always said: you can't beat a heavily-armed lynch mob for a meticulous and professional criminal investigation leading to a fair and open trial.
Fair and open trial?
You mean like the trial of in the UK in 1986 of Eric Butler, a 56-year old BP executive who was attacked in a London subway car? His assailants tried to strangle him and started beating his head against the door, and nobody came to his aid. He unsheathed an ornamental blade in his walking stick and stabbed one of his attackers in the stomach. He was tried and convicted of carrying an offensive weapon.
Or like the English homeowner in 1994 who used a toy handgun to detain two burglars who had broken into his home while he called the police, only to be arrested upon their arrival for using an imitation gun to threaten or intimidate? Or elderly woman who in the following year fired a toy cap pistol to drive off a gang who were threatening her, only to be arrested for "putting someone in fear"?
Or maybe you meant Tony Martin, who after having his house burgled 6 times in a village with no local police force used a shotgun to kill one burglar and wounded another, only to receive a life sentence for defending his life and property? And, of course, the wounded man who is now out of jail has received 5,000 pounds in legal assistance from the government in order to sue Martin.
You know, putting aside the fact that an armed populace doesn't denote lynch mobs and vigilante justice, but rather the ability and willingness of a citizenry to defend itself against injustice, a heavily-armed American lynch mob certainly does sound like an entity that's more familiar with the concept of justice than most European governments I can think of.
Indeed - you only have to look at the fine examples of capitalistic ethics provided recently by companies such as Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing etc to realise how unnecessary government regulation in the free market is.
You are citing real world examples. That isn't fair.
Objectivists have based their entire philosophy on Ayn Rand's fictional novels, of which The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are just two. This is in contrast to other schools of capitalist, socialist, and even communist thought, which, however flawed they may be, at least have insight enough to cite serious academic studies as the foundation of their ethos and philisophical views.
Does this mean a world view based upon a fictional work is false, or one based upon a scientific or academic study will yield better results? Not necessarilly, any more than we can know with certainty that science will yield a more accurate understanding of the universe than religion (of whatever flavor) will.
However, the vast majority of evidence is that science does yield better practical results than religious dogma, and rigorous academic studies more useful insights than works of fiction.
Having said all that, in Ayn Rand's defense (and I say this despite disagreeing with many of her assumptions and rather myopic views on a number of subjects), she was nowhere near as extreme as many of her adherents.
BTW - When I lived and worked in Germany I made two interesting observations:
1. German taxes were not significantly higher for middle and upper-middle income people there than they are in the United States, despite their having an excellent social net, including a form of socialized medicine (socialized via a strictly regulated insurance industry and policies paid for with public moneys for those who cannot afford the premiums), and
2. The healthcare I was provided there was vastly better than what I have in the United States, despite having one of the better PPOs currently available. The American system appears to be designed to subsidize high-end medical procedures, available generally only to the very wealthy or very well insured (two groups which are quickly becoming synonymous) through vastly higher costs for standard medical procedures (like getting a checkup or an allergy shot).
We in the United States pay three times as much for our less adequate healthcare than the rest of the industrialized world does for the "less effecient" socialized healthcare -- a fact which should put to rest once and for all the myth that the free market is always more effecient than a public works equivelent. In the area of healthcare, where the customer is captive by nature of the fact that without it they will suffer and possibly die, clearly the power of the customer to choose, or reject unacceptable conditions of service vs. the power of the provider to coerce or set their own conditions, is so degraded as to make a "free" marketplace in any meaningful sense impossible. This leaves corporate oligarchies and trusts vs. socialized medicine as the two real choices we face, and the experience of the entire developed world, outside of the united states, indicates that the socialized approach is vastly more effecient and effective.
Indeed - you only have to look at the fine examples of capitalistic ethics provided recently by companies such as Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing etc to realise how unnecessary government regulation in the free market is.
A lot of the problems with the recent Enron and WorldCom, etc. scandals were caused BY government regulation. That is, government regulation that was being written by the very companies it was supposed to control.
Corrupt and biased regulation is far, far worse than no regulation at all. The Bernie Ebbers and Ken Lays of the world may claim to lay their alllegiance at the feet of the free market, but a system where the ground rules are written and rewritten by the biggest players to ensure their own profits is far from a free market.
In theory, government regulation would be fair and impartial to all competitors. But then, in theory communism works too. The real world is quite a bit different.
McDonalds cost an insane amount of money. It cost $15 for a Happy Meal.
Oh please! You are either lying, or was severely ripped off.
I am Swedish, and there is a lot to say about this country. But the parent post seems rather trollish... I mean, $15 for a happy meal for christs sake!
As for comparing New York with a city with roughly half a million people. Well, that's just plain stupid.
I will leave the rest of your troll uncommented, as it is not worth the time. I've already bitten and I hope you are satisfied. Enjoy your $15 Happy Meal benzapp, and don't let people sell you any more bridges!
Btw. Gotenburg really is a dump, but that's just my opinion.
> The primary reason most people advocate capitalism is ETHICAL, not scientific.
In what theory is capitalism ethical? Nothing in my readings has any statements about an ethical dimension.
> Health care? You have only to go to a socialist country to see how that works. They won't throw you out in the gutter, but they will make you get in line, possibly for months to remedy serious ailments such as cancer.
So what happens if I have cancer, but no money for treatment? How is this different to the "socialist" case?
> You need to think about more than one possibility. Chanting to yourself over and over again "Government can solve my problems, government can solve my problems" is not going to work.
As opposed to chanting "Government can't solve my problems" or "Only the market can solve my problems"?
You raise some good points, no doubt. But Adam Smith was a moral philosopher and happpened to write a book called the Wealth of Nations--the very founding of capitalism as an idea and social system. I suggest you read it.
In the same moral theory that is behind the idea freedom of speech, freedom of religion and the words "all Men are created equal, [and] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" is the moral theory under which capitalism is ethical.
Something tells me that you've heard about these theories before, but just that you didn't make the connection that they have to capitalism.
The three fundamental rights of every man are Life, Liberty and Property. Justice is defined as the enforcement of these rights. The only extent to which your fundamental rights can be deprived is to protect the fundamental rights of everyone, including yourself. For example, it is moral to force people to pay taxes (deprive them of property) to pay for police and military, which will protect the rights of everybody from thugs and foreign invaders. In the case of life and property, when I say that government should "protect" them, I mean that government should "keep other people from physically taking away your freedom to create and preserve your own property and life." The only economic system the stems from the recognition of these rights is capitalism. Socialism and Communism are especially immoral because they outright deny the existence of property as a right. Anarchism is wrong because it does not take any steps to protect these rights.
There you have it: a crash coarse in why capitalism is the only ethical and moral economic system. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
>As opposed to chanting "Government can't solve my problems" or "Only the market can solve my problems"?
I would say chant "Everyone can solve his own problems"
>So what happens if I have cancer, but no money for treatment?
The same thing that happens when you want an iPod and you don't have enough money-- you can choose to do with out the iPod or appeal to others for assistance, which they may or may not choose to give you. In the case of the iPod, other people are probably not going to find your need very important, but I bet that if you had cancer, people would be much more likely to help you. There are free voluntary charity organizations for things like that. You're probably going to say , "there isn't enough private money to help all the people with cancer," and to that I would say: "tough." It is not one of your fundamental rights to get cancer treatment (see the bold part of the my third paragraph). It is everyone's right to choose how to manage the products of his own mind (property). You don't have a right to force others to give up their property no matter how pressing your need is (unless your need is the protection of one of your fundamental rights).
Well, the point is that it is fundamentally wrong for the government to do anything to hinder the workings of the market economy.
I sincerely hope that you are joking, or playing devil's advocate. The "market economy" is a fiction, created by government contrivance. Do you really believe that it is some sort of objective truth? or that it is the ultimate expression of human desire for advancement?
The market economy has done such an excellent job in protecting the environment and promoting individual liberty. Ironically enough, the "free market" has given us the most blatent interferences in market freedom that we have seen.
This is not to say that the market is undesirable or is not an excellent allocator of (some) resources - just that is it insufficient as a complete societal model.
I sincerely hope that you are joking, or playing devil's advocate. The "market economy" is a fiction, created by government contrivance. Do you really believe that it is some sort of objective truth? or that it is the ultimate expression of human desire for advancement?
"Markets" form with or without goverments. People naturally trade goods and service ebtween each other. Try an Econ 101 class.
The market economy has done such an excellent job in protecting the environment
That's what lawsuits are for. The areas that are badly polluted in this country are polluted because they're public areas, and the gov't never sues private, polluting entities as they should.
and promoting individual liberty. Ironically enough, the "free market" has given us the most blatent interferences in market freedom that we have seen.
Individual liberty? Like what? National tracking system? That's the US govt. Wiretapping and email cracking? That's the US govt. How exactly has your "individual liberty" been harmed by a private entity? I'm really curious.
"Markets" form with or without goverments. People naturally trade goods and service ebtween each other. Try an Econ 101 class.
Perhaps if you weren't so busy trying to be patronisng to the parent poster you would have noticed that he or she wasn't denying the existance of markets.
"The market economy has done such an excellent job in protecting the environment and promoting individual liberty."
Well let's just compare the environment in countries that free economies vrs the command driven economies which I believe have lately been experimented on in the former Communist countries.
Well let's just compare the environment in countries that free economies vrs the command driven economies which I believe have lately been experimented on in the former Communist countries.
People like Friedman and Hayek have proved that markets are the ultimate source of truth, at least in this world.
Economic 'proofs' aren't worth the paper they're written on, which is why the Nobel Prize for Economics is a joke. They may as well have one for psychology as well.:)
The Nobel Peace Prize is ludicrous as well, but that's because it's given as an encouragement prize... maybe Arafat could give his back now, for example. Oh, and because a Peace prize funded by the estate of an explosives developer seems... erm... inconsistent at best.
Economic 'proofs' aren't worth the paper they're written on, which is why the Nobel Prize for Economics is a joke. They may as well have one for psychology as well.:)
I understand that you were responding to a comment
that was surreal at best, but I could not really let this pass.
The problem with proofs (economic or otherwise)
is that they can only be used "in real life" when
the axiomatic system and additional assumptions that underlie them are sufficiently close to reality. Hayek got a Nobel in Economics not for
what a lot of Hayek fans think he did, but for a
fairly general argument about the availability of relevant information to economic planners and their ability to set prices. It really is and was a useful result.
Interestingly, this year's winners of the Nobel
in Economics were pioneers in the use of actual
experimental data to address issues that were crucial to economics, and one of them was a card-carrying psychologist. I doubt
this will create any huge shift in how economists
do most of what they do, but I think that it is important to note that there is and will be a more
empirical kind of economics being done that might make the science a bit less "Ivory Tower" than it has been.
Now, something that really worries me about the current line-up of Nobel Prizes is the extent to which the amount of actual science being done has "drifted" away from the set prize categories. I think this is particularly true for the "Medicine or Physiology" Prize, which is basically the only one anybody in medicine or any biological science
can ever hope to win. To be completely frank about it, there are waaay more deserving potential
recipients in those fields these days than can ever possibly win given the current rules. The pure science of Biology has absolutely exploded in importance in the last half century, and Medicine has made breath-taking progress as well, but the prizes were set up a century ago, so everybody has to queue up in these two vast fields. I can't help thinking that if Nobel were establishing the Prizes today, that this and similar problems would be fixed somehow. In the mean time, it's clear to me that while there are certainly some psychologists who would be deserving of a Nobel Prize (and Kahneman was among them), the field as a whole really has not yet reached the point where
amazing progress is a yearly event, to the point where ignoring the field prize-wise is anything like the embarassing situation in the life sciences.
What I meant by that snide crack is that economics pretends to be a science in the same way that psychology has in the past, when it's pretty obvious that neither are. (I guess I was also implicitly comparing the American capacity for deification of practitioners in both fields during the last century... despite the fact that they only offer incomplete, generic and often wildly wrong models for dealing with their problem space.)
That's not to say that either discipline hasn't been useful, especially in the context of determining broad cultural and societal trends. There are economists and psychologists whose work I find quite interesting and relevant... but I still think economics should be considered as a branch of psychology or sociology.:)
Yeah, the Nobel Prize structure is pretty archaic, but it really only has the legitimacy that people give it -- I know that most of the people I talk to find it somewhat irrelevant to the real work being done.
What I meant by that snide crack is that economics pretends to be a science in the same way that psychology has in the past, when it's pretty obvious that neither are.
Speak for yourself, Mr. Snide. Both are sciences, albeit really difficult ones to do good work in. But the best work in Psychology at least is stuff that can be envied by any experimental scientist.
1.
1. The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.
2. Such activities restricted to a class of natural phenomena.
3. Such activities applied to an object of inquiry or study.
2. Methodological activity, discipline, or study: I've got packing a suitcase down to a science.
3. An activity that appears to require study and method: the science of purchasing.
4. Knowledge, especially that gained through experience.
5. Science Christian Science.
I'd say it qualifies as 2, 3 & 4 but not as 1, and that any 'science' that doesn't fulfil all of 1 isn't one. You may disagree.:)
It's nice to see people mention Hayek and proper economics (not to be confused with Keynes, and the collectivist plutocracy the Central Bankers have ushered in).
I want to mention that Hayek, at least in "The Road to Serfdom", does not call for an abolishment of government. He seems to acknowledge, as many of us do, a need for it. Our founding fathers did.
The problem is, combined federal, state and local government here now represents about 50% of the market place, as opposed to around 5% prior to 1910. Truly this is *the* metric that shows clearly the US is now a collectivist / socialist enterprise.
History shows (Russia, National Socialist Germany, etc..) us that such a model does not work. It is a non competitive model. At best it can limp along, but will not provide liberty, self determination, self actualization. It cannot provide *opportunity* for a middle class. "We're in a tight spot!" - Oh Brother.
The states now feel the pinch (punch) of this last fed induced mania. For some excellent data and commentary on the current state, see Michael Hodges "Grandfather Economic Report".
Best,
Dave
The problem is, combined federal, state and local government here now represents about 50% of the market place, as opposed to around 5% prior to 1910.
Sorry, but I'm not sure what you mean here. As a share of GDP, the 1999 figures I'm familiar with [gpo.gov] say it's 29%. Furthermore, you are going to have to do a lot to convince me that this amount of increase is a bad thing. Life expectancies are way up, poverty is way down, education has improved for the vast majority, and we are no longer the same country we once were in almost any sense. I think it is healthy to debate our government funding priorities, and I know there is money being spent I would rather were not spent. But if you make me pick between 2002 and 1902, the choice is too easy. And if you argue that we've made all of this progress completely in spite of the government, I'm afraid to say I would like to see a lot of specific evidence that this is true.
The last time I looked at Hodges sites (maybe a year ago) he was saying that federal, state and local government outlays combined to just shy of 40% of the national income. The key here is the use of national income as opposed to GDP; I forget his justification. For 1999 that would be right about 35%. See this link [bea.gov] for more information concerning the difference between national income and GDP and for historical data.
This is why we should seriously consider abolishing the government and leaving everything to the market forces.
Couldn't this result in massive amounts of money being invested in social engineering to get us all to like the same things, meaning huge profits for companies?
It is far more profitable to either kill or join with your competitors, than to compete with them by offering better products at lower prices. This is why a strong government is needed to ensure a working market, based a continues struggle to provide better goods at lower prices than your compatitors.
Without such a strong government, producents will join force in guilds, who keep the market closed to outsiders, by force if necessary. This was the situation until the development of nation states with a strong King as the leader.
Unfortunately, this violates the foundation for the Libertarian belief, namely that all evil is created by government and all good come from the market. And as always when belief and reality slashes, the believers are unable to see the reality.
Of course, this isn't an excuse for the government to take up other tasks than ensuring that players on the market follow the rules.
I have to heartily agree that while the free market is the most efficient way we know of to allocate scarce resources, it's the civilising influence of government that ensures that everyone behaves themselves, and preserves social conditions necessary to ensure social stability and thus, the existence and smooth functioning of the free market at large.
The old Eastern Bloc happens to be an excellent example of what happens when governments are not strong enough to enforce the rule of law and make everybody play fair.
You cannot have a free market and foreign investment without a certain degree of government intervention. Otherwise you see the situation prevalent in the more-backwards parts of the world where businessmen find it cheaper and more convenient to use unethical means to dispose of the competition than follow the rules.
Russia is an excellent example. Quite a few people have been rubbed out by their business competitors because the government is either unable or unwilling to impose a sufficent level of rule-of-law. I believe that just the other day,
a regional governer got shot in the back of the head in broad daylight, apparently an organised hit by disgruntled businessmen. Check out the photo [moscowtimes.ru].
You seem to be confusing libertarianism with anarchy. Libertarians are more than happy to pay taxes to provide military and police force--protecting people from physical harm is what the government's job is.
But are libertarians willing to have the governent break up monopolies and "guilds" of producers that band together to drive everyone else out. Like a certain software maker?
Of course, due to the way our "just" court system works the big corporations are very difficult to actually stop with legal means, but the goverment is at least trying.
"People like Friedman and Hayek have proved that markets are the ultimate source of truth, at least in this world."
I suggest you go re-read Friedman. First off, he did not prove that free markets are the best solution, he merely made a (very compelling) argument that it is so. Second, Friedman himself pointed out various examples where 'Market failure' can occur. One example he cites is about public works, for example people might be willing to pay a fee for using properly maintained sidewalks, yet it would be economically unfeasible for a private company to collect these tolls. So instead we all pay a small amount of tax and the government takes care of the sidewalk.
There are other factors that may may prompt a government intervention: in case of the telcos, the government may decide that having a phone line is a basic right, and that telcos are supposed to hook everyone up for a basic fee, with the easy hookups subsidising the ones in remote locations. If governments did not do this, then all the telco's would tell the few customers living in the sticks to get stuffed if they wanted a phone hookup.
I am not saying any of that is right or wrong, but there is nothing fundamental about letting the market economy run its course. It may be the most efficient, and there is a strong case for any government to think twice before interfering with the free market, but not even Friedman suggested to leave everything to the market.
Makes sense to me. However I can't help but ask - if the government didn't support these services, what would have happened?
sidewalks: probably wouldn't exist - except along the lines of "gated communities", with boards far more oppressive than the regular governments could ever dream of. In the cities where sidewalks are absolute necessities, the quality of the sidewalk would be directly proportional to the affluence of the neighborhood - and might even help propel runaway gentrification and disinvestment (or not, since any functional society needs people from a variety of economic levels - that's why they've got rent control in New York).
telcos: until the advent of wireless/satellite communication, the rural areas would almost certainly remain poorly or completely unconnected, putting them at a significant economic and social disadvantage. Industrialized farming would have had an even easier time taking over the farming market. Populations would be much more concentrated in the cities. On the positive side suburban sprawl would probably be significantly curtailed.
If free market principles applied to roads (and to a lesser degree power) the exact same things as above would probably happen, only much more so. As for water and waste... those are two things where the community, up to and including the international community, gets involved because it affects them directly.
Of course there are countless examples on the books along these lines, and where real money is involved it gets much uglier. Unless the government regulates it into something acceptable at the behest of the (generally angry) people, the rich and powerful will increasingly manipulate and monopolize the markets (and the law, and the money) legally and illegally for their personal gain regardless of how badly it affects others. "Free Market" is an oxymoron. Those who want it the most are always either rich or think they could be - and if they actually got it almost all would be disabused of their hopes and money rapidly.
A meddling beauracracy versus a greedy oligarchy -fiscal democrats versus moneyed republicans.
Yes, it is hard to attach a private cost to public goods (like sidewalks). But there is a rich history of private individuals filling public needs. Ben Franklin started the first volunteer fire company in the US. Unlike the existing 'fire clubs' in Boston, these companies would fight ANY fire, not just fires that happened to their members' property. He formed a local group with his immediate neighbors to pay homeless people to sweep the sidewalks.
Any time the government attempts to fill a need, it must be very careful to not squeeze out private competition. If only the government allowed to fill a need (by law) or if it isn't willing to contract out to private companies (eg, it is the only supplier, instead of supplier of last resort) then you will never get anything better than the government's solution. That might be the best solution, temporarily, but beurocrats hate change. It will eventually be a bad solution, and if it has squeezed out all private competitors there is no where else to turn.
Well, the point is that it is fundamentally wrong for the government to do anything to hinder the workings of the market economy.
When the government doesn't do anything to 'hinder' the economy, you get a situation like the roaring 20's, which leads to rapid inflation, and overvalued markets. Then you get the depression. The reason the world pulled out of the depression was because governments started spending lots of money (another interference in the market). The first economy to pull out of the depression was Germany, because their leader said, "I don't care if we don't have money - just build me a frickin' army!" Of course, they could have spent the money on road or schools too, and that would have worked, but hindsight in 20/20.
In more modern times, the central banks *agressively* set interest rates higher if the risk of inflation gets too high, so as to slow the economy, and governments will increase spending and lower interest rates if the economy slows down too much.
Get this through your head: the economy is naturally Unstable! This is what economists have learned in the past century. Economies have to be regulated by governments or they fail dramatically. You owe your prosperity to Greenspan and people like him (e.g. John Maynard Keynes).
As an aside... this natural instability, and our ability to control it with a feedback loop is why I think economists and control systems engineers like myself should spend some time working on the problem together. The problem of economic balancing and the control systems problem of balancing an inverted pendulum have many interesting similarities.
--respectfully disagree. Greenspan and keynesian "economics" are the cause of what is wrong right now, and will be the cause of many millions (billions probably) of people drastically going broke and actually suffering in a physical sense in the medium future. He -alan greenspan- is someone who knew full well what money really is but sold his soul basically the the international cartel of crooks and swindlers who run governments now. In my opinion he is a consumate liar and actually a traitor in every sense of the word.
The markets failed starting in 29 and lasting until a functional flat lined bottom in 34 precisely on purpose from a cartel of international bankers working in collusion with so called "govern" ment. It was done on purpose as a pure theft-a con game. First they-"they" will be this cartel-first they fully buildup the illusion that "stocks" represent a per measured value tangible asset in people's minds, when they are not. This is the main point of the scam. Stock market opt-in buying is touted as an "investment", people are encouraged to swap their tangible produced and accumulated "wealth" for a promise of vastly more wealth in the future using little or zero more effort than what they have already done. this is the greed factor at play here, which makes it so easy for the conmen to keep running this scam generation after generation. These people (most-broadly speaking for conversational purposes now) at that point lose control of their wealth. This is entirely 100% based on the easily understood human condition known as greed, ie, getting more than what you produced. There's even a childrens fairy tale I like to use to illustrate this as an anology, a lesson that isn't taught anymore to people although it is the most accurate and simplistic way to describe this phenomenon. Jack and the Beanstalk. Jack = the bulk of people buying into the market. The giant = the cartel of bankers/brokers/government/news media shills who profit from this trade of tangibles for intangibles based on greed. That part of the story is jack swapping the tangible wealth -the family cow for the intangible and based on greed magic beans, with magic beans represented first with fiat money scams and stocks and government paper based on a future agreed to theft of tangibles called bonds.
The "crash" then and the resultant "great depression" resulted in zero factories disappearing, no farms floating off into the ether, etc, nothing "crashes" it merely resulted in a "lawful" transfer of ownership of the tangible assets-the cows in the analogy- of millions of people-the "jacks"- into the hands of a relative small number few "connected giants".
It's a hell of a scam really.
Now as the larger of the giants now sought to consolidate their gains firmly into tangibles, the US in particular was put into receivership and needed bulk tangibles besides the ownership of the land and factories and smaller banks etc and this resulted in the confiscation and transfer of what was the limiting factor in cartel inspired fiat scams, ie, tangible based money which at the time was represented by hard metals. *see note. It became illegal to possess bullion for private individuals UNLESS they were part of this cartel. there is your exact proof that it was and still is a congame perpetuated by this cartel. They-the giants- know what tangibles are, the bulk of the jacks think magic beans are tangibles because the collective few big giants tell them this is so and it's the "official way" to do business, they are coerced into accepting this trade. that's the illegal/unethical con part. This tangible wealth of the great depression era got transferred to a very few large central bankers based in europe primarily. Now back at the ranch, people were told the market "crashed". Umm where's the collapsed whatevers? Oh ya,there aren't any. People working the day before producing tangibles-remember always tangibles are the only true wealth-were told to go home. sort of nuts but to perpetuate the scam it must be played out to the final part, each and every time. True tangible wealth wasn't needed or useful anymore they were told. Their "investments" they were told were worth zero or close to it, so they got "sold" which resulted merely in the transfer of the tangibles from many people to a few in the giant-cartel. Now at gunpoint this is called theft, but if it's accomplished using the government/bankers/brokers/media shills cartel using mass psyops, cooking the books, misrepresenting what wealth really is, etc, etc, etc this is "lawful". It is only accomplished by manipulating people from the point of reality based normal business practices-starting in chuildhood- into speculative greed based gambling, without ever mentioning the gambling part except in the very fine print if ever. Example curently today, no matter which mainstream stock shill you hear on any over the air show, zero of them will ever mention anything but buying more magic beans as something to do with your tangible cow-money. You won't hear it, it doesn't exist. This is because these folks would need to go get actual productive tangible wealth producing jobs and would lose their con angle. The con is loosely called bubble investing, many examples in the past the most famous (more or less) is "tulip mania".
There has been no true "stock" investing since roughly clipper ship days. The theory of honest investing is company A will produce wealth, not re-arrange already produced wealth. Re arranging is not producing. never, ever, ever. This is because for 4 generations now (I am broadly and very generally speaking now obviously) no one is taught the basic difference between tangible wealth and credit based magic beans wealth. This is to perpetuate this scam, it works very well, it results in a huge transfer of ownership of true wealth into the hands of a few based on, well,"lying" is the actual word to use.
It's happened again, we-the "jacks" of the world, are currently in a much worse position than in 29 based on this congame, and the cartel is now milking the last few drops out of jack's cow. Fractional reserve banking, derivatives and the illusion of virtual wealth being equal to tangible wealth in 99.9%+ of most peoples minds will insure this scam goes on. Expect it to get much worse as the finalized wealth transference of those people "investing" today gets complete. And these "investors" are included in the pool of people with large outstanding mortgages,and financed goods, etc, etc. Our economy as a whole is now credited to beyond the lifespan's of everyone living, it's based on a lie, same as people treating a federal reserve bank note as a tangible wealth instead of a debit contract, which it is in fact. And that is just indisputable data, a bank note is a contract for a debt it is not a tangibles based piece of money except for a relatively short time span in gross human historical terms. It is useful only so long as the (ponzi based) pyramidical scam structure is operating. once the bottom wide part of the pyramid is reached (about now), it has to be dissolved as there's no new pools of true wealth being introduced and the ratio of producers becomes smaller than the numbers of wealth-credit accumulators. The pyramid reverses 180 degrees, whoops, that's called a "crash". rinse lather repeat.
Hmm, it's a complicated subject until you can really get around tangibles and intangibles, then it gets remarkably easy to understand. You can see then that the crash in 29 was manipulated into happening, same as what is going on now is being allowed to happen. I have an honest estimate of that 99.9% figure too, I hardly ever meet anyone in meatworld who understands this tangible wealth concept, even so called business people. I know several people right now who think they are millionaires and own zero actual tangibles. having a lot of crediot is not the same as outright ownership of tangibles. Some do- a very few- but most don't. They get taken in by the congame and wonder what happened, the game let them win for awhile but the house has percentages on it's side.
Please trolls, no "I made money in the market" replies, this was addressed up above, wealth transference happens, it's just based on a series of congame principles.
money thoughts * I am a proponent of tangibles based "money" as opposed to fiat-credit based bank note debt instruments. Precious metals are one form of tangibles, my idea is to have a rotating top 100 tangible produced commodities to back "money" rather than poof created digits in a ledger, with metals being in the mix. Hmm haven't come up with a catchy name for this concept yet though, although I have written a few papers outlining the basic idea.
whatever dude!
I'm as big a fan of Chomsky as anyone else, but the cartel argument falls flat in the face of friendman's research showing a contraction of the money supply was the real cause of the great depression. Between '29 amd '33, there was a gross contraction of around %5 of the money supply. Literally, there wasn't money to invest. The federal reserve didn't really understand the value of monetary policy, and hence, made, in hindsight, a series of staggering errors of judement which guaranteed that a bad recession became the Great Depression.
--well, my main basic point is that it wasn't an accident like you have been taught. that part is the lie, it was done *on purpose* for vast wealth transference clouded in pseudo illegality. If you accept as writ in holy stone it was an oversight or accident, then yes the classic argument is accurate, whereas if you believe as I do that it was done on purpose, then my points are valid. That argument is tangential to the discussion but relevant. For reference purposes go back and research such topics as the rise of central banking in europe, who started the concept, fiat money based economies versus tangibles based, the 16th amendment and the floor vote and arguments, the creation of the federal reserve and the "act", some of the players involved, the mass media fatcats of the time and their holdings and etc. Research what happened with bullion and where it went.
The bottom line is there are no historical parallels which can show fiat/credit intangibles based economies are viable beyond a couple or ffew generations, no examples exist. In western based literature you can take the arguments all the way back to old testament times where the biblical injunction is to use honest weights and measures. Fiat created "money supply" is completely antithetical to that tried and true concept, hence why it fails in bubble boom and bust cycles.
It's fairly complex yet simple, there's no free lunch, something for nothing doesn't exist. You cannot create or accumulate tangible wealth based on intangibles, else we all could be "rich" instantly. It works for those at the very tippy top of the command and control structure only in the long run, as they have the armed power and psuops to insit on it working for them, but it doesn't change the fact that vast numbers of people have to have their wealth transferred to them, either voluntarily or involuntarily by executive decree and force usually, as is the case now. Wealth-true wealth not mere ledger entries picked at random by mystical formulae- is only measured by things taken from the ground, refined into something else, and by the ground itself. The Earth I am speaking of. Wealth is mined, grown, or manufactured from that which is mined or grown. No wealth is made by creating account ledger entries on a whim. Therefore only existing produced wealth is valid, and how it gets transferred around. If a "money" supply is based on future promises of wealth creation, and if it rises to the point there is no conceivable way to create this wealth within the timespans of those living, it collapses, based on whichever population model this monetary system encompasses.
It's collapsing now, so enjoy the ride. There is no more conceivable way to issue more credit and keep the economyworking at the same levels of wealth transference we "enjoy" now. Our true ratio of actual produced tangible wealth versus the representations of it in terms of monetized digits prmulgated by the scammer shills is a mere few percent now, wheras during the years immediatley proceeding the 29 crash it was runing at around 40 %. This is something to REALLY think long and hard on right now.
Advice here, freely given. Put whatever wealth you have into tangibles that are useful and more reflect human being necessities as opposed to luxuries, especially for yourself and family. Best advice I have for anyone now, or stay on the deck of the titanic and enjoy the music by the string combo. Two choices, choose once, choose wisely.
Though it is always funny to read how commie CEO's beg for state subsidies to help their mismanaged companies.
You must be talking of KennyBoy Lay who came whining to his good pal George W Bush (who of course together with his conspirator in crime Dick C. would prefer to forget that they ever knew this guy) for help when his mismanaged company was shit up creek.
Man, you should switch to another propaganda channel, fast!
Right, but that's why there are anti-trust laws. The government will in no way, shape, or form ever give up their ability (monopoly) to tax people, nor will they allow anyone else to usurp that ability. If a corporation shows they have too much power, they get stomped like everyone else.
There's nothing wrong with monopolies. The only time a monopoly becomes a problem is when the government supports it--see Standard Oil. If a monopoly got into the position it's in because it is simply by far the best provider of a product or service, there's nothing wrong with that. If the monopoly starts to become lazy, overcharge, etc., then competitors will arise and provide necessary pressure.
A monopoly like Standard Oil could never happen under lassiez-faire capitalism, because the government can't make laws with respect to the economy.
BUT what if the monopoly, though resulting from free market pressure, cannot easily be competed with even though it is lazy? Microsoft is extremely difficult to compete with because
1. Software dev is very very time consuming and expensive. To get a truly "good" version of an application may take a decade of revisions and much money. Even if you DID have the money to make, say, a direct competitor to Office to really make it as good as what microsoft already has takes years.
2. Its a pain in the ass to use other operating systems for general purpose computing. Practically every program ever written runs under windows or via emulator. Yes, if all you need is say photoshop and similar tools then a mac is good and if you are into geeky stuff such as servers and databases Linux works. One of the real reasons OS X works better for some is that it is designed to appeal to artists, while Linux appeals to geeks. Both OSs provide a SPECIALIZED experience. This is the reason why the are better for SOME things.
3. Its a pain changing. Its a pain to switch software or operating system, its a pain to switch away from Office/Word when all your old documents are in a proprietary microsoft format.
4. The key features windows is missing do NOT really affect consumers that much. Yes, windows is unstable but if you turn the PC off after a few hours those memory leaks won't ever affect you. Yes, its insecure but most consumers have little information of importance stored on their PC, and recovering from a hacker just requires a recovery cd. Only when you get into servers do you need the absolute stability.
Consumers and business buyers want more FEATURES, not better ones. I'd far rather have less gimmicky features that are half broken and instead have a few absolutely reliable ones, but the business managers who give microsoft money would rather buy the system with more goodies and long spec sheets. It seems like a better bargain to them, like that lawn mower with 5 different grass collection options (even if only 1 of the works) seems to you.
> The key features windows is missing do NOT really affect consumers that much.
If this is indeed true as you claim (it may not be, but you say it is), than you just explained why Microsoft as a monopoly among the average joe is in fact _not_ really doing much harm to the average joe.
I would agree with the original poster in that the only truly harmful monopolies are government sponsored monopolies. I find that Windows XP is more than adequate for the tasks that I need to do during the day, so I use it. I prefer Phoenix over IE because I like its tabbed browsing and open development process. I am really impressed by Mac OS X, so the next computer I buy will be a Mac. Microsoft has not physically forced me from making these decisions. If Microsoft does not provide enough incentive for people to keep using Windows, than most people, assuming they are free and (for the most part) rational, will choose something else, and the monopoly will no longer have a monopoly
>1. Software dev is very very time consuming and expensive. >3. Its a pain changing.
These are all true statements about reality that do not change no matter how antitrust laws are enforced. If these facts contribute to Microsoft's monopoly, are you going hold Microsoft accountable for taking advantage of... reality? Everyone else is subjected to that same reality. If it takes another person a lot of time and money to develop a piece of software, than it probably took Microsoft a lot of time and money to develop its software. Many people avoid buying the latest and greatest technology because the up-front cost of change is too great (even if in the end, they would be better off with the change). The same is true of software. Microsoft had to provide enough value in their products to get over that resistance to change and get most people to use them in the first place. Why shouldn't other companies face the same reality?
Show me an example of a monopoly that developed in a truly free market that abuses its monopoly power to harm people, and I'll show you why it did not develop in a free market or why it does/can not abuse its monopoly power.
But when their product is *needed* to function what do you do? Hypothetically, if energy companies did something drastically wrong and were all in peril of collapsing you'd want somebody to step in and prop them up, at least as long as it took to either get back to normal or for smaller companies to fill the gaps, right?
"Be there. Aloha."
-- Steve McGarret, _Hawaii Five-Oh_
Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't their existing infrastructure, and
social dependency on that infrastructure, give them a somewhat legitimate need for a bailout?
As far as I know, the citizens of the US are engaged in an ongoing "bailout" of the Baby Bells... that's what all of the tariffs, etc. on the standard phone bill are for.
We've *paid* for the infrastructure, allowing the telcos to profit from their regional monopolies for decades.
I think that it is time to reclaim our ownership of it, decouple the infrastructure from the services by making infrastructure maintenance the province of non-profit organizations, forcing the the Baby Bells to compete for services on a level playing field.
Of course, it will never happen - the Baby Bells spend enormous amounts of lobbying money at both the state and federal level to retain their "ownership" and control of "their" infrastructure, and the fact that our money was spent to build out their regional infrastructures is something they'd prefer everyone ignore.
Oddly, one of the justifications that the Baby Bells continue to use for tariffs is to guarantee services in low population density areas... yet these regions are still lagging far behind more populous locations in DSL availability (and even quality POTS lines) because it isn't "cost effective" for the Bells to roll out such services there, despite the fact that the tariffs are supposed to eliminate cost considerations in such places in the first place!
Further, the ILECs continue to prevent competition from CLECs whenever possible.
True story: Here in Upstate NY I had a customer that wanted high speed Internet access... they are located in a small rural town, and a T1 line wasn't an option due to the cost. The POTS lines are lousy (and have been for the nearly 2 decades that I've done service there), and the local cable company didn't offer cablemodem services because their infrastructure couldn't support it and the owner wasn't prepared to make the financial commitment to rebuild the cable plant in town.
The ILEC in this case (Verizon) wouldn't even offer them ISDN, which was in theory available, would have been at least acceptable for their Internet needs (which were basic email and light Web-browsing for some 20 LAN users).
Well, after some searching, I found a CLEC that could offer DSL albeit "only" at 256Kbps due to distance) and local business dialtone service as well. There was much rejoicing, and plans were made to roll it out. A few other companies in town discovered what this company doing, and they too expressed an interest in DSL for their Internet access. It looked like a "win-win" for everyone: My customers would get cost-effective Internet access, lower cost business telephone service, the CLEC would get business that Verizon couldn't (or wouldn't) provide and my company would make money installing the firewalls, routers, mail servers, etc.
When Verizon found out what was going on, they closed the POP from which the CLEC was operating, splitting the services between 2 small cities in the area, citing "lack of demand for services" from that location as the reason for their actions, thereby eliminating the CLEC's ability to deliver local dial tone and DSL services to that town.
This is the same Verizon that is now allowed to offer long distance services because they have sufficiently opened up the last mile to competition...
The more things change, the more they stay the same, at least here in Verizonland.
It's obvious to me that so long as the RBOCs have control of the last mile, continue to have it supported by tax dollars, credits and tariffs, and abuse their monopoly control over it, that they will *not* compete, but will simply continue to ask for more money from us and the government when their mistakes cost them money.
Time to wean them from the public teat. No more bailouts!
SBC too (Score:2, Interesting)
What the heck, over?
Re:SBC too (Score:1)
Re:SBC too (Score:1)
>>>>>>
Maybe they studied math with the Enron accountants?
Excellent comment (Score:2)
What amazes me about them is how blatant and unapologetic they always were in flouting the TA96 regulations; even down to the middle- and lower-management. We watched them directly, blatantly and constantly bludgeon their "competitors." The FCC always seemed at best paralyzed by the political fight, and once Bush took the election, the writing was on the wall...
Your idea about maintaining the infrastrcuture with non-profits and converting the RBOCs to client status is an excellent one. Makes you wonder why they didn't do it that way in the first place.
Re:Excellent comment (Score:2)
Your idea about maintaining the infrastrcuture with non-profits and converting the RBOCs to client status is an excellent one. Makes you wonder why they didn't do it that way in the first place. ;)
Same reason these things always happen. Somebody had a lot of money, and some other people were willing to sell out the public to get their hands on it.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
This area can't get DSL because Verizon won't update the bad DMS station (it's 15 years old and was defective/outdated when it was installed, and they can't get parts for it. So I was informed by the poor sucker in charge of maintaining this station.) It's also why dialup here peaks at 26k, and why there is lots of voice dropout and static.
I finally threatened Verizon with making a complaint to the dreaded Public Utilities Commission, and that got a response from some mid-level manager. But from the lack of followup (they failed to report back as promised on the results from testing the DMS), it's pretty clear that response was just to shut me up. Methinks a chat with the PUC is now in order.
No, was Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:5, Interesting)
Doesn't their existing infrastructure, and social dependency on that infrastructure, give them a somewhat legitimate need for a bailout?
No.
In fact, quite the opposite. The ideal combination of market and regulated solutions would be to strip the infrastructure part of the task away from the ILECs and create a new category, WC. The Wiring Carrier would handle building out infrastructure, and would sell it to whatever LEC pays the bills. That would put CLECs like Covad on semi-equal footing with the ILECs, who currently use their monopoly over physical infrastructure to beat the competition down like a red-headed stepchild.
I say "semi-equal footing" because in all likelihood, the people constituting the WC will be ex-ILEC lifers, the type that have proven their willingness to creatively interpret job orders in such a way as to screw the competition. After time, though, they'll die off and the WC will deal with whoever pays the bills.
It's our infrastructure. Our universal service fees have paid to make sure it gets built. However, it's managed in a way that allows the incumbent to screw the competition and screw the customer. They've had their day. Let's take it away.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know about you, but I'd sure miss the powers granted to me by the fact that I live in a democracy right now, and the rights granted to me by my country's constitution.
Go back to the jungle, or participate in a free fight, if you think that's best for humanity. But please allow the rest of us to strive for some civilization. Thanks.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd take your civic-mindedness at a higher value if you understood that the Constitution doesn't grant rights.
Pay particular attention to the 9th and 10th amendments.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
I live in the Netherlands. A constitutional democracy since 1848.
Libertarianism by any other name (Score:1)
One who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state.
anarchism Pronunciation Key (nr-kzm) n.
The theory or doctrine that all forms of government are oppressive and undesirable and should be abolished.
As the previous poster suggested, in either case its survival of the fittest, or the law of the jungle if you prefer. Just remember this warning when you're lying in the gutter being butt-fucked by AOL/Time Warner and the local warlord at the same time.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
It's sad, considering the great way how it was started, but I'm glad that I was not speaking of the United States when I referred to my country.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:3, Offtopic)
I don't know of any rights granted to me by the constitution.
Read it again.
Compare the government of the United States with governments typical 250 years ago and with various contemporary governments in other parts of the world such as North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Iraq, Zimbabwe, etc.
Most U.S. citizens are spoiled by not having direct first-hand experience with a big league oppressive regime. Take a 6 month bus tour of Central America and tell me when you get back that we aren't lucky to have the luxury to be actually arguing over something like a ballistics database.
Personally, I rather enjoy the right to not be woke up in the middle of the night by jack-booted thugs displeased with my criticism of some leader in government.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
declare that its citizens can do as they please within this framework.
Aye, there's the rub.
My government is powerful, so I'm grateful for restrictions placed upon its use of that power.
But my life is full of interactions with other non-governmental organizations, such as my employer, my telephone service provider, my credit card company, etc, that have a substantial impact on my life.
They are free to require quite a lot of things of me that the government is not permitted to do.
To be sure, if I don't agree with the terms of that interaction, I'm certainly "free" to go live a pauper's existence in a cabin in Montana. A rotten choice, though, to give up some privacy for material comfort.
Please piss in this cup as part of the pre-employment screening. Video surveillance of the premises is done for your protection.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is why every day, I consider leaving the US.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:4, Interesting)
I did read it again. Apparently, I understood the words it contained. It doesn't grant rights; it recognizes them. The notion that rights exist only because a piece of paper says they do is rather horrifying. The Constitution exists to spell out the specific powers of the government, not the specific rights of the citizenry.
Here, look
Amendment 9: The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Translation: Just because we mentioned a few rights doesn't mean others don't exist. They do, because this document isn't the source of rights.
Amendment 10: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Translation: This document says what the government can do. If it doesn't say the Feds can do it, then the Feds can't do it. If it says the states can't do something, than the states can't do it. Other than that, let the people decide how they want their communities to be run.
Yeesh. Before making pronouncements about what the Constitution says, maybe you should try understanding it .
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
Well, he's right, but not in the way he intended. The Constituion doesn't grant rights to the people, it witholds powers from the government. That is and always was the intent when it was created and ratified. The Bill of Rights, enumerating basic human rights explictly, were included in the Constitution at the same time as a safeguard. This was done at the insistence of those framers who were afraid that people/govt would forget that original intent. It's probably contributed to some confusion over the years, but in retrospect it was probably a wise decision.
As the saying goes, a government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
I one hundred percent agree with you. It bears repeating every time this point is brought up, however, that the insecurity in many other countries (especially S. and C. America) is a direct result of US foreign policy.
That much is not arguable. What is debatable is to what degree our peace, prosperity and relative liberty has been purchased with the blood of our neighbors to the south.
In a probably vain attempt to be on-topic, attempts at de-privatizing (and sometimes nationalizing) resources like telephones and such have been some of the justifications that we (as a citizen of the US I think it necesary to use the first person plural when referring to the government) have historically used to fund/incite revolutions in these very nations under discussion.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
Fundamentally wrong? What tablets of stone are you getting this from?
Methinks you should apply a little skeptism before making such broad statements as these.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:5, Insightful)
Like health care? "Sorry, sir. I know there's a gaping wound in your skull and that it hurts, but your credit is no good here. Please go away and die outside in the gutter with all the other poor people."
Like law enforcement? "I'm sorry, sir, but there's nothing we can do. You have not paid for our police services. We cannot dispatch officers even if there's a murderous psychopath banging on your door with a bloody knife in his hand."
Like rescue services? "I'm sorry to hear that your house is on fire, sir, but we are a business not a charity. You should remember to pay your bills next time."
And so on...
People like Friedman and Hayek have proved
You can't really prove anything in even hard sciences like physics. Saying that something has been proven in economics or sociology is just ridiculous. Like psychology, economics and sociology are not hard, predictive sciences (some would say that they're not science at all) in the same sense as physics or chemistry.
If capitalism were a scientific theory, it would have been dropped a long time ago because it has no real predictive power and often contradicts with the real world observations.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
In fact it was like this in Britain with the fire brigades. Each fire brigade was owned by an insurance company and they would fight a fire in your house only if your house was insure by the appropriate insurance company, while letting the fire burn your neighbour's house. This crazy system was later replaced by local/national governement controls.
Another area where governements are necessary is pollution control. The private electricity industry in the US pollutes (proportionally) 6 times more than the (previoulsy or still) state owned electricity industry in Europe. This is a staggering number.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2, Insightful)
It might not be that way with a head injury... but it's that way with AIDS patients in lots of cities. Not to mention those needing an organ donation. And lots of other cases since the HMO's became popular.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
Like law enforcement?
Like rescue services?
LIKE PHONE SERVICE? "I'm sorry, but your account is past due -- no service for you. If you pay us all of the access charges, universal service charges, 911 charges, number portability charges, in addition to our wildy overpriced monthy rate, we'll be happy to restore your poor-quality analog line. Wonderful.
We subsidize certain services (Police Fire, sometimes health care) as a matter of public policy. Why should we subsidize a nice-to-have-but-not-essential service if it wasn't a public service to begin with, especially if it impairs the adoption of better technology that would probably cost less than the crap we have now? Investors bought telco stocks and bonds, knowing that certain risks were involved, premature obsolescense being damn near the top of the list.
For the most part, the US economic system does a wonderful job of purging itself of obsolete companies. The death of such companies creates opportunities for better competitors.
We think nothing of closing a factory and moving it to Mexico or China in search of cheap labor; how is this any different? It's tragic for individuals in the short run, but in the long run, we're all better off when people migrate to more competitive industries. If the telcos have to die anyway, get it over with. If we grant European-style subsidies to every industry that has a problem, we'll have sky-high unemployement, and a reduced standard of living (like the Europeans do). Once everyone is getting a subsidy, the tax burden will choke off any possibility of economic growith.
My retirement plan may be adversely impacted by the telcos demise, but it will have time to bounce back. Having subsidized telcos won't change my expectation that they will continue as a underperforming investment. Thanks, Uncle Sam, but no thanks.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
I do, however, consider it a fundamental function of a state to provide reliable and affordable health care, education, transportation and welfare to all. Those who have plenty, should give to those who are in need; thus progressive taxation. These strategic functions should not be privatized. Competition would perhaps drive the costs down, but the lowest bidder isn't always the best option for critical services.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
Joe Blow makes $1,000 a year, and pays 10% in taxes. That's $100.
Sounds like the rich pay more under a flat tax, doesn't it?
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
Joe Blow makes $1,000 a year, and pays 10% in taxes. That's $100.
John Doe makes $100,000 a year, and pays 10% in taxes. That's $10,000
Sounds like the rich pay more under a flat tax, doesn't it?
Bravo (Score:1)
Real Market Forces (Score:2)
Give me a second to go call the media so the people in this town can get all riled up and come and firebomb your hospital... oh, or what were you saying about treatment?
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:5, Insightful)
And I am happy to know that if I am burgled or mugged the criminal will rarely have a gun and that it's even rarer that the gun will be used. Regardless of whether the cops will catch the criminal, I can cope with losing some money or property.
Health care? You have only to go to a socialist country to see how that works. They won't throw you out in the gutter, but they will make you get in line, possibly for months to remedy serious ailments such as cancer.
Well, you could say I've been to a socialist country: I was born in a one with mostly state controlled economy. I am currently living abroad in a Northern European country which has had a large socialist party in the government for the last twenty decades. And you know what? The living standards are excellent in both countries. Working public transportation, no people living under the poverty line (check out the US and UK stats in the CIA worldbook for comparison), free public schooling, public libraries and goverment subsidized university level education to allow even the low wage blue collar workers' kids to have an advanced degree if they so choose. Crime is low because the social "safety net" will provide you with basic necessities even you go completely bankcrupt.
As far as your medical care argument goes, you couldn't be more wrong when it comes to Northern Europe and Scandinavia (UK public health care is in real shambles, though). As I've pointed out in one of my recent posts, I've undergone several surgeries. The latest problem with the eye was diagnosed at a private clinic (you know, private clinics are allowed even if the public health care is run by the government!), I got a referral to the local hospital (state run university hospital) and was under the knife in a week. I spent another week in the ward and paid $200 for that - the $8000 operation itself was paid by the society. I pay the progressive 28% income tax gladly for a system like that that is accessible to all citizens regardless of their income (unlike insurances).
You should know more about practical socialism before your spout nonsense like that. That's the kind of black and white reasoning that's not realistic. There is a middle ground between dog-eat-dog capitalism and total commitment to a government run economy, you know.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
Doh... that's two decades, of course.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
I wonder...I'm in the US, middle class. I pay about 30-ish% federal income tax, probably (ballpark, not pulling out the figures to look) 10% state income tax, social security tax, medicate tax, sales tax (6.5%), personal property taxes, etc., etc., etc.
I would estimate that over half of my earned income goes back to the government in some way, shape, or form. Would over 50% taxation make the US a socialist nation?
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
I could avoid the tax just by leaving the church, but to save just 0.5% in my taxes isn't worth the effort of filling that form. I consider it as an advance payment for my place in the graveyard, so that my family (or whomever's left behind) doesn't have to pay for it.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
I visited Norway recently, and while I was there heard several horror stories in the media about medical care that was slow and incompetent. My (native) host also believed that the system had significant problems in that regard. Granted, this is a very small dataset; I'd be interested in seeing a more scientific take on the subject.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
The first one is a direct result from the necessary cuts in the public spending in the 1990s depression. Nurses get ridiculously small pay for the physically and mentally heavy work they do. Better pay could now be afforded but the conservative right wing section of the government would usually rather spend the available money on military hardware and law enforcement.
Second problem is a social one and in my mind cannot be addressed by economical means.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:5, Insightful)
I just moved back to the states from the Uk, having lived there for 3 years and 1 year in Switzerland.
I found the health care in switzerland to be excelent, even though it was private. You had to have healthcare, to be registered in a city.. which you had to be to legally rent an apartment. The taxes where I was living was about 14% total, not including taxes on things like Garbage (yes,a stamp had to be put on every bag you take out.. at 1 dollar per bag, it encourages you to recycle everything you can).
My wife went to the doctor a few times, for this and that, and was quite happy with the modern clinic. The doctors seemed progressive and would offer medicine that was both herbal and western in nature. (No robotusin for a cold, but a herbal concoction you get at the pharmacy).
Anyway, I loved the swiss method of handling things, and at 1% un-employement, and guarding their borders in a way that would make the queen of england prooud, they don't seem to have a lot of the problems that other EU countries have with the poor and destitute.
Now, england is a complete flip-side. I have spent more hours sitting in a clinic waiting for the bloody doctor to just show up for work. (No appointment at my local surgery). When the doctor does show up, they seem to not give a damn about what the problem is. My wife sat waiting to be seen for almost 6 hours. No joke. A co-worker waited 7 months for status on a testicular lump that he was worried might be cancer. Yada yada.
When we found out we where having a baby, our first, we decided to pack our stuff up and move back to the states. Pretty scarry stuff. I can't speak for the rest of the EU, I am sure that they are in better shape than Uk. I was watching a debate on Brittish TV, and there is a statistic that if you get stomach cancer, your chance of survival is 6%. In the US your chance of survival is 61%. Fricken nuts.
And as for shoving people out the door. When we came back the US, we didn't have a job or much money. We immediately qualified for medicade and even after I got my new job, the state took care of the child birth and all the expenses including 6 months of birth control after the child birth for my wife and 3 follow up visits. Now we are back on private health care with my job, but to say that the hospital kicked me out is plain false.
I don't think that my case is special. I don't think that a lot of people realize is that in the US, there is help if you really need it. I am not a bum out on the street, but when we moved back to the US.. we did need some help, and I am glad we had it.
Private sector will always be better off than public, even in healthcare. What they need to do is put legislation in to keep the mall-practive law-suits under control and help keep the costs down so insurance isn't expensive for everyone. Look at the mortality rates across the board, you will be surprised what america's health care is churning out. It was a big enough difference for me to move across the world to have our baby.
Cheers
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
If you look at the amount of money involved, the problem is not malpractice suits. It's health insurance that incourages both the patient and the doctor to over do it. Why don't people buy generic drugs? Because their insurance is paying for it. Why do OB/GYN run a test for Downs Syndrome in utero? There's nothing they can do about it, (except abortion). They run the test because it's a few extra bucks. The mother to be lets them because it's not her money.
Another problem with health costs? Everyone is guaranteed treatment...but only in an emergency. These emergencies are expensive and the cost is picked up buy those who can afford it. Much of the cost could be alleviated by guaranteeing cheaper preventive medicine to everyone.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:5, Insightful)
The primary reason most people advocate capitalism is ETHICAL, not scientific. It was liberals and their endless dreams of micromanaging the perfect society that gave birth to that study.
Indeed - you only have to look at the fine examples of capitalistic ethics provided recently by companies such as Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing etc to realise how unnecessary government regulation in the free market is.
As far as your other statements, many of us wish there WAS no police force. I am perfectly capable of defending myself, and have a license to carry a Ruger .38 to do so.
Ah yes, and of course the police do nothing that giving everyone a gun wouldn't. It's like I've always said: you can't beat a heavily-armed lynch mob for a meticulous and professional criminal investigation leading to a fair and open trial.
Health care? You have only to go to a socialist country to see how that works. They won't throw you out in the gutter, but they will make you get in line, possibly for months to remedy serious ailments such as cancer. Even dialysis machines are hardly easily accessible.
And of course, limiting access to healthcare according to personal wealth or employability is such a fair way of arranging things, isn't it? After all, it's obviously entirely your own fault if you're poor or unemployed. I'm sure many of the /. readers left jobless by recent events in the tech industry will back me up on this one.
Incidentally, which socialist countries are you thinking of? How about Cuba as a counter-example? The health service there is excellent, and completely free at the point of use.
Stopping crime OT (Score:1)
lynch mob for a meticulous and professional criminal investigation leading to a fair and open trial.
Actually, the police do little to stop real crime (i'm not talking speeding tickets here i'm talking robberies, assault, murder, etc.). They are
little more than glorified paper pushers labeled as a deterrent. Basically you have to commit murder before any investigative part of the police
force is brought in. The local police where I live, always give the lame excuse that they are undermanned (even though there is like 1 cop per
100 people in the city). Its more like they are to busy enforcing traffic violations and petty civil issues (loud music, arresting people who haven't
paid their late tickets etc.) to do anything except show up and write an incident report when a real crime occurs.
I am apparently one of the few people who doesn't take the "we need more police" line seriously. More police != lower crime rate. Even
though that is usually the reason given to hire more. Instead I see 50 cops standing on street corners "showing presence" in groups of three or
so on a friday night when I go downtown to drink. Since, the town I live in is pretty laid back its rare to actually see them doing anything. Most
of the 'disturbances' probably occur in the bars which already have hired security there to check id's and deal with such problems.
Basically what i'm getting at, is you probably have a better chance of stopping crime if nearly everyone carried a gun. Effectively, you have
a 99% of the population as a police force. Instead of the first instinct being "call the police!" the first instinct should be "lets go stop that!" Five
to ten minutes later when the police show up there is a good chance that the burglar has run off with a few valuable things, the rapist has
finished up and ran away, or the murderer is half way across town.
Re:Stopping crime OT (Score:2)
Basically what i'm getting at, is you probably have a better chance of stopping crime if nearly everyone carried a gun. Effectively, you have a 99% of the population as a police force.
No, you have 99% of the population as an untrained armed mob. Would you really feel safer if you knew that every junkie, angry drunk, borderline sufferer of mental illness and road rage perpetrator you met was packing heat? Reducing crime by arming the whole population is like limiting the probability of nuclear war by giving everyone their own atom bomb!
Re:Stopping crime OT (Score:1)
If an angry mob (with or without guns take your pick, although I should point out most angry mobs in the US in the last few years were partially armed) were to attack your neighborhood. Would you want to have a gun to defend your home, wife and children? On the other hand you can call the police, and hope they can get though in time, or you can hope that you can escape from your house trailing your wife and children and hope that no one catches you, or your loved ones. Again, if you decide to run would you like to have a gun with you?
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
It's like I've always said: you can't beat a heavily-armed lynch mob for a meticulous and professional criminal investigation leading to a fair and open trial.
Is being lynched by a mob any worse than having a gang of cops shove a plunger up your ass, or being shot 42 times by the police on your way home from work?
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
Please don't do that. That's fraud and theft nothing more.
And of course, limiting access to healthcare according to personal wealth or employability is such a fair way of arranging things, isn't it? After all, it's obviously entirely your own fault if you're poor or unemployed.
Whose fault is it then? Mine? Yours? The evil corporation? If you want my taxpaying help to send your poor sorry corpse to the doctor at least have some grace about it.
Incidentally, which socialist countries are you thinking of? How about Cuba as a counter-example? The health service there is excellent, and completely free at the point of use.
It might be free, if you don't count the fact that you're not. They are also usually out of many medicines so they don't have much to charge you for. Been there? Used it? Not with that opinion.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:3, Interesting)
Fair and open trial?
You mean like the trial of in the UK in 1986 of Eric Butler, a 56-year old BP executive who was attacked in a London subway car? His assailants tried to strangle him and started beating his head against the door, and nobody came to his aid. He unsheathed an ornamental blade in his walking stick and stabbed one of his attackers in the stomach. He was tried and convicted of carrying an offensive weapon.
Or like the English homeowner in 1994 who used a toy handgun to detain two burglars who had broken into his home while he called the police, only to be arrested upon their arrival for using an imitation gun to threaten or intimidate? Or elderly woman who in the following year fired a toy cap pistol to drive off a gang who were threatening her, only to be arrested for "putting someone in fear"?
Or maybe you meant Tony Martin, who after having his house burgled 6 times in a village with no local police force used a shotgun to kill one burglar and wounded another, only to receive a life sentence for defending his life and property? And, of course, the wounded man who is now out of jail has received 5,000 pounds in legal assistance from the government in order to sue Martin.
You know, putting aside the fact that an armed populace doesn't denote lynch mobs and vigilante justice, but rather the ability and willingness of a citizenry to defend itself against injustice, a heavily-armed American lynch mob certainly does sound like an entity that's more familiar with the concept of justice than most European governments I can think of.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
Much like the reference to lynch mobs as a fair and least extraordinary example of a populace capable of self-defense?
Out of curiousity, are you European or American?
I might answer that if you explain how the validity of an argument is affected by the nationality of the one making it.
Understanding Objectivists (Score:2)
You are citing real world examples. That isn't fair.
Objectivists have based their entire philosophy on Ayn Rand's fictional novels, of which The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are just two. This is in contrast to other schools of capitalist, socialist, and even communist thought, which, however flawed they may be, at least have insight enough to cite serious academic studies as the foundation of their ethos and philisophical views.
Does this mean a world view based upon a fictional work is false, or one based upon a scientific or academic study will yield better results? Not necessarilly, any more than we can know with certainty that science will yield a more accurate understanding of the universe than religion (of whatever flavor) will.
However, the vast majority of evidence is that science does yield better practical results than religious dogma, and rigorous academic studies more useful insights than works of fiction.
Having said all that, in Ayn Rand's defense (and I say this despite disagreeing with many of her assumptions and rather myopic views on a number of subjects), she was nowhere near as extreme as many of her adherents.
BTW - When I lived and worked in Germany I made two interesting observations:
1. German taxes were not significantly higher for middle and upper-middle income people there than they are in the United States, despite their having an excellent social net, including a form of socialized medicine (socialized via a strictly regulated insurance industry and policies paid for with public moneys for those who cannot afford the premiums), and
2. The healthcare I was provided there was vastly better than what I have in the United States, despite having one of the better PPOs currently available. The American system appears to be designed to subsidize high-end medical procedures, available generally only to the very wealthy or very well insured (two groups which are quickly becoming synonymous) through vastly higher costs for standard medical procedures (like getting a checkup or an allergy shot).
We in the United States pay three times as much for our less adequate healthcare than the rest of the industrialized world does for the "less effecient" socialized healthcare -- a fact which should put to rest once and for all the myth that the free market is always more effecient than a public works equivelent. In the area of healthcare, where the customer is captive by nature of the fact that without it they will suffer and possibly die, clearly the power of the customer to choose, or reject unacceptable conditions of service vs. the power of the provider to coerce or set their own conditions, is so degraded as to make a "free" marketplace in any meaningful sense impossible. This leaves corporate oligarchies and trusts vs. socialized medicine as the two real choices we face, and the experience of the entire developed world, outside of the united states, indicates that the socialized approach is vastly more effecient and effective.
The Enron anti-free-market argument (Score:2)
A lot of the problems with the recent Enron and WorldCom, etc. scandals were caused BY government regulation. That is, government regulation that was being written by the very companies it was supposed to control.
Corrupt and biased regulation is far, far worse than no regulation at all. The Bernie Ebbers and Ken Lays of the world may claim to lay their alllegiance at the feet of the free market, but a system where the ground rules are written and rewritten by the biggest players to ensure their own profits is far from a free market.
In theory, government regulation would be fair and impartial to all competitors. But then, in theory communism works too. The real world is quite a bit different.
Above poster is a troll, and I'll bite... (Score:1)
Oh please! You are either lying, or was severely ripped off.
I am Swedish, and there is a lot to say about this country. But the parent post seems rather trollish...
I mean, $15 for a happy meal for christs sake!
As for comparing New York with a city with roughly half a million people. Well, that's just plain stupid.
I will leave the rest of your troll uncommented, as it is not worth the time. I've already bitten and I hope you are satisfied.
Enjoy your $15 Happy Meal benzapp, and don't let people sell you any more bridges!
Btw. Gotenburg really is a dump, but that's just my opinion.
Capitalism is ethical? (Score:5, Insightful)
In what theory is capitalism ethical? Nothing in my readings has any statements about an ethical dimension.
> Health care? You have only to go to a socialist country to see how that works. They won't throw you out in the gutter, but they will make you get in line, possibly for months to remedy serious ailments such as cancer.
So what happens if I have cancer, but no money for treatment? How is this different to the "socialist" case?
> You need to think about more than one possibility. Chanting to yourself over and over again "Government can solve my problems, government can solve my problems" is not going to work.
As opposed to chanting "Government can't solve my problems" or "Only the market can solve my problems"?
Re:Capitalism is ethical? (Score:1)
Re:Capitalism is ethical? (Score:1)
In the same moral theory that is behind the idea freedom of speech, freedom of religion and the words "all Men are created equal, [and] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" is the moral theory under which capitalism is ethical.
Something tells me that you've heard about these theories before, but just that you didn't make the connection that they have to capitalism.
The three fundamental rights of every man are Life, Liberty and Property. Justice is defined as the enforcement of these rights. The only extent to which your fundamental rights can be deprived is to protect the fundamental rights of everyone, including yourself. For example, it is moral to force people to pay taxes (deprive them of property) to pay for police and military, which will protect the rights of everybody from thugs and foreign invaders. In the case of life and property, when I say that government should "protect" them, I mean that government should "keep other people from physically taking away your freedom to create and preserve your own property and life." The only economic system the stems from the recognition of these rights is capitalism. Socialism and Communism are especially immoral because they outright deny the existence of property as a right. Anarchism is wrong because it does not take any steps to protect these rights.
There you have it: a crash coarse in why capitalism is the only ethical and moral economic system. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
>As opposed to chanting "Government can't solve my problems" or "Only the market can solve my problems"?
I would say chant "Everyone can solve his own problems"
>So what happens if I have cancer, but no money for treatment?
The same thing that happens when you want an iPod and you don't have enough money-- you can choose to do with out the iPod or appeal to others for assistance, which they may or may not choose to give you. In the case of the iPod, other people are probably not going to find your need very important, but I bet that if you had cancer, people would be much more likely to help you. There are free voluntary charity organizations for things like that. You're probably going to say , "there isn't enough private money to help all the people with cancer," and to that I would say: "tough." It is not one of your fundamental rights to get cancer treatment (see the bold part of the my third paragraph). It is everyone's right to choose how to manage the products of his own mind (property). You don't have a right to force others to give up their property no matter how pressing your need is (unless your need is the protection of one of your fundamental rights).
-Andrew
neo-economic-liberal bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
I sincerely hope that you are joking, or playing devil's advocate. The "market economy" is a fiction, created by government contrivance. Do you really believe that it is some sort of objective truth? or that it is the ultimate expression of human desire for advancement?
The market economy has done such an excellent job in protecting the environment and promoting individual liberty. Ironically enough, the "free market" has given us the most blatent interferences in market freedom that we have seen.
This is not to say that the market is undesirable or is not an excellent allocator of (some) resources - just that is it insufficient as a complete societal model.
Re:neo-economic-liberal bullshit (Score:1)
"Markets" form with or without goverments. People naturally trade goods and service ebtween each other. Try an Econ 101 class.
The market economy has done such an excellent job in protecting the environment
That's what lawsuits are for. The areas that are badly polluted in this country are polluted because they're public areas, and the gov't never sues private, polluting entities as they should.
and promoting individual liberty. Ironically enough, the "free market" has given us the most blatent interferences in market freedom that we have seen.
Individual liberty? Like what? National tracking system? That's the US govt. Wiretapping and email cracking? That's the US govt. How exactly has your "individual liberty" been harmed by a private entity? I'm really curious.
Re:neo-economic-liberal bullshit (Score:2)
Perhaps if you weren't so busy trying to be patronisng to the parent poster you would have noticed that he or she wasn't denying the existance of markets.
Re:Environment (Score:1)
Re:Environment (Score:1)
Because they are the only two choices?
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:3, Interesting)
Economic 'proofs' aren't worth the paper they're written on, which is why the Nobel Prize for Economics is a joke. They may as well have one for psychology as well.
The Nobel Peace Prize is ludicrous as well, but that's because it's given as an encouragement prize... maybe Arafat could give his back now, for example. Oh, and because a Peace prize funded by the estate of an explosives developer seems... erm... inconsistent at best.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
I understand that you were responding to a comment that was surreal at best, but I could not really let this pass.
The problem with proofs (economic or otherwise) is that they can only be used "in real life" when the axiomatic system and additional assumptions that underlie them are sufficiently close to reality. Hayek got a Nobel in Economics not for what a lot of Hayek fans think he did, but for a fairly general argument about the availability of relevant information to economic planners and their ability to set prices. It really is and was a useful result.
Interestingly, this year's winners of the Nobel in Economics were pioneers in the use of actual experimental data to address issues that were crucial to economics, and one of them was a card-carrying psychologist. I doubt this will create any huge shift in how economists do most of what they do, but I think that it is important to note that there is and will be a more empirical kind of economics being done that might make the science a bit less "Ivory Tower" than it has been.
Now, something that really worries me about the current line-up of Nobel Prizes is the extent to which the amount of actual science being done has "drifted" away from the set prize categories. I think this is particularly true for the "Medicine or Physiology" Prize, which is basically the only one anybody in medicine or any biological science can ever hope to win. To be completely frank about it, there are waaay more deserving potential recipients in those fields these days than can ever possibly win given the current rules. The pure science of Biology has absolutely exploded in importance in the last half century, and Medicine has made breath-taking progress as well, but the prizes were set up a century ago, so everybody has to queue up in these two vast fields. I can't help thinking that if Nobel were establishing the Prizes today, that this and similar problems would be fixed somehow. In the mean time, it's clear to me that while there are certainly some psychologists who would be deserving of a Nobel Prize (and Kahneman was among them), the field as a whole really has not yet reached the point where amazing progress is a yearly event, to the point where ignoring the field prize-wise is anything like the embarassing situation in the life sciences.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
That's not to say that either discipline hasn't been useful, especially in the context of determining broad cultural and societal trends. There are economists and psychologists whose work I find quite interesting and relevant... but I still think economics should be considered as a branch of psychology or sociology.
Yeah, the Nobel Prize structure is pretty archaic, but it really only has the legitimacy that people give it -- I know that most of the people I talk to find it somewhat irrelevant to the real work being done.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
Speak for yourself, Mr. Snide. Both are sciences, albeit really difficult ones to do good work in. But the best work in Psychology at least is stuff that can be envied by any experimental scientist.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
I'd say it qualifies as 2, 3 & 4 but not as 1, and that any 'science' that doesn't fulfil all of 1 isn't one. You may disagree.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
If they had to fake a Nobel prize they sould have done one for all the sciences not in Nobel's will rather than Economics alone.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
von Hayek (Score:2, Insightful)
I want to mention that Hayek, at least in "The Road to Serfdom", does not call for an abolishment of government. He seems to acknowledge, as many of us do, a need for it. Our founding fathers did.
The problem is, combined federal, state and local government here now represents about 50% of the market place, as opposed to around 5% prior to 1910. Truly this is *the* metric that shows clearly the US is now a collectivist / socialist enterprise.
History shows (Russia, National Socialist Germany, etc..) us that such a model does not work. It is a non competitive model. At best it can limp along, but will not provide liberty, self determination, self actualization. It cannot provide *opportunity* for a middle class. "We're in a tight spot!" - Oh Brother.
The states now feel the pinch (punch) of this last fed induced mania. For some excellent data and commentary on the current state, see Michael Hodges "Grandfather Economic Report". Best, Dave
Re:von Hayek (Score:1)
Re:von Hayek (Score:2)
Sorry, but I'm not sure what you mean here. As a share of GDP, the 1999 figures I'm familiar with [gpo.gov] say it's 29%. Furthermore, you are going to have to do a lot to convince me that this amount of increase is a bad thing. Life expectancies are way up, poverty is way down, education has improved for the vast majority, and we are no longer the same country we once were in almost any sense. I think it is healthy to debate our government funding priorities, and I know there is money being spent I would rather were not spent. But if you make me pick between 2002 and 1902, the choice is too easy. And if you argue that we've made all of this progress completely in spite of the government, I'm afraid to say I would like to see a lot of specific evidence that this is true.
Re:von Hayek (Score:1)
cheers
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
Couldn't this result in massive amounts of money being invested in social engineering to get us all to like the same things, meaning huge profits for companies?
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
The market economy depends on a strong government. (Score:5, Insightful)
Without such a strong government, producents will join force in guilds, who keep the market closed to outsiders, by force if necessary. This was the situation until the development of nation states with a strong King as the leader.
Unfortunately, this violates the foundation for the Libertarian belief, namely that all evil is created by government and all good come from the market. And as always when belief and reality slashes, the believers are unable to see the reality.
Of course, this isn't an excuse for the government to take up other tasks than ensuring that players on the market follow the rules.
Re:The market economy depends on a strong governme (Score:1)
The old Eastern Bloc happens to be an excellent example of what happens when governments are not strong enough to enforce the rule of law and make everybody play fair.
You cannot have a free market and foreign investment without a certain degree of government intervention. Otherwise you see the situation prevalent in the more-backwards parts of the world where businessmen find it cheaper and more convenient to use unethical means to dispose of the competition than follow the rules.
Russia is an excellent example. Quite a few people have been rubbed out by their business competitors because the government is either unable or unwilling to impose a sufficent level of rule-of-law. I believe that just the other day, a regional governer got shot in the back of the head in broad daylight, apparently an organised hit by disgruntled businessmen. Check out the photo [moscowtimes.ru].
Re:The market economy depends on a strong governme (Score:1)
Re:The market economy depends on a strong governme (Score:2)
Re:The market economy depends on a strong governme (Score:1)
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:5, Informative)
I suggest you go re-read Friedman. First off, he did not prove that free markets are the best solution, he merely made a (very compelling) argument that it is so. Second, Friedman himself pointed out various examples where 'Market failure' can occur. One example he cites is about public works, for example people might be willing to pay a fee for using properly maintained sidewalks, yet it would be economically unfeasible for a private company to collect these tolls. So instead we all pay a small amount of tax and the government takes care of the sidewalk.
There are other factors that may may prompt a government intervention: in case of the telcos, the government may decide that having a phone line is a basic right, and that telcos are supposed to hook everyone up for a basic fee, with the easy hookups subsidising the ones in remote locations. If governments did not do this, then all the telco's would tell the few customers living in the sticks to get stuffed if they wanted a phone hookup.
I am not saying any of that is right or wrong, but there is nothing fundamental about letting the market economy run its course. It may be the most efficient, and there is a strong case for any government to think twice before interfering with the free market, but not even Friedman suggested to leave everything to the market.
But what if they did? (Score:3, Insightful)
sidewalks: probably wouldn't exist - except along the lines of "gated communities", with boards far more oppressive than the regular governments could ever dream of. In the cities where sidewalks are absolute necessities, the quality of the sidewalk would be directly proportional to the affluence of the neighborhood - and might even help propel runaway gentrification and disinvestment (or not, since any functional society needs people from a variety of economic levels - that's why they've got rent control in New York).
telcos: until the advent of wireless/satellite communication, the rural areas would almost certainly remain poorly or completely unconnected, putting them at a significant economic and social disadvantage. Industrialized farming would have had an even easier time taking over the farming market. Populations would be much more concentrated in the cities. On the positive side suburban sprawl would probably be significantly curtailed.
If free market principles applied to roads (and to a lesser degree power) the exact same things as above would probably happen, only much more so. As for water and waste... those are two things where the community, up to and including the international community, gets involved because it affects them directly.
Of course there are countless examples on the books along these lines, and where real money is involved it gets much uglier. Unless the government regulates it into something acceptable at the behest of the (generally angry) people, the rich and powerful will increasingly manipulate and monopolize the markets (and the law, and the money) legally and illegally for their personal gain regardless of how badly it affects others. "Free Market" is an oxymoron. Those who want it the most are always either rich or think they could be - and if they actually got it almost all would be disabused of their hopes and money rapidly.
A meddling beauracracy versus a greedy oligarchy -fiscal democrats versus moneyed republicans.
Re:But what if they did? (Score:1)
Any time the government attempts to fill a need, it must be very careful to not squeeze out private competition. If only the government allowed to fill a need (by law) or if it isn't willing to contract out to private companies (eg, it is the only supplier, instead of supplier of last resort) then you will never get anything better than the government's solution. That might be the best solution, temporarily, but beurocrats hate change. It will eventually be a bad solution, and if it has squeezed out all private competitors there is no where else to turn.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:4, Informative)
When the government doesn't do anything to 'hinder' the economy, you get a situation like the roaring 20's, which leads to rapid inflation, and overvalued markets. Then you get the depression. The reason the world pulled out of the depression was because governments started spending lots of money (another interference in the market). The first economy to pull out of the depression was Germany, because their leader said, "I don't care if we don't have money - just build me a frickin' army!" Of course, they could have spent the money on road or schools too, and that would have worked, but hindsight in 20/20.
In more modern times, the central banks *agressively* set interest rates higher if the risk of inflation gets too high, so as to slow the economy, and governments will increase spending and lower interest rates if the economy slows down too much.
Get this through your head: the economy is naturally Unstable! This is what economists have learned in the past century. Economies have to be regulated by governments or they fail dramatically. You owe your prosperity to Greenspan and people like him (e.g. John Maynard Keynes).
As an aside... this natural instability, and our ability to control it with a feedback loop is why I think economists and control systems engineers like myself should spend some time working on the problem together. The problem of economic balancing and the control systems problem of balancing an inverted pendulum have many interesting similarities.
great depression, Jack and the Beanstalk (Score:1)
The markets failed starting in 29 and lasting until a functional flat lined bottom in 34 precisely on purpose from a cartel of international bankers working in collusion with so called "govern" ment. It was done on purpose as a pure theft-a con game. First they-"they" will be this cartel-first they fully buildup the illusion that "stocks" represent a per measured value tangible asset in people's minds, when they are not. This is the main point of the scam. Stock market opt-in buying is touted as an "investment", people are encouraged to swap their tangible produced and accumulated "wealth" for a promise of vastly more wealth in the future using little or zero more effort than what they have already done. this is the greed factor at play here, which makes it so easy for the conmen to keep running this scam generation after generation. These people (most-broadly speaking for conversational purposes now) at that point lose control of their wealth. This is entirely 100% based on the easily understood human condition known as greed, ie, getting more than what you produced. There's even a childrens fairy tale I like to use to illustrate this as an anology, a lesson that isn't taught anymore to people although it is the most accurate and simplistic way to describe this phenomenon. Jack and the Beanstalk. Jack = the bulk of people buying into the market. The giant = the cartel of bankers/brokers/government/news media shills who profit from this trade of tangibles for intangibles based on greed. That part of the story is jack swapping the tangible wealth -the family cow for the intangible and based on greed magic beans, with magic beans represented first with fiat money scams and stocks and government paper based on a future agreed to theft of tangibles called bonds.
The "crash" then and the resultant "great depression" resulted in zero factories disappearing, no farms floating off into the ether, etc, nothing "crashes" it merely resulted in a "lawful" transfer of ownership of the tangible assets-the cows in the analogy- of millions of people-the "jacks"- into the hands of a relative small number few "connected giants".
It's a hell of a scam really.
Now as the larger of the giants now sought to consolidate their gains firmly into tangibles, the US in particular was put into receivership and needed bulk tangibles besides the ownership of the land and factories and smaller banks etc and this resulted in the confiscation and transfer of what was the limiting factor in cartel inspired fiat scams, ie, tangible based money which at the time was represented by hard metals. *see note. It became illegal to possess bullion for private individuals UNLESS they were part of this cartel. there is your exact proof that it was and still is a congame perpetuated by this cartel. They-the giants- know what tangibles are, the bulk of the jacks think magic beans are tangibles because the collective few big giants tell them this is so and it's the "official way" to do business, they are coerced into accepting this trade. that's the illegal/unethical con part. This tangible wealth of the great depression era got transferred to a very few large central bankers based in europe primarily. Now back at the ranch, people were told the market "crashed". Umm where's the collapsed whatevers? Oh ya,there aren't any. People working the day before producing tangibles-remember always tangibles are the only true wealth-were told to go home. sort of nuts but to perpetuate the scam it must be played out to the final part, each and every time. True tangible wealth wasn't needed or useful anymore they were told. Their "investments" they were told were worth zero or close to it, so they got "sold" which resulted merely in the transfer of the tangibles from many people to a few in the giant-cartel. Now at gunpoint this is called theft, but if it's accomplished using the government/bankers/brokers/media shills cartel using mass psyops, cooking the books, misrepresenting what wealth really is, etc, etc, etc this is "lawful". It is only accomplished by manipulating people from the point of reality based normal business practices-starting in chuildhood- into speculative greed based gambling, without ever mentioning the gambling part except in the very fine print if ever. Example curently today, no matter which mainstream stock shill you hear on any over the air show, zero of them will ever mention anything but buying more magic beans as something to do with your tangible cow-money. You won't hear it, it doesn't exist. This is because these folks would need to go get actual productive tangible wealth producing jobs and would lose their con angle. The con is loosely called bubble investing, many examples in the past the most famous (more or less) is "tulip mania".
There has been no true "stock" investing since roughly clipper ship days. The theory of honest investing is company A will produce wealth, not re-arrange already produced wealth. Re arranging is not producing. never, ever, ever. This is because for 4 generations now (I am broadly and very generally speaking now obviously) no one is taught the basic difference between tangible wealth and credit based magic beans wealth. This is to perpetuate this scam, it works very well, it results in a huge transfer of ownership of true wealth into the hands of a few based on, well,"lying" is the actual word to use.
It's happened again, we-the "jacks" of the world, are currently in a much worse position than in 29 based on this congame, and the cartel is now milking the last few drops out of jack's cow. Fractional reserve banking, derivatives and the illusion of virtual wealth being equal to tangible wealth in 99.9%+ of most peoples minds will insure this scam goes on. Expect it to get much worse as the finalized wealth transference of those people "investing" today gets complete. And these "investors" are included in the pool of people with large outstanding mortgages,and financed goods, etc, etc. Our economy as a whole is now credited to beyond the lifespan's of everyone living, it's based on a lie, same as people treating a federal reserve bank note as a tangible wealth instead of a debit contract, which it is in fact. And that is just indisputable data, a bank note is a contract for a debt it is not a tangibles based piece of money except for a relatively short time span in gross human historical terms. It is useful only so long as the (ponzi based) pyramidical scam structure is operating. once the bottom wide part of the pyramid is reached (about now), it has to be dissolved as there's no new pools of true wealth being introduced and the ratio of producers becomes smaller than the numbers of wealth-credit accumulators. The pyramid reverses 180 degrees, whoops, that's called a "crash". rinse lather repeat.
Hmm, it's a complicated subject until you can really get around tangibles and intangibles, then it gets remarkably easy to understand. You can see then that the crash in 29 was manipulated into happening, same as what is going on now is being allowed to happen. I have an honest estimate of that 99.9% figure too, I hardly ever meet anyone in meatworld who understands this tangible wealth concept, even so called business people. I know several people right now who think they are millionaires and own zero actual tangibles. having a lot of crediot is not the same as outright ownership of tangibles. Some do- a very few- but most don't. They get taken in by the congame and wonder what happened, the game let them win for awhile but the house has percentages on it's side.
Please trolls, no "I made money in the market" replies, this was addressed up above, wealth transference happens, it's just based on a series of congame principles.
money thoughts * I am a proponent of tangibles based "money" as opposed to fiat-credit based bank note debt instruments. Precious metals are one form of tangibles, my idea is to have a rotating top 100 tangible produced commodities to back "money" rather than poof created digits in a ledger, with metals being in the mix. Hmm haven't come up with a catchy name for this concept yet though, although I have written a few papers outlining the basic idea.
Re:great depression, Jack and the Beanstalk (Score:1)
Re:great depression, Jack and the Beanstalk (Score:1)
The bottom line is there are no historical parallels which can show fiat/credit intangibles based economies are viable beyond a couple or ffew generations, no examples exist. In western based literature you can take the arguments all the way back to old testament times where the biblical injunction is to use honest weights and measures. Fiat created "money supply" is completely antithetical to that tried and true concept, hence why it fails in bubble boom and bust cycles.
It's fairly complex yet simple, there's no free lunch, something for nothing doesn't exist. You cannot create or accumulate tangible wealth based on intangibles, else we all could be "rich" instantly. It works for those at the very tippy top of the command and control structure only in the long run, as they have the armed power and psuops to insit on it working for them, but it doesn't change the fact that vast numbers of people have to have their wealth transferred to them, either voluntarily or involuntarily by executive decree and force usually, as is the case now. Wealth-true wealth not mere ledger entries picked at random by mystical formulae- is only measured by things taken from the ground, refined into something else, and by the ground itself. The Earth I am speaking of. Wealth is mined, grown, or manufactured from that which is mined or grown. No wealth is made by creating account ledger entries on a whim. Therefore only existing produced wealth is valid, and how it gets transferred around. If a "money" supply is based on future promises of wealth creation, and if it rises to the point there is no conceivable way to create this wealth within the timespans of those living, it collapses, based on whichever population model this monetary system encompasses.
It's collapsing now, so enjoy the ride. There is no more conceivable way to issue more credit and keep the economyworking at the same levels of wealth transference we "enjoy" now. Our true ratio of actual produced tangible wealth versus the representations of it in terms of monetized digits prmulgated by the scammer shills is a mere few percent now, wheras during the years immediatley proceeding the 29 crash it was runing at around 40 %. This is something to REALLY think long and hard on right now.
Advice here, freely given. Put whatever wealth you have into tangibles that are useful and more reflect human being necessities as opposed to luxuries, especially for yourself and family. Best advice I have for anyone now, or stay on the deck of the titanic and enjoy the music by the string combo. Two choices, choose once, choose wisely.
good luck friend
Ah (Score:2)
You must be talking of KennyBoy Lay who came whining to his good pal George W Bush (who of course together with his conspirator in crime Dick C. would prefer to forget that they ever knew this guy) for help when his mismanaged company was shit up creek.
Man, you should switch to another propaganda channel, fast!
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
Cheers,
S
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
A monopoly like Standard Oil could never happen under lassiez-faire capitalism, because the government can't make laws with respect to the economy.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:1)
If this is indeed true as you claim (it may not be, but you say it is), than you just explained why Microsoft as a monopoly among the average joe is in fact _not_ really doing much harm to the average joe.
I would agree with the original poster in that the only truly harmful monopolies are government sponsored monopolies. I find that Windows XP is more than adequate for the tasks that I need to do during the day, so I use it. I prefer Phoenix over IE because I like its tabbed browsing and open development process. I am really impressed by Mac OS X, so the next computer I buy will be a Mac. Microsoft has not physically forced me from making these decisions. If Microsoft does not provide enough incentive for people to keep using Windows, than most people, assuming they are free and (for the most part) rational, will choose something else, and the monopoly will no longer have a monopoly
>1. Software dev is very very time consuming and expensive.
>3. Its a pain changing.
These are all true statements about reality that do not change no matter how antitrust laws are enforced. If these facts contribute to Microsoft's monopoly, are you going hold Microsoft accountable for taking advantage of
Show me an example of a monopoly that developed in a truly free market that abuses its monopoly power to harm people, and I'll show you why it did not develop in a free market or why it does/can not abuse its monopoly power.
-Andrew
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:2)