If anyone wants a trip down memory lane, here is the three-post OP from jrodefeld from three years ago. I offer it without comment.
Shadow Stats!
For anyone who doubts that libertarian creationism is a real thing, they give their own artificial data to make the case for us. This is market fundamentalism at its purest. The real data don’t support their favorite conclusions, so they make up their own data to compensate. Shadow Stats! stems from the same mentality that gave us Unskewed Polls! in the last election cycle, where the line between political belief and personal religion vanishes.
One great thing about modern econo-data is that there actually are non-governmental price indices out there that we can look at if we doubt the government’s CPI calculation. It is true that the government has played around a bit with the CPI, so it is within the realm of reason to want something objective to verify that the CPI isn’t too badly off. The trick is finding a reliable one. The most famous of these alternate measures has gotta be MIT’s Billion Price Project. Not perfect but at least it’s real data, not fantasy numbers made up for ideological convenience. And the people who created this index were kind enough to create graphs that compare their own findings with the official CPI.
The final hilarious nail in this coffin has got to be the cost of a subscription to Shadow Stats!. Seven years ago, the cost of said subscription was $175. Woof! But checking again today, I can see that the cost of a subscription has risen to an astounding $175. Feel the inflation! (Krugman did this calculation last year, and the number still hasn’t changed.) Look at the “data” they provide and they insist on much higher prices, but when we glance at the one number on their entire website that is subject to genuine market forces and we see no change at all.
I will never understand why people who know nothing about history cite the historical record as if it supports their position.
Here is the most relevant piece of information from the entire historical record: Percentage of gold standard monetary systems that failed in history: 100%. This is a perfect rate of failure, unblemished by any exception. The gold standard is no more. It has ceased to be. It’s expired and gone to meet its maker. As we look around the world today, we see only fiat money systems, of various degrees of success, because literally every gold standard system on the face of this planet went extinct.
While it’s true that fiat money systems also fail from time to time, it’s never the case that such a country returns to gold. That literally never happens anymore. To quote an old post from Exapno Mapcase that Der Trihs referred to earlier in the thread:
The historical record here is perfectly clear, and the level of self-delusion required to miss it is just breathtaking.
In many cases, yes. In other cases the government is simply much better at it. And as a rule, the federal government does a better job than local governments; it is less corrupt, more competent, fairer, and has far more resources. Given the choice I’d greatly weaken the state/county/city governments and transfer most of their functions and authority to the federal government.
Which would make them corrupt mercenaries.
In other words, hand yet more money to rich while crushing ordinary people under taxes.
And no, you couldn’t fund a functional government of any kind with your silly “non aggression principle”.
I’ll say this on that subject. I know that 16 trillion dollar figure was widely reported and not just on right wing websites. I admit that I did NOT read the entire GAO report that was linked to earlier. However, if the numbers were misleading, then I was mislead on that (and so were many others). It is certainly not that first time and I try to carefully examine the sources I quote.
But, as you mentioned, even if that number is exaggerated, my point is still quite valid. The point is that the Federal Reserve has embarked on an unprecedented experiment with monetary stimulus and there is virtually no oversight.
Lets suppose the number reported from this report only amounts to a trillion dollars and some change. The only reason we even know about this is due to the watered down “audit” that Ron Paul and Alan Grayson managed to pass in the house (it was watered down dramatically in the Senate).
Are we to suppose that this money is ALL the Fed has passed out in secret?
**As is pretty much always the case with modern American politics, people seem to find hobgoblins and conspiracies everywhere in every place except where the real thing, or something close to it, actually exists. In the case of the debt issue, we have a raging national controversy over something as meaningless and routine as raising the debt ceiling, while a genuinely radical experiment in something vaguely like centrally planned economics is going on at the Fed and the other central banks around the world, and the public has mostly yawned in response.
. . .
Essentially, all of these central banks are creating vast sums of money and thrusting themselves into the world economy as gigantic buyers of stuff, be they mortgages or treasury bonds. In theory, the banks will eventually “sterilize” or reverse the process by selling off all this stuff they’ve bought and draining the economy of its “excess liquidity,” but no one knows when that will be, and for the time being, QE is pure financial steroids. It’s stimulus on a much bigger scale than Obama’s recovery program, it’s open-ended, and it’s not voted upon. In fact, apart from the fact that the Fed chairman is nominated by the president, the actions of the central bank are not merely undemocratic but intensely secret, with minutes of its Federal Open Markets Committee (which debates decisions like the raising of interest rates or QE) only released three weeks after decisions are made. The Fed therefore never has to engage the public in real time about its decisions. Instead, it hands down edicts, and Wall Street watches for clues into its mysterious behind-closed-doors deliberations the way Catholics watch the Apostolic Palace for smoke before papal elections.**
Is it only myself who have a problem with the actions of the Federal Reserve? I might have been misled on the figures of that particular sum of money, but this is standard operating procedure at the Fed right now. And it is undemocratic and intensely secret.
I don’t mind if you find out factually incorrect statements in sources, but to suggest that a widely (possibly) misquoted figure somehow invalidates my thesis is hardly true.
Should it be legal? Most definitely. Could I have gotten in “plenty of trouble” for smoking weed? Not hardly. I guess it depends on where you live. I’m in Oakland. I guarantee you LE here doesn’t give two shits if you’re merely getting high recreationally.
So you’re suggesting we have private police forces? People going around with uniforms and badges and guns enforcing laws - but not subject to any government control?
This is probably the worst idea you’ve had in this thread.
Why are all these other taxes any different than an income tax?
David Brin once pointed out that there were no constitutional democracies prior to the eighteenth century. And people weren’t living in some libertarian paradise before the eighteenth century. So why would anyone think eliminating constitutional democracy would produce a libertarian paradise now?
Sorry mate in what world could we stop mans’ natural tendency to gain advantage through any means possible?
I mean it would be great if we could all just get along but it I have not seen any evidence that this can happen beyond small groups.
Dont we have non aggression principles today? I mean I cant just go and punch someone in the mouth and police officer cant just beat me up if he wants?
Faced with a world model as astounding as OP’s, one asks: Is he sincere and intellectually honest? Does he have an open mind?
We have our answer.
Twenty trillion in secret loans turns out to be a single trillion in public loans? But … * It doesn’t matter! The false figure was “widely quoted.” * :smack:
Before we move on, let me ask for a cite on that. Forbes’ $16 trillion figure is obvious bullshit, concocted to delude. Who exactly are the other sources that fell for this lie? Come on, jayarod7, don’t wait for the consecutive translation; you wrote “widely quoted”; are there any quoters besides other idiotic right-wing sites like Forbes?
… And then, to defend himself, OP writes “Are we to suppose that this money is ALL the Fed has passed out in secret?” – Oops! It looks like I was right after all. OP, I suggest Illuminati Rothschild as search terms if you want to “research” this idea on YouTube.
… and trots out a piece by Matt Taibbi, of which the only relevance is that it also tosses out “trillions of dollars” in a scary fashion.
The names jayarod7 and jrodefeld are similar enough as to make one wonder. jayarod7, what do think about forced vaccination?
I dunno. I think he’s sincere. Just misinformed. I’m guessing he’s young and he got a hold of some libertarian literature and he had that epiphany of having The Answer suddenly revealed to him. A lot of nonsense like libertarianism or marxism or objectivism or anarcho-syndicalism can sound credible as long as you present it in isolation and avoid the counter-evidence.
Yes. What’s amazing is what a mish-mash his ideas are. He hates government … but somehow focuses on fiat money and fractional-reserve banking as the enemy. :smack: But he can’t actually articulate any economic ideas. I don’t bother clicking to his crackpot sites – I’ll bet they start with loud gesticulations about the rising price of gold. At one point he seemed to associate the decline of America’s middle class with the FRB. :smack:
I’ve written the following 5 times before at SDMB, but will write it a sixth time: The average man’s understanding of economics would improve ten-fold if he just forgets everything he thinks he knows about “money” and focuses on the real economy, pretending all trades are barters if that helps.
One thing I did figure out is that endorsement of civil rights, etc. in OP was just a subterfuge, trying to draw “progressives” in. His only three real themes are
[ul]
[li] Unreasoned hatred of government and fiat money[/li][li] Unreasoned hatred of government and fiat money[/li][li] Unreasoned hatred of government and fiat money[/li][/ul]
It’s hard to argue with fuzzy inchoate philosophic musings. That’s why I focus on his specific factual allegation about “$20 trillion in secret loans.” This has now been completely debunked. I won’t address jayarod7 again unless he demonstrates the intellectual honesty to write, in no uncertain terms:
“Forbes’ headline about $16 trillion was total bullshit and I regret inflicting their lie into this thread.”
Hello there. You’re better off foregoing the essay approach and having them focus on one point at a time. I suggest starting a thread on the empirical case for sound money or the irrational fear of deflation. They all claim to be pragmatic empiricists, so use that to your advantage. I’d do it myself if I had the time and patience. Good luck fellow.
Okay, rather than argue over ideology, let’s talk practice. Perhaps the OP would like to outline the fundamental principles upon which he feels society should run.
Would there be some form of government in your society? How would the officials in your government be chosen? Would there be ongoing legislation in your government? How would legislation be enacted? To what degree would individuals be allowed to refuse to recognize the authority of the government over them? In what circumstances would the government be allowed to override the wishes of an individual? Would there be powers that the people would be prohibited from giving to the government? How would controversies between people who have different views on what the fundamental principles are be resolved?
I realize the OP has already written things that suggest some of his answers to these questions but I don’t want to speak for him.
“Money” does not exist. “Money” is simply a concept for a medium of exchange between various goods and services. People who scream about Gold and Fiat Money do not understand this. They think “Money” actually is something, when as I said, it is only an idea.
Nothing has any value except within the Illusion of the World where we decide that since we need it to live, or it can be used for something, or that it is Cool, or that other people want it for whatever reasons, it then has ‘value’. Given that this ‘value’ is fluid and ever changing, and that there are a nigh infinite number of things that need to be exchanged for other various things on a daily basis, the concept of “Money” comes into play as being a Common Means of Exchange.
Money allows us to exchange Beans for Automobiles for Hours of Labor.
And yet again, NOTHING IS MONEY. Money is only that concept of exchange, for which we in this current Illusion long ago decided to use bits of paper with numbers on them (rather than bits of metal, which we still use to a lesser degree). With progress, we are even moving beyond the need for a physical medium and money is becoming only numbers stored in computers. Ephemeral electronic scoreboards saying that you have N amount of Money.
“Fiat” money? All money is fiat money. Even Gold. You’re just declaring (by the fiat of the shared illusion) that Gold is actually worth something. Something more valuable than food or fuel or sometimes, even people’s lives.
Are you suggesting that Shadow Stats is making up these numbers?
The creator of the website, John Williams is highly qualified to evaluate economic data and is far from the charlatan you seem to be suggesting he is.
From the main page of shadow stats:
**Walter J. “John” Williams was born in 1949. He received an A.B. in Economics, cum laude, from Dartmouth College in 1971, and was awarded a M.B.A. from Dartmouth’s Amos Tuck School of Business Administration in 1972, where he was named an Edward Tuck Scholar. During his career as a consulting economist, John has worked with individuals as well as Fortune 500 companies.
Although I am known formally as Walter J. Williams, my friends call me “John.” For 30 years, I have been a private consulting economist and, out of necessity, had to become a specialist in government economic reporting.
One of my early clients was a large manufacturer of commercial airplanes, who had developed an econometric model for predicting revenue passenger miles. The level of revenue passenger miles was their primary sales forecasting tool, and the model was heavily dependent on the GNP (now GDP) as reported by the Department of Commerce. Suddenly, their model stopped working, and they asked me if I could fix it. I realized the GNP numbers were faulty, corrected them for my client (official reporting was similarly revised a couple of years later) and the model worked again, at least for a while, until GNP methodological changes eventually made the underlying data worthless.
That began a lengthy process of exploring the history and nature of economic reporting and in interviewing key people involved in the process from the early days of government reporting through the present. For a number of years I conducted surveys among business economists as to the quality of government statistics (the vast majority thought it was pretty bad), and my results led to front page stories in 1989 in the New York Times and Investors Daily (now Investors Business Daily), considerable coverage in the broadcast media and a joint meeting with representatives of all the government’s statistical agencies.
Nonetheless, the quality of government reporting has deteriorated sharply in the last couple of decades. Reporting problems have included methodological changes to economic reporting that have pushed headline economic and inflation results out of the realm of real-world or common experience.
Over the decades, well in excess of 1,000 presentations have been given on the economic outlook, or on approaches to analyzing economic data, to clients—large and small—including talks with members of the business, banking, government, press, academic, brokerage and investment communities. I also have provided testimony before Congress (details here).
An old friend—the late-Doug Gillespie—asked me some years back to write a series of articles on the quality of government statistics. The response to those writings (the Primer Series available at the top-center of this page) was so strong that we started ShadowStats.com (Shadow Government Statistics) in 2004. The newsletter is published as part of my economic consulting services. — John Williams
**
The numbers are not fictitious. All John Williams is doing is using the governments own method of calculating the rate of inflation. The government changes the methods of calculating inflation every decade or so to under report the true extent of inflation.
So all John Williams is doing is using the CPI calculation method the government used in 1990 or 1980 to calculate todays inflation rate. Therefore, if the government did NOT change its method of calculating the CPI, the governments own statistics would correspond precisely to what Shadow Stats is reporting.
What leads to you think that the government would NOT want to misrepresent its economic statistics? Unless you work for the government you would be happy to see its misrepresentations exposed.
And it seems you have a terribly poor understanding of economics if you think it somehow discredits those of us who think that inflation is higher than reported that ShadowStats subscription is $175 and it was $175 seven years ago.
Anyone who knows anything about the effects of inflation know that prices don’t rise uniformly throughout the economy. Some areas have experienced tremendous price inflation over the past thirty years, like medical care and college tuition, some areas (like consumer electronics) have actually seen falling prices due to the competition and relative lack of government intervention.
ShadowStats subscriptions cost $175 because that is what John Williams chooses to charge.
If you deny the tremendous price inflation in medical care, college tuition, fuel and food prices (incidentally some of the most critical areas of the economy) then you are really lying to yourself to avoid having to reassess your ideological persuasion.
First, to claim that no nation that was on a fiat currency ever returned to a gold standard or other system of sound money is astoundingly incorrect. What about every instance of hyperinflation in world history? In every case of hyperinflation, following the turmoil and chaos caused by that upheaval, the only choice for such a society is to return to a sounder basis for their money.
In the United States, our founders had the Continental Dollars which were used during the Revolutionary War. They printed too many of them and they became essentially worthless, hence the expression “not worth a Continental”. From that experience, the founders make clear in the Constitution that only gold and silver should be legal tender. We went from a fiat currency to a gold standard.
We also abandoned the Gold Standard during the Civil War and printed paper money to fund the war effort. Following that war, we resumed the Gold Standard.
You have to remember that no libertarian today is advocating a gold standard like what we had in the 19th century. Rather we are advocating Free Market Money.
“A Free Market Money System”, by Friedrich Hayek:
Don’t allow the government to print money, allow the people to choose what they desire to use as money. No legal tender laws. No monopolistic bank practices.
Back to your comments, it is patently absurd to look at a snapshot in history and observe that no nation has a currency backed by gold and thus declare that sound money has “failed” disregarding the fact that historically societies have thrived on a gold backed currency for centuries at a time.
One might as easily claim that “peace” has failed and thus is not worth advocating for since politicians keep taking nations to war against one another.
It is especially absurd that you dismiss honest money by looking at the world today, enmeshed as it is in a worldwide economic crisis brought about in large part by the business cycle caused by fiat money creation.
